My confused gaze swung to Shirleen but she was looking at the movie star glamour girl who was looking at me.

“Three days,” Glamour girl said, smiling at me and I thought, in other circumstances, I would have liked to meet her.

“A week, she’s got spirit,” the other black lady said. She was smiling at me too, not like I was the butt of some joke, but in a kind way.

I shook my head, I needed to focus, leave these nutsos behind and go, go, go.

I opened the outer door.

Before it closed behind me, I heard Luke say strangely, “Tonight.”

Then everyone laughed.

Chapter Two

A Little Bit of Trouble

I was standing in my dinky little kitchen, taking my post-Luke episode attitude out on an innocent cucumber.

That didn’t go very well, Good Ava said on a sigh, resting the side of her head in her hand and her elbow on her thigh.

I thought it went great! Bad Ava yelled enthusiastically, jumping up and down.

I tried to ignore them both and pounded the big cleaver into the cucumber, chopping it in a cucumber-decimating frenzy, trying to get the confrontation with Luke and everyone in his office out of my head.

* * * * *

I lived in a row house in the Highlands area of Denver. I called it The Best Little Row House in Denver.

See? I’m a dork.

It had a living room with two big, arched windows at the front separated by double doors that rolled into the walls and led to dining room also with two big windows, these facing the back, a small kitchen off the dining room and a screened-in porch out the backdoor of the kitchen. All hardwood floors, except in the minuscule kitchen, which I’d tiled in slate with the counter tops tiled in shiny black. I put in white cupboards, all the hanging ones glass-fronted and displaying my huge collection of Fiestaware. There were two bedrooms and a massive bathroom with a claw-footed tub upstairs. I had a big, old basement its door leading off the kitchen which had two rooms and an old coal room. It was more of a pit than a basement, un-renovated and long-since unused, wallpaper peeling and exposed light bulbs. I only went down there to do my laundry because it creeped me out.

My row house was historically registered and had three fireplaces (dining room, living room and bedroom) and a sweet, little shady backyard with big trees kitty-corner at the ends.

It wasn’t in the best neighborhood, but who cared? It had character, grace, history, a low mortgage, a garage out back where my Range Rover could be safe and I dug it.

I’d lived in Denver my whole life and was never going to move away. Denver was home. It had everything you needed, the big city choice of culture, food, shopping and entertainment all with a small town feel.

My family felt differently.

* * * * *

After my Dad left us when I was fourteen (rat-bastard number one in my life) and all us girls graduated high school, Mom took off to Phoenix like a shot. She hated the cold and the snow and all the familiar reminders of my father. She also liked to be tan but felt claustrophobic in sunbeds.

I had two older sisters. My oldest one, Marilyn, moved to St. Louis after high school and got married to a car salesman then divorced him and almost immediately got married to a lawyer with whom she was currently involved in a bitter divorce at the same time dating a doctor, thus moving up in her chosen career as trophy wife. So far Marilyn had managed to work approximately four months of her life and spent the rest of it in spas and malls and on her back with sweaty slimeballs pumping away at her. I knew this because she talked about her active sex life a good deal, a kind of gross good deal, read: ick.

My other sister, Sofia, moved to San Diego and became a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers. Sofia worked her way through the offensive line and then the defensive line of the Chargers (something, I might add, she also did as a cheerleader in high school). Now, retired from her career as an active cheerleader and football player groupie, she was running a cheerleading camp and engaged to a sports agent who was more of a slimeball than both of Marilyn’s husbands put together and that was quite a feat, considering Marilyn’s husbands were seriously the scum of the earth.

By the way, my Mom had named us all, with high hopes, after Hollywood bombshells. My sisters had both been bombshells from puberty, all thick, dark, shining hair, big boobs, tight asses, flat stomachs, long legs and sultry eyes. I had to work hard at bombshell status, and even then didn’t quite make it because I was a big dork.

It was safe to say my sisters and I weren’t close.

Sissy Whitchurch was another story.

* * * * *

Sissy and I had been best friends since second grade and we were close. She was the bestest, best friend in the world. Good at keeping secrets, happy to rip my silly and sometimes mean sisters to shreds with me, loyal to the core and always up for an adventure.

One problem with Sissy, she had shit taste in men.

Though, considering good men were non-existent, all women didn’t have much choice.

However, Sissy’s husband, Dominic, was beyond the pale in the shit-men stakes. Dom was a world-class ass**le.

Dominic Vincetti was very good-looking (and knew it), made his money dubiously (and didn’t hide it) and treated Sissy like shit (and never apologized). He didn’t hit her, but he cheated on her (openly), walked all over her and talked down to her in a way that made my teeth go on edge.

Before Dom, Sissy was funny and sweet and there was no one in the world who was better to go to a rock concert with. She loved music like I did and she went wild at concerts, dancing, screaming, she always knew all the words to the songs and sang them loud.

After five years of marriage, Dom had forced all that good stuff out of Sissy, making her quiet, shy, uncertain and a homebody and Sissy didn’t even notice it was happening.

I noticed and it pissed me off.

Sissy loved him though and put up with it and it wasn’t my place to say anything. If she wanted him then I was there. My only other choice was to stop spending time with her and a life without Sissy, well, I couldn’t imagine it.

But when I changed, lost weight, dyed my hair, Dom noticed.

In fact, a lot of people noticed.

In fact, even though I’d dated when I was heavy, I started to get some serious male attention as the weight dropped off then more then more. Since Luke’s Dad’s funeral, I’d had my first three longish-term boyfriends. I must admit, in the dream world I had in the back of my head, they were all practice for Luke. Of course, I never told them that and I could have fallen in love with any one of them, if they hadn’t all turned out to be jerks.

There was Rick, who cheated on me (um, no).