Still So Hot!. Serena Bell

two of them against the world. Blowing off studying to eat pizza on the roof of the library, verbally dismembering their common enemies behind closed doors, stealing the Buddha statue from the religion department and installing it as guardian over the condom jar in the health center. She’d been funny, sharp, energetic, but kind, too, jollying him out of bad moods and dragging him on hikes in the New England mountains as an antidote to sophomore slumps and senior stress.

      She was not the kind of friend who came along every day. There were eight million other people living in New York City, but no one played Scrabble with the focus or intensity that Elisa applied to the game. And of the other 7,999,999 New Yorkers, he had yet to find one who liked to deliberately pick bad DVDs and do her own Mystery Science Theater 3000, dissecting and mocking the films with glee. And no one had ever laughed at him with the utter abandon that Elisa had employed the day she’d taught him to Rollerblade, hoisting him up off the ground and then falling down beside him, breathless with hysteria.

      You didn’t get second chances too many times in life.

      “Okay,” he said. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

      3

      ELISA COLLAPSED INTO the cushy first-class seat. “Okay. I think I talked Brett into not taking the next flight back.”

      There was silence from beside her, and she turned to discover that Celine was not awed and grateful, but confused. “He wanted to take the next flight back?”

      Oh, man. She’d blown that. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that Celine might still think a romance could develop between her and Brett? Brett always did manage to inspire unreasonable expectations in women. She of all people should know that. “He said the situation was too weird for him. You didn’t mean to mislead him. It’s just that he thought he was getting a special weekend with you.”

      “But you said now he’s staying?” There was a sweet, hopeful note in Celine’s voice. No wonder this woman got her heart publicly broken a minimum of five times a year. She had no hard-candy shell, only the melty center.

      “Well, no—not staying. Just, I—” There was no diplomatic way to say this. “I thought it would be embarrassing for you if he left now, whereas if he stayed, we could make it look like you sent him away on your own terms. You guys can put on a nice show of having a destination date, and then you can decide you’re not interested and move on. Everyone looks good.”

      Celine narrowed her eyes. “Everyone, meaning you?”

      Elisa kept her irritation under tight wraps. “Everyone meaning everyone. Me, you, Brett. A more graceful exit for all of us.”

      “What if that’s not what I want? A graceful exit?” Celine’s voice rose.

      “What do you want?”

      “He said the situation was too weird, right? Because of the boot camp weekend?”

      “Yeah.”

      “So let’s do the boot camp weekend another time!” Celine was excited now. She pulled out her iPhone and tapped open her calendar. “I can’t do the next three weekends, because I’m filming straight through, but I could do—no—I’m sure we could figure something out, though, right?”

      “Hon—no. We’ve got a videographer here, I did a huge push in the media, and I can’t get those people to take me seriously again if I bail now.” The thought made her cringe. There were no do overs in PR. No, for realz this time! Celine Carr’s dating boot camp weekend!

      “Yeah. That would kinda suck. For you.”

      Ouch. Elisa didn’t have to dig down far to read the subtext there. But I’m paying you for this weekend, and you can sit down and shut up, if that’s what I need you to do. And Celine’s unspoken chastisement was dead right. It wasn’t Celine’s job to win friends and followers for Rendezvous.

      “You wouldn’t have to go home. You could stick around and just be on vacation.”

      Elisa had to smile at Celine’s stab at generosity. “Sure. I could.”

      “I’m just saying, Brett’s only upset because you’re still trying to match me up. He’d come around if you were out of the picture. And like I said, not totally out of the picture, just not so visible.”

      “If that’s what you want,” said Elisa, with effort. “We’ll have to check in with Haven.”

      “Can we call her as soon as we land?”

      “Yes.”

      Haven was supposed to be on this trip, too, but, at the last minute, her mother had been hospitalized with appendicitis. Haven had wanted to cancel the trip—“Keeping Celine Carr in line is a job for a paid PR professional”—but Elisa had promised that she could handle Celine. Elisa had assured Haven that she’d manage the media according to the publicist’s directions, carefully watch out for Celine’s well-being and call “the instant she sets a toenail out of line.”

      Haven was going to have rabbits when she heard that Celine had showed up for her flight with Brett in tow.

      Elisa would worry about that later. She had bigger fish to fry right now, like making sure that her client didn’t get her heart broken instead of having her self-confidence built up.

      “Celine—” Oh, this was stupid and awkward. Whatever she said next would sound like sour grapes, but if she didn’t say it, she’d be a really crappy dating coach. So, screw it, she’d rather be sour grapes than drop the ball. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now, but Brett Jordan is—”

      Well, who was or wasn’t Brett, exactly? And what gave her the right to make that call? She’d had her own share of miscalculations about the kind of man he was. She was hardly an expert.

      “What’s the deal between you guys?” Celine’s voice was sharp.

      “There’s no deal.” She could see that Celine didn’t believe her. Smart girl. “We were friends. There was a time, briefly, when I hoped—but there was never anything.”

      God, she was full of shit. Never anything. Nothing except kisses that had made her limp and golden and floaty, nothing except for his hands on her in a way that had made her willing to beg for more. And what exactly did she mean by telling Celine she’d been hopeful “briefly”? Briefly, if briefly meant all through college and for years after that. Even now she wasn’t sure what she had wanted from him. Not anything he could give, that was for sure.

      “So you were in love with him,” Celine said.

      “Not in love with him, no, I wouldn’t— It was a long time ago. We were friends. He was—he dated a ton of women, just not me.”

      “But you’re not objective.”

      The night Elisa had met Brett, he’d come wandering through the dorm looking for someone to play Scrabble with. She’d leaped at the opportunity. He was cute, with pale green eyes, an intense gaze and symmetrically hewn features, but she’d mostly been grateful to find someone who was as much of a word nerd as she was. He had known all the two-letter words in existence, had produced seven-letter words multiple times per game and had constantly manufactured crazy plays, laying one word alongside another to spawn five new words for thirtysomething points.

      “I have an embarrassment of Os,” he had said midway through that first night, turning his tile holder to face her. There they were, four Os in a row, lined up. “They’re like four eyes, staring at me.”

      Back then, he had longish hair that fell over his face, and he shook it away periodically in a gesture that was too self-conscious for her taste but had made her palms a little sweaty anyway. “Only—they’re Os, not eyes.”

      His own eyes had sparkled and a dimple had appeared in his cheek.

      She’d started to laugh helplessly and he’d joined in. They’d stopped, gasping, and then