“Oh, that’s so sad, please don’t be that girl.”
“Which girl?”
“The fake mean girl,” I shot back. “Come on, help me order, please.”
She rolled her eyes before turning to the baker and repeating what I asked for. Pleased, he said something about us both, making Lucy nod as if she’d heard it a million times before.
“What did he say?”
“Never have such beauties graced his store before.”
She had most likely heard that a million times before. She gave him the card, and he gave her the bag of goodies and a cup holder for the drinks. I bit my lip when she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach his higher counter. I wanted to help, but the moment she heard me step forward, her head whipped back like a demented doll, and she glared at me. Raising my hands in surrender, I stepped back.
With both of her feet on the ground, she handed me the drinks and my treats, and then she signed the receipt.
“Merci!” I said, lifting him.
“Merci, revenez nous voir,” he said back.
I looked at Lucy to translate.
“He said, thank you, come again,” she repeated, walking to the door where our personal bodyguard and driver stood waiting. Charline’s eyes weren’t on us but everything that moved in the distance.
“Okay wait, where is your phone?” I asked, handing her one of the drinks. She took it but didn’t seem to understand why I needed her phone. “We’re going to take a selfie.”
“Dru,” she sighed in annoyance.
“Just one, indulge me this once. Who knows when I’ll get to come back again.”
“Whenever you like. You are the mate of Theseus Thorbørn,” she snapped, and I just gave her a look.
“We’re taking the selfie, Lucy even if you are growling at me the whole time. We have no pictures together, and we are supposed to be friends,” I said to her.
With a heavy frown, she came over and unlocked her phone, holding it up. “My arm isn’t long enough.”
“Mine is.” I took it from her, bending down a bit and quickly took the picture—well, rapid-fire picture—holding up the hot chocolate.
“One of those has to be good,” I said, beginning to scroll.
“Why are you like this?” she questioned.
I glanced up from the phone, and she wasn’t glaring or annoyed but just blank-faced. “You do realize I have been spying on you. That I haven’t been very honest or forthcoming with you. And yet, you insist I come on the plane with you, that I am your guest, and that on top of that, now I am your friend whom you want photos with. Why? Are you trying to become a saint?”
“Because when I was lonely and scared, you were the first person there,” I answered without needing to think, and that seemed to surprise her. “I was scared. Really, really scared. And you were there. You weren’t the nicest, but you explained things to me. You helped me get cleaned up, and you always answered when I called. You taught me how to be okay. You didn’t have to do all of that to spy on me. Even if you did, it doesn’t take away from the fact that you helped me. You were a friend as Mrs. Old Lady Ming. You are still my friend as this young K-pop star.”
The mask on her face broke a bit. “Which K-Pop star?”
“Oh my God, you are so vain.” I
“I know.” She said as we turned to walk.
“That’s why I came to this country to begin with.”
“What?”
She nodded, taking the drinks from my hands and setting them beside a homeless woman as she slept in a ball on the street. I put down the bake goods before we kept walking.
“I came here when I was seventeen to make it in Hollywood; it was 1924. Only, I didn’t make it,” she answered as we walked down the sidewalk toward a shop called Lefèbvre, across the street. “I was killed six years later, leaving my shift as a waitress in a Calabasas Chinese restaurant.”