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I laugh again. “Do you have some?”
“Royce bought, like, twenty pints. And I’m not kidding. He really did.”
“I’ve met him,” I say. “I believe you.” I stand up and help her do the same.
A few minutes later, we are on the couch in the living room, the television on mute, the fireplace crackling in the corner, with a selection of six ice cream pints on the table in front of us. “I told you he bought twenty pints,” Lauren says, finishing a bite of ice cream. “Did you know that one of these pints is, like, seventy percent of the calories we’re allowed to have in a day?”
“Thank you for that,” I say, as I try a spoonful of some kind of chocolate ice cream that is incredible. “Thankfully, I haven’t eaten much today, and neither have you.”
“I ate a pint,” she says. “Maybe I ate two. For some reason, after I eat one of these, I’m not sick for a while.”
“The baby wants what the baby wants,” I say. “Eat the ice cream.”
She grabs a stack of files sitting on the coffee table and sets them between us on the couch. “Has Reese talked to you about the trial, or is that off-limits since you’re press?”
“I’m not press. You know I hate being called press as much as Reese hates being called Mr. Hotness. And I was with him and his team all day, working on the questions and closing for next week.”
“Really? He trusts you already, then.”
“I— Well, yes. I guess he does.”
“How’s trust working on your end?” she asks, giving me a knowing look, considering she weathered the Mitch storm with me.
“Better than expected,” I say, “and for now, that’s all you’re getting.”
“How did you meet him?”
“You didn’t hear what I just said, did you?”
“I heard and chose to ignore what you said.”
“Fine. He cut in line at the coffee shop and accused me of playing games on my phone while holding up the line. When I was, in fact, reading a Mr. Hotness blog without even knowing it was him.”
She laughs and scoops a spoonful of ice cream. “That’s priceless,” she says, taking a bite. “Then what?”
“I checked his bad manners and told him he’d be single the rest of his life if he didn’t.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “That’s the Cat I know.”
“And I called him an arrogant asshole.”
She presses fingers to her forehead. “Oh God. You just gave me brain freeze.” She scrunches up her eyes and face for a minute and then refocuses. “Okay. It’s gone. Back to you and Reese. All the women pining for that man, and you figured out the secret code. Just call him a manner-less, arrogant asshole. It’s your charm, Cat. I’ve always admired your charm.”
“Men want what they can’t have.”
“But he has you.”
“Maybe he thinks he really doesn’t.”
“Does he?”
“Yes, actually, he does.”
She squeezes my hand. “I’m glad. You really shut down after Mitch.”
“I didn’t shut down. I focused on doing me my way, instead of my father’s. That meant getting to know who I am. I needed time and space to do that.”
“And now, Cat? Do you know yourself now?”
