like a hit of heroin to a recovering addict.
I am evidently the addict in question. No recovery here, boy.
“Did dying make her any nicer?”
“Nope,” I say with a startled laugh. “It’ll take more than a visit from the Grim Reaper to soften my mother up.”
She starts to smile with me, then catches herself and stops.
“You look great, by the way,” I blurt.
One of those delicate brows goes up.
“I pay a personal trainer, a hairstylist and an aesthetician to keep me spackled together these days. Glad to know I’m not wasting my money. And you’re not trying to flirt with me, are you?”
“Would it work?”
“Absolutely. Just like me going outside right now and trying to swim across the river to Jersey would work.”
I laugh again, somehow resisting the growing urge to swallow her whole. She’s that delicious.
“You looked great before all that, as I recall. Matter of fact, back in the day, I’d be looking forward to the end of the night and figuring out what you’ve got on under that dress.” I pause to give her a once-over that lingers on her small breasts, curious to see if the attention is enough to make her nipples bead the way they used to. Ah. There it is. So that hasn’t changed. Thrilling. “And you’d be looking forward to letting me.”
Those luscious lips curl into a crooked smile without a trace of humor in it.
“Twenty-year-olds aren’t known for their smarts. Back in the day, I survived on frozen pizza, donuts, diet soda and five hours of sleep most nights.”
“Don’t expect me to apologize for the sleep deprivation,” I say, sweet memories making my voice husky. “We had better things to do in bed, as I vividly recall.”
The bright patches of color in her cheeks intensify.
“Maybe, but I’m trying to stay away from stupid now that I’m older. If there’s nothing else? I want to mingle with the people I actually want to see. Have a great night.”
She turns to go, but I’m not done here. Not by a long shot. Not when being in Mia’s presence again makes me feel this buzzed and alive. I don’t know what I’ve been doing with my life this whole time, but it wasn’t this. And this is something I need a lot more of.
“I understand you’re designing for one of the big houses these days,” I say quickly, before she can take off. I try to recall which one it was, but my overstimulated brain can’t call up the information at the moment. Ralph Lauren, maybe. “I’m impressed.”
She makes a derisive sound. “Sure you are.”
“I’m dead serious,” I say, feeling a surge of the hate again, along with the sour taste of bile in the back of my mouth. “I know exactly how much your career in fashion means to you. Although I could have sworn you said you wanted to design wedding dresses. Or am I remembering that wrong?”
I realize my arrow hit home by the way she stiffens.
“Oh, so that’s why you’re here.” She says it with the grim triumph of Sherlock Holmes when he slides that last clue into place and discovers who the murderer is. “Career advice.”
Wrong. I want to remind her that I still exist. That while she may be living her Oprah-sanctioned best life, some of us aren’t so lucky. That she still has her nasty claw marks all over my life.
“Well, that’s why you ran off to Milan after graduation, right? To learn to make wedding dresses? So you could start your own atelier one day?”
“There was no running away involved,” she says, the thinning of her lips belying her sweet tone and evident determination not to let me ruffle her feathers. “I got an apprenticeship in Milan and moved there.”
“What about your dream of making wedding dresses?”
“Not all dreams go the distance,” she says, her expression stony now. “But since you’re so curious, you should know that I periodically make custom dresses for people through word of mouth. Matter of fact, I have a wedding this weekend.”
I know that already, but now is not the time to mention it. Not when she’s raised such an interesting topic.
“Any other dreams in particular?”
“Not at all,” she says smoothly.
“Glad to hear it, Starlight,” I say, adding a nice layer of mockery to my voice because I know it will infuriate her. And because I want to punish her for acting like the two of us didn’t have joint dreams that died an ugly death. “I’m glad you have everything you