Tipsy

Five

Chapter Five

Hallie

A blog. How was I supposed to write a blog when I couldn't even come up with its name? My thirty-minute break was nearly over, and the screen was still blank. I was counting the number of times the curser blinked and comparing it to the pounding through my head.

"My soup is cold."

"You should have eaten it when it got here," I said to Harold without looking up.

"Listen to how hard this breadstick is." He tapped it against his tray.

He was correct. It sounded like plastic on plastic. But the lunch had been delivered nearly two hours ago. Harold's own stubbornness left him with a less than appetizing meal. It had interrupted his favorite soap opera—a big no-no in this room. No one came in here when it was on, but now the strike against the kitchen staff was fighting his rumbling stomach.

"Dip it in your cold soup. That will soften it."

"You're pissier than I am today, blondie."

I sighed, slapping the laptop shut. He was right. And even though I knew he was, I shook my head no. Harold grinned, being his cocky self, dipped his breadstick into the soup and bit it with an exaggerated chew.

"Delicious."

For the first time today, I giggled. "Liar."

I hadn't touched my own food—two tacos and a bowl of seasoned potato rounds. I selected one, and without leaving my chair, stretched to place it on Harold's tray. It was followed by a handful of the potatoes. They may as well have gone to him, because they were bound for the trash.

"What's the matter with you?" he questioned as he picked up the taco first. "You've been quiet today. What are you working so hard on over there?"

"Apparently, I'm becoming a blogger," I said. "I do not know what I'm doing or what I should name my blog."

"Uh, huh?" He grunted. "This is why you are huffing and puffing?"

No. It wasn't. This blog—the one that seemed stupid until I needed something to fill my time—was supposed to take my mind off this evening. It wasn't working. I had no one to vent to, and now poor Harold was about to hear it all.

"My best friend is getting married," I said. "Tonight is her last dress fitting, and I promised I would be there. But we had a fallout."

"A fallout," Harold repeated while dabbing a napkin at the corner of his mouth. "Over...?"

It seemed stupid when saying it aloud. No one understood how important the promise was except Sloan and me. Apparently even Sloan thought it was stupid, because she broke it easy enough.

"I don't have parents." I tossed a potato into my mouth and chewed. "Neither does she. It's how we met. But she took one of those DNA testing kits for ancestry and found her dad. She didn't tell me she was doing it, and I don't know, we always said we wouldn't. It hurt. She could have at least told me before doing it."

"You sound jealous."

My eyes rolled. Jealousy was not it. "I have no desire to find my parents."

"Maybe that's not what you're jealous of."

He had my attention. I dropped my chin to my fist and waited to hear what I was jealous of.

"You said she's getting married," Harold continued. "She's starting a family of her own."

That couldn't be it either. Ollie knew what he was getting into with Sloan. I was part of the package. Nothing was impeding on a friendship that had lasted all these years. Especially not a guy. The last two years of Ollie being around more than proved nothing was changing—other than he stole Sloan away to live in a cute house and left me to rot with his idiotic brother.