Page 54 of The Wildest One

The sound that came out of me was a laugh, but Ginger knew I didn’t find this funny. “Are we really? Because I feel like we’re still climbing toward the peak and we’re nowhere even close to being over it.”

“Listen, I’m drinking out of a glass that has boobs.” She held it in front of me so I could see, even though mine was identical. “Let’s spend tonight focusing on the good rather than the upcoming anxiety we’re about to face.”

I smiled, lowering my head to look at my hand. One of the first things I’d noticed when the bartender gave me my order was the shape of the glass—how it dipped and curved and jutted out, resembling a woman’s body.

When I glanced back up, I raised my brows and said, “We both have anxiety?”

She tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, knowing my locks never stayed. “Part of a bestie’s role is taking on the other person’s anxiety. So, yes, by default, I’m taking on yours, which means we both have it.”

Anxiety.

I hadn’t anticipated having it this bad—or at all.

Because I had a plan.

I was going to graduate from college. Ginger and I would stay in the same apartment we had rented our junior year and keep it until we could afford something larger, however long that took. I was going to work full-time for my dad in his Boston office, and instead of him comanaging my accounts, they would become mine, and I would take on several others.

The graduation part had happened.

But nothing else went according to plan.

And it all started that day my dad called me into his office, dropping a bit of news that completely came out of nowhere.

News that had rocked my entire world.

My hand went to my chest. “Is yours right here? Your anxiety, I mean.” I pushed harder against it. “Because this is where I feel it. It’s burrowed a hole, and it won’t stop digging.”

She circled her fingers around mine. “That means you haven’t had enough to drink. You need to down these”—she tapped my glass—“until that feeling is gone.”

My head fell back, and I tried to breathe. When I couldn’t, I said, “And tomorrow, when I wake up and it’s still there, what do I do then?”

She smiled. “We do it all over again.”

I made a face as I thought about what that hangover would feel like. “Horrible plan.”

“I know. But it’s all I’ve got.”

I slid my hand over the top of my hair and bunched some into my palm. “What the hell am I going to do about Monday?—”

“Oh my God.”

Ginger hadn’t cut me off because she was tired of hearing me groan. What told me that were the way her eyes were going wide and how her mouth was hanging open. An expression then grewacross her face, like she’d just witnessed an alien land behind me.

“Ginger?”

She quickly downed every last drop of her drink, which she set on a nearby table as fast as she had shot back the liquor, and she put her hands on my shoulders. “I need you to listen to me.”

“Ginger, you’re freaking me out. What’s wrong?”

“Do not move. Do you hear me?”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“But why?”

“Jolie, you’re not listening—you’re talking—and I really need you to listen.” She took a deep breath, her behavior getting stranger by the second. “You’re going to put your drink on the table beside us, and then you’re going to give me your hand, and we’re going to walk across the front of this balcony until we reach the stairs, and at the bottom, we’ll sneak out the back—if there’s a back. If not, we’ll slip out the front.”