“YOU’RE LATE,” I inform Riley, who just walked through my door with a bottle of wine and a grocery-store sack full of ice cream.
“Sorry,” she says as she hurries into the kitchen to stow away the ice cream and pop open the wine. “I got held up on a call with the Web designer. But I brought sugar and wine, so I should be forgiven. Besides, the show hasn’t started yet.”
I slap slices of pizza on plates for both of us, and we each take a plate and a glass to the living room and settle in for our date night.
Every week, Riley, another best friend of mine, and business partner, comes over and we watch our favorite shows back-to-back while eating bad food and drinking too much wine.
It’s tradition.
“Meow,” the cat says as he slinks into the room, his nose sniffing out the food.
“What the hell!” Riley says in surprise. “When did you get a cat?”
“I didn’t,” I reply as the opening credits for The Vampire Diaries begins. “He got me.”
“Huh?”
I explain how he ran in the house and refuses to leave. “So I bought him some food and a bed and some toys.”
“You got a cat,” Riley says, grinning.
“He got me,” I say again.
“What’s his name?”
“Scoot. Because he won’t scoot.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Riley says with a smile, and scratches Scoot’s ears, making him purr. “He’s so pretty.”
“And stubborn. He doesn’t listen. I tell him he can’t sleep on my bed, and he does it anyway. The only thing he does right is use the litter box.”
“He’s a cat,” she says with a shrug. “That’s what cats do.”
We settle in to eat and watch TV as Scoot jumps up on the back of the couch and curls into a ball to sleep and watch over us.
“I’m telling you,” Riley says as she sips her wine. “That Ian Somerhalder is going to eventually be my husband.”
“He’s already married,” I remind her, and watch as young vampires feed on innocent bystanders while also saving the town from evil.
It’s an amazing sort of irony.
“For him I could be a home wrecker,” she says thoughtfully. “I mean, look at him.”
“Sexy for sure,” I reply with a nod. “Except when he has blood dripping down his chin.”
“I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for having blood dripping down his chin,” she says with a smirk. “Unless he wanted to do me in the bathroom.”
“Ew,” I reply.
“You don’t like to do it in the bathroom?”
“No, the blood part. Ew.”
We giggle, then settle in to enjoy the rest of the show. When it’s over, I pause the DVR so we can clean up the pizza, refill our wine, and scoop ice cream. Because right after The Vampire Diaries is The Originals, an offshoot of The Vampire Diaries.
Just as I’m about to resume the TV, Riley says, “So, have you seen Landon?”
She’s not looking directly at me, and she says it as if she’s asking me if I’ve checked the weather forecast for tomorrow.
“I saw him the other day,” I reply. “Just for a minute.”
I really don’t want to get into it. The girls all know that I’ve crushed on Landon for years.
“Kat said he came into the restaurant the other day,” Riley says. Kat is the fifth friend of our group. The five of us co-own Seduction, a trendy restaurant in Portland. We’ve been open for almost a year, and business couldn’t be better.
“Did he?” I ask.
“She said he looks pretty good.”
No, he doesn’t. He’s sad and maybe scared, and it’s not my job to help him.
“Good for him.”
I press play and pretend to be engrossed in the show. When I’m finished with my ice cream, Scoot jumps down into my lap and curls up, but when I pet him, he hisses, so I leave him be.
“I know that Mia is glad that Landon’s home,” Riley says, and now I want to hiss at her.
“Why are we still talking about this?”
“Because you’re not saying anything,” she says.
“There’s nothing to say. He’s home.”
“And you love him,” she reminds me.
I shake my head. “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t know him, Ri. I’ve carried a torch for a boy I used to know. A lot has happened.”
She’s frowning. “But it’s Landon.”
“I’m fine,” I say, exasperated. “It’ll be nice to see him once in a while, but I’m not a teenager, Riley.”
“Is it weird because of Brian?” she asks, making me frown.
“Why would it be weird because of Brian?” I’m deliberately being a