Page 1 of Anyone But the Superstar

1

LIZ

My panties are wet for all the wrong reasons.

‘Sorry, ma’am, there’s a forty-minute wait.’ The hostess points behind me at the picnic tables I passed on my way from the parking lot as I hurried from my rental car toward the salvation of the restaurant’s air conditioning. ‘But thereisavailability on the patio.’

It takes serious effort not to scoff at her suggestion as I pull at the front of my damp, cotton t-shirt.

Of course, there’s room on the patio. Only crazy people would sit outside in ninety-eight-degree weather with a heat index of a 107.

And yet, when I follow to where she’s pointing, I find a small crowd scattered around the restaurant’s picnic tables.

This time, I can’t hide the sound of incredulity as I survey the jean and boot clad customers acting like two free-standing water misters are sufficient to keep them from having heat stroke.

I mean, honestly, who wears long pants and boots in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave?

Texans, that’s who.

But then again, from what I’ve seen so far of the Lone Star state since I landed yesterday –Texansarecertifiable.

Take my sister-in-law, Bell. First, she married my (former) playboy brother Chase. Then she became obsessed with his pet sidekick – a hairless cat named Mike Hunt (see what he did there?). Obsessed enough to let the cat motorboat her on the regular as a form of affection.

It suddenly makes sense that Bell is Houston born and raised when I look at these crazy Texansnotnoticing the insufferable heat.

Yet as much as I love my sister-in-law, I’m not crazy. Or at least not Texas-level crazy.

Turning back to the hostess, I flash her a polite smile and prepare to do something I’ve never had to do in all my years in New York – put my name on a waitlist. ‘Thanks, but?—’

My phone buzzes. And while I would really like to ignore it, it may be from my boss, aka my professor, about the internship he arranged for me. One I’m due to start in three days. ‘Excuse me a moment, please,’ I tell the hostess, stepping aside and tugging my phone out of my jean shorts’ back pocket.

The screen lights up with a text notification from my other sister-in-law, Alice. It may not be my professor, but as I consider Alice the nicest woman on the planet (how my eldest dour brother Thomas managed to score her is a complete mystery), I’d feel guilty not responding.

Opening the phone, I’m rewarded with a picture of both my brothers holding their respective cats – one hairless, one sasquatchian.

The cats, not my brothers.

I snort at their expressions. The cats’andmy brothers’.

While my oldest brother Thomas has a strong dislike for Chase’s sphinx – he and Mike both have nearly identical looks ofdisdain. Meanwhile, Chase mirrors Thomas’ Bengal cat, King Richard (who Chase nicknamed King Dick Moore), adopting an expression of cuddly bliss.

My sisters-in-laws and I find great pleasure in talking behind my brothers’ backs about how each of them personally chose a feline that reflects the brother they held a grudge against for years. Until recently. Until Bell and Alice.

Now they all get along. The brothers, not the cats.

Mike likes no one but Bell and me. He tolerates Chase.

Standing in the pub’s smallindoorwaiting area for patrons, I can’t help but physically feel how much I miss them as I look at the picture on my phone.

All of them.

In the year since I left (*cough* ran away *cough*), the Moores have not only grown by three – four if you include King Dick – but they’ve been doing things I’d always wished us Moores would’ve done more of when I was a kid – hang out as a family.

Too bad I’m no longer a Moore. Never was, really.

I’m about to sink into a pity party for one, something I’ve done far too often this past year, when a man sitting at the bar, wearing a slick suit (an anomaly in the casual pub/restaurant) catches my attention. He flashes his Piguet watch as he signals the bartender for his tab.

I don’t stop to think what a man in a custom-cut suit and a one hundred grand watch is doing at Boondoggles Pub on the outskirts of Houston, Texas. Because as someone who, from the age of nineteen (thanks to an older friend’s ID), has honed their drinking savvy in the busiest and most exclusive clubs in New York City, I know that hesitation costs when it comes to jockeying for position at the bar.