Oh! You Pretty Things by Shanna Mahin Read Free Book Online Page B

leaking out into the space between us, maybe an old Tool song. She was tapping on her phone and didn’t even look up at me when I said hi.
    â€œDouble red-eye, no room, maple scone,” she said, and turned her back to lean her ample ass against the counter, like
We’re done here, right?
    I looked at the leaping koi and exotic mermaid decorating the backs of her arms and thought,
Huh, that’s kind of a bold attitude to take with the person who’s about to handle your food.
    When I set everything on the counter, Scout grabbed her order and headed for the open front door without another word, trailing a guitar solo and the scent of gardenias.
    â€œHey,” I yelled after her. “Hey, that’s $11.75.”
    I ran from behind the counter, hobbled by the apron, and caught up with her at the edge of the patio. I reached for her elbow to get her attention, because she still had her music blasting and she wasn’t acknowledging my presence.
    She swears I grabbed her arm in an aggro Freddy Krueger slasher grip, but we agree on what happened next, which is that she startled like a gazelle on the African veldt and sloshed a good sixteen ounces of hot, black coffee—with two shots of Italian roast espresso—all over her tattooed arms and white tank top.
    And here’s my favorite part. She dropped her purse, still without making eye contact with me, and carefully set her phone and the bag with her scone on top of it. She sluiced coffee from her forearms and wrung a thin stream from the lower part of her shirt. She took off her black-framed glasses and wiped them on a clean spot on her shirt.
    The whole thing took maybe ten seconds, but it was very effective:
You will wait while I deal with your mess.
    Finally, she looked at me with her crazy-beautiful pale blue eyes and said the most ridiculous, clichéd, L.A. thing that you’d think nobody could ever be cheesy enough to say aloud.
    â€œDon’t you know who I am?”
    (For the record, she says that I said, “Who do you think you are?” but she lies.)
    â€œYeah, you’re the girl who just tried to ditch out on paying for breakfast. Can I get an autograph?”
    Scout flicked her hair over her inked shoulder. “You must be new.”
    It turned out she lived in an apartment that was practically connected to the Date Palm, and she was such a regular that Pete let her run a tab. Which was lovely, except the Date Palm has a strict “no credit” policy and she’s one of a handful of exceptions, which no one had bothered to mention to me.
    She grudgingly accepted the replacement shirts I handed over in a beribboned gift bag two days later, then ignored me for the next couple weeks, even when I had her drink and pastry waiting by the time she got to the counter.
    Finally, I asked how long she’d lived in the area, and she said she got emancipated at fourteen and moved into the one-bedroom apartment next to the Date Palm and had lived there ever since, with about as much forward momentum as a car on blocks.
    â€œJesus, really?” I said.
    â€œI know,” Scout said, like she was used to answering the question. “Crazy, right?”
    â€œNo, you don’t get it. I’m blown away because it’s so familiar.”
    And on that foundation, our friendship was built.
    Scout and I mostly hang out when Megan’s out of town. Which is weird, because Scout’s best friend is an actress too. The difference is that Scout’s best friend is bona fide famous. She’s Eva Carlton, who spent her formative years playing the slutty sister on a sitcom, then moved to one of the big five soap operas—and finally hit the big-time on a high school show where every actor was gorgeous and pushing thirty.
    You’d think that Scout and I would bond over it, but instead it creates a weird distance between us. Maybe it’s that neither of us is good at girl stuff, or maybe it’s that