Vonnie, who usually has at least something to say, looks like she’s trying to blend in with the wall behind her. She’s staring down at my runner and even though I think it’s a great rug, it’s not that interesting. Then I remember Liv and Marie telling me that she thinks I’m mad at her.
Ignoring everyone else in the room, even though I know their nosy asses aren’t ignoring us, I walk over to Vonnie and put my hands on her shoulders. “Hey,” I say when she won’t meet my eyes. “I am not mad at you, not at all.”
“I just feel so terrible.” She closes her eyes and pushes her lips together. “I promised you I wouldn’t tell and then I did it in front of a room full of people. You must have been so pissed at me.”
“Please! If anything, you should be pissed at me.” I hope she doesn’t take me up on that, but I say it anyways because it’s true, and a sad Vonnie is the most heartbreaking sight in the entire world. She’s too full of life to ever be muted. “I should’ve never put that on your shoulders, it wasn’t your secret to keep and I should’ve told him when you told me to.”
“I thought you hated me,” she says.
“Are you kidding me?” My incredulous laughter cannot be prevented no matter how hard I try. If anything, I was just waiting until they realized I was a visitor in their world and there was no reason for them to want to hang out with me when Quinton was out of the picture. “You are literally one of the best people I know. I thought you guys would’ve washed your hands of me already.”
“Why the hell would we do that?” Brynn asks.
Poppy looks at me with big, sympathetic doe eyes, her curly hair bouncing as she shakes her head no.
“You know . . . I mean, we’ve only known each other for a short amount of time.” I look to Marie and Liv to back me up, but the traitors say nothing. “I just assumed that because we only hung out because of Quinton, you wouldn’t want to anymore.”
“Oh yeah, that makes so much sense.” Brynn’s words drip with sarcasm. “You didn’t even like Q when you guys met! Also, we’re all grown women capable of creating and maintaining friendships that have nothing to do with our husbands or boyfriends.”
“Preach.” Vonnie snaps her fingers two times, the quiet woman who walked into my condo fading away.
“I get what you’re saying.” Poppy tries to take my side, ignoring Brynn’s and Vonnie’s glares while Greer just picks through the cupcakes, oblivious to it all. “When TK and I broke up, I felt the same way. But these women are like glitter, they never go away.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Brynn says.
“Same,” Vonnie agrees. “Plus, Justin and I might not make it much longer, so then what? I’m not going to have any friends anymore? I think not.”
Even though Vonnie is talking about her marriage ending, the sadness in her voice from minutes ago is gone and I’m so grateful to have her back. Even if it means her giving me a hard time.
Like Queen Lizzo says, truth hurts.
“Alright.” Greer peels the wrapper off of the cupcake she finally decided on. “Are we going to tell her our intel from Maxwell now? Also, I brought sage to burn when we’re finished. You know, good vibes only.”
While someone offering to sage my house would usually be the thing that catches my attention, it isn’t in this case.
“What intel?” I ask the Lady Mustangs taking over my living room. Even Liv and Marie are sitting up straight.
“I might’ve had Maxwell invite Q over to our place for dinner.” Brynn has the decency to look a little embarrassed. “Hey, don’t look at me like that! You weren’t answering my phone calls, so I had to do what I had to do.”
“That’s fair,” I say to Brynn before aiming a glare at Liv and Marie when I hear them laughing.
“I asked him about things between you two and he was super vague.” She walks to my kitchen and sits on my stool as she pulls a bottle of whiskey out of her purse. And I’m not sure there’s a more effective way to distract me from whatever bombshell she’s about to drop. “But he said that he was worried about you losing your job, that he didn’t want to be responsible.”
I already know this since he said something along those lines before he drove away from me.
“Is that all?” I ask. “I quit yesterday, so it doesn’t matter. Not that I think anything he says to Mahler would’ve changed his mind about letting me go.”
“You what?” Vonnie grabs my arm and spins me around.
“Um, yeah. I finally realized you guys were right. Mahler is an asshole and I think I like event planning a lot more, so I quit.” I thought out of everyone, Vonnie would be the happiest to hear that I made the decision to quit, so I’m taken aback by her reaction. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It would be if Quinton didn’t tell the world’s slowest storyteller over there”—she glares at Brynn, who is glaring right back—“that he’s planning on not taking a knee or wearing the tape for these final games so Mahler won’t fire you,” Vonnie says.
“Why would he do that?” The room starts to spin a little and I stumble backward. “I never once told him to stand. After all of this, he’s just going to stand? That doesn’t even make sense!”
Greer takes a bite of her cupcake, oblivious to the mood in the room. “I think it’s romantic.”
“It’s not romantic! It’s stupid! Why would he risk his integrity for this? And why does he think I need him
