get away from the dust, noise, and reality. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking after our last discussion, but escaping reality is a must sometimes, right? I should have an answer for you regarding the date in a few weeks. Pencil me in. If I don’t have any unseen obligations with my publisher or the studio, I will be there. I look forward to seeing you soon.
Best,
Dee Dee
Ellery stared at the email she’d sent Evan last night and tried not to panic at the thought of sitting on the couch of Vine House at One Tree Estates. She could still hear the echo of her best friend’s voice as they exited the interstate outside Tyler, Texas.
Surprise, Elle! We’re doing your birthday weekend at your favorite vineyard! Happy birthday!
Any other time, she’d have been ecstatic that her friends had come up with such a cool birthday weekend. But since the owner of the place was her secret obsession, she was less than thrilled. More like panicked that Evan and her mother would find out she’d been masquerading as a stalker.
No, remember, you’re not a stalker.
Pretending to be the talented, pretty Miss Dee Dee O’Hara and maintaining a friendship, albeit a flirty and somewhat intimate one, wasn’t stalking. It was . . . something that she’d obviously convinced herself she needed because her fiancé was . . . something.
God, why couldn’t she figure out why she was doing what she was doing? Why couldn’t she sort through her emotions as easily as she sorted through what would be on trend for the upcoming spring season? Her once-perfect life was so smudged around the edges that there were no lines left.
Every time she thought about Josh and the way she no longer seemed to matter to him, jagged pain split her heart into two halves. She didn’t know what to do, but she’d decided this weekend she would do her best to reel him back to her. When her mother had mentioned that a weekend away was a go, she’d convinced Josh to leave the books, the study group, and the stress behind for just one night. She’d bought a leather bustier and stockings, ordered a few sex toys to try from a discreet online company, and gotten a Brazilian wax. This weekend he was going to notice her if she had to park her ass in his lap and . . . okay, not make him have sex with her, but make it really hard not to.
But that was before, when she thought they were getting rooms at a swanky hotel in Dallas. She had been almost certain her mother and friends would arrange a shopping weekend and spa treatments.
Nope.
Lord, what had she gotten herself into? Why had she ever started flirting with Evan . . . building a secret relationship with him? Her house of cards faced a tsunami.
“Elle, check this out. It’s stocked with a bottle of every type of wine they grow here,” Madison said, opening the wine fridge. “Birthday perks, birthday girl. So which one should we open?”
“Mads, technically my birthday is tomorrow.” She now felt silly for wanting everyone to make a fuss over her birthday. She should have insisted on the simple dinner her mother first suggested. But she knew why she’d let them plan this celebration. Because deep down under all the “I’m totally an adult” facade, she wanted the cake, balloons, and epicness. Because a nice dinner out had sounded too much like what everyone else did. Like it wasn’t special enough.
Ellery didn’t want to admit that her life had become ordinary. Ellery had graduated from being on the homecoming court to being a basic bitch. She might as well drink pumpkin spice lattes, carry Michael Kors, and wear yoga pants to the grocery store. Totally basic.
And she didn’t want to be that woman. If she were going to have the fabulous life she’d wanted for herself in NYC, she had to be interesting enough to be in the spotlight. And if she and Josh were going to make it, she had to be more interesting than his books and cadaver.
Her biggest fear was that she was neither. That she had already peaked, and everything was downhill from hereafter.
“Uh, you get to celebrate the whole month if you want to,” Madison drawled before grinning, causing her two precious dimples to come out to play. Her friend’s blonde hair spilled over her shoulders, and her mossy-green eyes surrounded by sooty, long lashes inspired jealousy in