Dreaming in Technicolor by Laura Jensen Walker Page B

ethnic restaurants and stores. So many stores. Bliss.
    Phil lobbed the friendship guilt grenade. “Please come home, Pheebs. I really need you. Lins needs you.”
    â€œBut I already have a job.”
    He snorted. “A job you really don’t like that doesn’t pay anything.”
    He had a point there. But my family’s here. This is where I belong, isn’t it? That’s why I came back here in the first place. Besides, Alex will be back any day now, and things will really start moving with us then . . .
    I told Phil I’d consider his job offer—that whole friendship thing and all—although I really didn’t think I’d accept. I mean, come on. Me? Writing about budgets and investments?
    Nearly as bad as emus.
    Sure, the money was good. Really good. But money isn’t everything. I wouldn’t want to leave Gordon in the lurch. Besides, no journalist worth her five- W s-and-an- H news training would ever consider becoming a public-relations flack.
    After hanging up, remembering my promise to Phil, I called Lins.
    â€œDid you say yes?”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œTo Phil’s job offer.” Lindsey bubbled over with excitement. “It will be just like before, Pheebs. Except of course for the rock on my finger.” She giggled. “You can return to the city life you love so much and all the friends who love you and make great money in the process. How cool is that?”
    â€œWell—”
    She plowed ahead. “You only left Cleveland in the first place because you lost your job, right? But now you’ll have an even better one—and still get to write!” Lins giggled again. “And as an added bonus, you’d be able to do the maid-of-honor thing up close and personal, which will help take some of the pressure off Phil.”
    Would you like a side of fries with that emotional blackmail?
    â€œSpeaking of Phil and pressure . . .” I gently tried to convince my best friend to cool it with the wedding obsession. But all my running interference for the groom did was get the bride mad at me.
    Note to self: Kill Phil. Then call Dr. Phil.
    After dinner that night, I climbed up to the top of my beautifully reorganized closet and pulled down all my No More Lone Ranger scrapbooks.
    There were me and Lindsey dressed up in poodle skirts and bobby socks at the fifties sock hop we’d organized. And there we were in costume again—this time in hoop skirts doing a Southern belles skit at the singles retreat—and in soaking jeans and sweatshirts at the carwash fundraiser, dressed to the nines for opening night at the ballet, painting sets for the Christmas play, gabbing at Starbucks, working out at the gym . . .
    The gym. Eew. How’d that photo ever see the light of day?
    Lindsey of course looked cute as always, her petite little self in a sports bra and a pair of bike shorts, but my thighs in Spandex was not a sight I want the whole world to see. I wasn’t too wild about seeing them myself.
    Rip.
    We sure did have a lot of fun together. And would again. Probably. I miss those days. Maybe I should give serious thought to Phil’s job offer after all.
    I turned the page and my heart clutched.
    Alex. His first time at Lone Rangers.
    I remembered everything about that night.
    He wore black.
    I wore red.
    He ate Doritos.
    I munched on pretzels.
    I knew movie trivia and he matched me film for film, star for star. We played Trivial Pursuit together and wiped everyone else, including Phil, off the board.
    That’s when I knew we were destined to be together.
    I sighed. How could I ever leave Barley and Alex?
    Uh, Alex isn’t exactly here right now, my bratty stop-and-face-reality self reminded me. Hasn’t been for a while.
    But I wasn’t a Gone with the Wind devotee for nothing.
    Ah won’t think about that right now. Ah’ll think about that tomorrow.

[chapter six]
    The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
    v