Page 70 of Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake
Annoyance and indignation flooded Lizzie. She wasn’t stupid enough to think her brother would reach out to her without an ulterior motive. “You’re texting me because you think I’m going to mess up this dumb-ass cake, and you’re scared, so you think that by texting me regularly, it will remind me I have to make it. News flash, Ryan, I know what I’m doing.”
… for the most part.
Lizzie knew what she was doingfor the most part.
Silence flooded the line for three heavy seconds. “That’sreally why you think I text you?” Ryan asked, his voice soft and bewildered. “To harass you about a cake?”
“Well… yeah. What else would it be?” Lizzie said, scraping the toe of her shoe against the concrete.
Ryan let out an incredulous laugh. “To. See. How. You. Are.”
Lizzie pulled the phone away from her ear and gave it a wide-eyed look before responding. “Yeah? Why would you want to do that?”
“Because you’re my sister? Why the hell else would I want to?”
This tripped Lizzie up. While Ryan had never shown Lizzie open disdain, he was such a perfect shining golden star of a child, Lizzie had always assumed he found her as… unpalatable… as their parents did.
Ryan sighed. “Look, I don’t exactly understand how I screwed this up, but I apologize. I’ve just been texting you to check on you. That’s all. I-I’m…”
“You’re what?” Lizzie said, her throat feeling a little tight.
“Looking forward to seeing you in a month,” Ryan said, his voice without inflection.
He might as well have told Lizzie he thought she was the greatest sister in the world for the small kick start of happiness it gave her heart. A slow grin broke across her cheeks, and she couldn’t help letting out a tiny laugh. After a few moments, she remembered she was on an actual phone call and it was expected of her to respond.
“Oi, bruv, I be damn’d. Lookin’ forward ta seeing you too, good sir. Only two fortnights’ time, I reck’n,” Lizzie said, putting on a thick and awful Cockney accent because Ryan saying he was excited to see her felt a tiny bit serious, and Lizzie did not do well with serious conversations.
Ryan was silent again on the line, then a rusty chuckle came through. “No one would say two fortnights. They would just say a month,” Ryan said.
“Wha’ you on about, then?” Lizzie said, making him laugh even harder. She couldn’t help laughing too.
“You’re ridiculous,” Ryan finally choked out through his giggles. “I have to run, but I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Bye, Ry,” Lizzie said, then hung up the call.
Chapter 32
LIZZIE met Rake outside of a swanky high-rise in Center City a few hours later, having spent the day telling herself over and over that the kiss meant nothing and she was making it a way bigger deal than it was.
Rake looked nothing short of devastating in his black suit and black dress shirt. If Lizzie were a cartoon character, her eyes would have popped out of her head whileAHOOGAblared at full volume as she watched him lean against the building and scroll through his phone.
God really spent his time on that one, Lizzie thought as she stepped toward him and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hi,” she said. “You look ridiculously good and it’s borderline obscene.”
Rake blinked at her for a moment before giving her an embarrassed smile. “You clean up well yourself, Birdy,” he said, eyeing her up and down. “I’m starting to doubt you own anything other than red dresses.”
She waved off the comment then dragged a hand down the lapels of his suit coat, unable to resist touching him. “No, for real,” she continued, still ogling. “This suit makes me wish I was a snake, so I could unlatch my jaw and swallow you whole.”
Rake blinked again, opened his mouth to say something, seemed to think better of it, and shook his head.
“Let’s go,” he said, placing his hand on her lower back to guide her into the building.
They rode the elevator up to the rooftop in silence, Lizzie fidgeting and smoothing down the skirt of her bloodred dress, tangling her fingers in the overlay of lace, while Rake typed away on his phone.
When the golden doors of the elevator slid open, Lizzie was slapped with the news that swimsuit launch parties were her waking nightmare of ADHD overstimulation.
Bumping music and chatter crashed at her from both sides, sending a sharp zap of energy from her brain down her spine. A glittering sea of nicely dressed people fanned out across the rooftop, all circled around a sparkling pool where models in swimsuits lounged and laughed, every color and texture tugging at her attention. They were swallowed into the crowd, Rake leading Lizzie to a table of name tags while she gawked, all the shininess of the scene devouring her brain like warp-speed ivy.