August: Calendar Girl Book 8 Read Free Page A

one hundred and twelve, in the span of—what—six months? A girl has to look out for her future, you know!”
    “Gin, seriously? A high-roller? You were the one who told me there was no such thing as a high-roller out on the floor. That those bastards were all just losing their home, their wife, and their kids’ college tuition in the hopes of winning against the house. Don’t fall for that garbage. A true high-roller would be behind closed doors having clandestine poker tournaments with his other Monopoly-playing rich buddies, not showing off to a Vegas girl. Cool your jets and talk to me.”
    Her gum smack sounded loud in my ear, and even though I think it pierced an eardrum, I’d rather hear that sound than the sound of her giving herself cancer one breath at a time smoking those cigarettes. “I’ve moved into Wes’s house.”
    The gum-smacking stopped. Everything stopped. No sound at all came from the line. I pulled the phone away and looked at the display. No, still connected. “Gin? Hello?”
    “You fucking moved in with bachelor number one? Get. The. Fuck. Out!” Her tone was astonished and laced with a heavy dose of ‘holy shit.’
    “Er, not exactly. I mean, kind of. Yeah. Maybe. Um…yes?” I worried my nail with my teeth and waited.
    “You moved in with Malibu Ken?”
    I blinked and waited.
    “Mr. Rules?” She scoffed.
    Again, staying silent was the only option. I’d known her for a lifetime, and these things took time to process.
    “Golden god on the surf board?” Her tone turned dreamy this time. Okay, now we were getting somewhere.
    “Movie writer guy, the one that changes characters so they look like my hot BFF guy? You moved into his house, in the Malibu mansion?”
    “It’s not really a mansion…” I started, but she cut me off.
    “Zip it! Are. You. Insane ? Do you need your head checked?”
    I rubbed on my dome and felt around. “Not since the last time I checked.”
    She groaned. “Okay, tell me one thing. And it’s gonna hella suck to have to ask you this babe, but I gotta.” On a slow inhale, I braced for whatever she would throw at me. “Are you doing this because of that needle-dick prick that assaulted you in DC?”
    I closed my eyes and hugged myself. “No, honey, no. Not at all. When I was in Miami, Wes came down for my birthday.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know. I sent the smooth operator, remember?”
    “While he was there, we both admitted some feelings—things that we’d been going back and forth about since I was here in January. Gin, I love him.”
    “Oh, Jesus Christ on a fucking pogo stick. Not the love-him shit again!” She started mumbling something I couldn’t quite hear but knew was a full-on rant. “You love everybody , Mia. It’s part of your DNA, your genetic code. You meet hot guy. You fuck hot guy. You fall in love with hot guy. This is not the first or the last time you will repeat this pattern.”
    Ginelle had a point. In the past, that was my MO. Not now, not with Wes. “I didn’t with the other guys I fucked this year. Explain that?”
    “Explain a roll in the hay. Okay, when a boy and a girl meet, there is this chemical that puts off pheromones…”
    I groaned and blew out a harsh breath. “Ginelle! Focus here.” I almost stomped my foot in exasperation. Shit, I’d called the wrong sister. I should have called Maddy, the blood sister, not the soul sister. She’d have been over the moon. Mostly because she had found her one and only and was engaged to be married. People like that wanted everyone else to be in the same place they were: happy and in love.
    “Mia, I…I just don’t want you getting hurt. Again.” She sighed long and deep. So much so that I could feel the rumble of her distress even at this distance.
    “I know, Gin. I do. It’s just, you know I’ve been going back and forth with him for months. If I hadn’t had Pops’s shit to deal with, I’d have still been here.”
    “If you hadn’t had Pops’s shit to deal with,