Sour Grapes (The Blue Plate Series) Read Online Free Page A

the Dallas social scene altogether, some room to breathe, where my entire life isn’t being examined and dissected under a microscope.
    Winding my way through the dining room, I spot the girls—Piper, Samma, and Faye—laughing and chatting on the patio. Bellinis, antipasti plates, and a basket of focaccia are scattered around the table. Of course they wouldn’t wait for me to arrive to start the festivities.
    I walk outside through the open floor-to-ceiling windows, the humidity sticking to my body like a second skin.
    When the girls notice me, they abruptly stop talking and plaster on smiles loaded with more fake sugar than the artificial sweeteners they dumped into their coffees. I tense, knowing what’s coming. Rumors fly faster than Highland Park real estate among our social scene, so I shouldn’t be surprised they know about my encounter with Nick last night, but right now that’s the last thing I want to talk about.
    Forcing a smile of my own, I greet each of them with a kiss on the cheek. “Sorry I’m late,” I say, draping my purse on the back of a chair and sitting. “I had to deal with a situation at the office.”
    “Taking out the trash again?” Piper asks, popping an olive into her mouth. She’s constantly eating despite not weighing more than a hundred pounds. Piper claims she stays so thin because she works out with a trainer, but everyone knows she uses laxatives and cocaine to maintain her figure. She also happens to be one of the worst offenders of wearing lululemon apparel as everyday attire.
    “I swear you shuffle through assistants as often as I shuffle through shoes,” Faye says. Her lips are puffy and slightly bruised—I’m betting she’s three days postinjections. She has the looks of a supermodel that rivals the greatest ’90s divas, but by fashion standards she’s last year’s sloppy seconds.
    A waitress extends a menu to me. Waving it away, I order a glass of prosecco and my usual egg-white omelet. “This one was worse than the others,” I say to the girls. “I had to do her job for her. It was like dealing with a toddler.”
    “I think you’re incapable of relinquishing control,” Samma says. She flips her hair, mainly comprised of extensions dyed to match her natural deep brown color, over her shoulder. Her five-carat diamond solitaire sparkles in the sun. She’s been married less than a year and has already upgraded the stone twice and taken numerous solo trips to the spa to deal with “stress.” If I were married to her husband, Alan, with his comb-over, potbelly, and onion-smelling breath, I’d self-medicate with retail therapy and beauty treatments, too.
    “Don’t forget asking for help,” Faye adds.
    “And apologizing,” Piper mumbles around a mouthful of bruschetta.
    “You’re confusing capability with willingness,” I say. “I’m quite able to do those things. I just don’t believe in them.”
    Before they can argue, the waitress delivers their entrées and my much-needed glass of prosecco. I take a sip, the taste bright, crisp, and lively with a subtle amount of sweetness. While this sparkling wine is great for Dallas patio weather, my favorite way to enjoy it is straight from the source at a vineyard nestled in the verdant rolling hills of northeastern Italy.
    As they eat, Piper gushes about attending New York Fashion Week this fall, Samma rants about the general contractor in charge of renovating her Florida beach house, and Faye complains about the service department at the Mercedes-Benz dealership. None of the girls mentions the gala or offers me her congratulations, even though they were there. Not that this is unexpected. Instead of celebrating the good things that happen in our lives, we treat them like dirty secrets and pretend they don’t exist. It’s been this way since we met in sixth grade.
    The waitress drops off my dish. I’m midbite when Samma fires off a question that catches me so off guard I nearly choke on a mouthful of