Page 9 of The Best Worst Thing

Girls’ Night Out

By eight o’clock, Nicole, Paige, and Mari were at dinner.

Mari had picked out some bougie rooftop on the Westside, all succulents and sleek white chairs and rattan pendant lights that dangled from the veranda like ivy.

At every table, pretty little things thumbed through their phones, nursing twenty-dollar cocktails as the dusty sun melted into the twinkling hills.

There was also a pool, because Los Angeles.

“Well, this is it,” Paige said as the group behind them finished up their fourth very serious, very shameless photo shoot. “This is, hands down, the straightest, most basic thing I’ve ever done.”

“First of all,” Mari said, “it’s a good life. I won’t apologize for it. And where else were we going to go? Los Feliz? Silver Lake? Can you imagine Nicole there? She’d probably—”

“I’m right here, assholes. I’m depressed, not dead. And I would’ve been fine in Silver Lake! I would’ve gone to Silver Lake!”

“Nicole,” Paige said. “When was the last time you were actually in Silver Lake?”

Nicole huffed. “Fine. I’ve never been. But I would go in theory.”

The truth was, Nicole didn’t go much of anywhere. But tonight, she’d insisted on leaving Manhattan Beach. Anything to get away from another reminder of Gabe. Who, for the record, had most definitely never been to Silver Lake either.

“Why don’t you ask Logan to take you?” Mari said, reaching for a glorified sweet potato fry.

Nicole rolled her eyes. She’d hardly let herself think about Logan these past few days.

She’d been busy bawling her eyes out, trying to do the right thing: grieve her failed marriage.

Still, she couldn’t totally help herself.

From time to time, she’d dust off a memory of theirs.

Give it a closer look. Decide if maybe it played back a little differently now that she could see it through a strange new lens.

“Wait,” Paige said. “Logan, Logan? Like, work Logan?”

“Hold on a second,” Mari said. “How do you know about Logan?”

“Nic’s favorite person at work. Other than you, of course.”

It was true that with Paige, Nicole had talked about Logan quite a bit.

Not recently, of course—that would’ve been superweird.

But back when she was still at Porter Sloane, Nicole would call Paige and tell her all about her day.

Logan, it just so happened, seemed to play a starring role in Nicole’s most colorful stories.

“Interesting.” Mari raised an eyebrow—make that two—at Nicole, who was now shifting in her seat, fiddling with her empty glass. “Very interesting.”

“I always thought the New York story was a little odd,” Paige said.

“Huh?” Mari said. “What New York story?”

Now Nicole’s cheeks were really starting to burn. “We can skip this, guys. Please.”

“Wait a second,” Mari said. “Weren’t you and Logan both in New York? Right when we opened up the East Coast office?”

“It was a work trip. We—”

“Holy shit! You guys went out, didn’t you?”

“It was my birthday!” Nicole’s face was on fire. “He was just being nice!”

“This is a safe space, Nic.” Mari caught their server’s attention, then signaled for another round of drinks. “Nobody here liked Gabe. Like, at all.”

Nicole glared at Mari, then at Paige. Both of whom were giggling, sucking down the bottoms of their drinks through very cute, tangerine-and-white-striped paper straws.

“Screw both of you,” she said.

Paige hooked her arm around Nicole and pulled her in tight. “Just giving you a hard time. Although I am curious why we’re even talking about this guy. Haven’t heard that name in years.”

“Wait,” Mari said to Nicole. “You didn’t tell her about Monday?”

Now Paige was glancing around the table. “Tell me what about Monday?”

“I …”

“I convinced her to go knock on his door the night she found out about Gabe. We were pretty drunk. She chickened out, but he caught her there anyway. She was inside for, like, two hours. He even walked her back to my place.”

“And?” Paige said.

“And nothing!” Nicole said.

For a good ten minutes, this continued. Paige demanding the play-by-play.

Nicole blushing, offering the bare minimum, protesting a bit too much.

Mari chiming in with humiliating little details Nicole must’ve let slip after Logan dropped her off.

By the end of it, Mari was pulling up Logan’s headshot on her phone and Nicole was hiding her face in her hands.

“Okay, guys,” Nicole said. “Enough, though, really. I need to be alone.”

“Myth!” Mari turned to Paige. “Tell her it’s a myth. Tell her you don’t need to be alone after a breakup!”

“There is well-documented evidence,” Paige said, dunking a now-soggy fry in the last of some heirloom tomato compote, “that you have to get under someone to get over someone.”

“See!” Mari said. “And Paige would know. She’s had sex with more than, what, four people in her lifetime?”

Paige snickered. Nicole, at this point, was just cracking up.

“Why are you guys so obsessed with me having rebound sex?”

“We’re not obsessed with you having rebound sex,” Mari said as their drinks arrived. “We’re obsessed with you being happy and having rebound sex.”

The server—a woman, maybe forty—gave the group a knowing glance. Nicole thanked her, then apologized on behalf of her very rowdy table.

“So you haven’t heard from him?” Paige said.

“Oh, no, I did.”

“Wait, what?” Paige said. “Read it to us!”

“It’s nothing, it’s—”

“Right now,” Mari said. “You read it to us right now.”

Nicole laughed, then pulled out her phone, wincing at the latest barrage of messages from Gabe. She opened up her text from Logan and handed over her phone.

Really good to see you. Sorry things have been so hard. When you’re sobered up and ready to see the light of day, let’s run?

“Running?” Mari said as she and Paige peered at Nicole’s screen. “Jesus Christ. The most Logan pass ever.”

But it wasn’t as dumb as Mari thought. Back in the day, Logan and Nicole would sometimes cross paths on the Greenbelt before work. She had mentioned to him on their walk from his place to Mari’s the other night how much she missed getting out there.

“Well, are you going?” Paige said. “Did you call him or something? Did you say yes?”

“I … I haven’t responded.”

Nicole was telling the truth; she hadn’t. But she failed to mention that she’d been drafting a reply for two days now, ever since she got her new phone.

“You have to text him back!” Mari said. “He’s probably dying!”

Nicole shook her head. “This has been fun, guys. But I’m not ready to date. Or hook up or anything, okay?”

“Okay,” Mari said, nodding. She put her hand on the table and leaned toward Nicole. “You’re right. You should do whatever you want.”

Nicole exhaled. She’d finally gotten Paige and Mari—especially Mari—to drop it.

But it wasn’t that simple, was it? Because what Nicole really wanted wasn’t to be alone. It wasn’t to stay in bed and cry like a baby, ignoring Gabe’s incessant calls. It was to text Logan back— to see him again. Just for, like, a run. Maybe a cup of coffee.

You know, as a friend.