Free Queen of Babble Gets Hitched by Meg Cabot Page B

over to Ava and hold out my hand expectantly. “You may,” I say.
    Still crouching behind the tulle skirt, she looks down at my hand with a blank expression on her face. Then comprehension dawns. She spits her gum out into my hand. I walk over to the trash can beneath the desk at which Tiffany is sitting and dump it, then reach for a tissue.
    “Little Joey,” I say to the bodyguard, to whom we’d been formally introduced during Ava’s last visit. “There are blinds if you want to pull them down.”
    Little Joey—whose hulking three-hundred-pound, nearly seven-foot frame makes it clear that his name is ironic—begins pulling down the black metal blinds I’d bought at the Manhattan Target when I’d been rehabbing Jill Higgins’s gown, and she, too, had had problems with stalkerazzi.
    “Why are you looking for a condo in Manhattan, Ava?” I ask her.
    “It’s, like, so much better here than in Los Angeles,” Ava says, pulling her shivering Chihuahua onto her lap. “Except for the weather. For one thing, you don’t have to drive as far to get to cool places. Which is great if you’re wasted. And for another, no one asks you for autographs, or crap like that—usually. I mean, people stare. But they don’t bug you. Except, like, teenagers at H&M.”
    It takes us a moment to digest this. Tiffany is the first to recover.
    “So are you looking for a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom, or what?” Tiffany asks conversationally.
    “She’s looking for four bedrooms, three baths, and an eat-in kitchen with at least two thousand square feet of outdoor terrace, and full southern exposure,” Little Joey says when Ava just blinks bewilderedly at the question.
    When we all turn our heads to stare at Ava, dumbfounded by this information—since to my knowledge, no such piece of real estate exists on the island of Manhattan (for less than five million dollars, anyway)—she just shrugs and says, in her little girl voice, “I’ve got seasonal affective disorder. Hey, do you have anything else to eat? All I’ve had today is a PowerBar, and I’m, like, starving.”
    I hand her the other half of my tandoori chicken sandwich, but she makes a face.
    “What’s that white slimy stuff?” she asks suspiciously.
    This causes Tiffany and Monique to dissolve into a fit of hysterical laughter from which it’s clear they won’t soon recover.
    “Tzatziki sauce,” I say. “Ava, how can you be marrying a Greek prince and not know what tzatziki sauce is?”
    “I like him,” Ava says, snatching the sandwich out of reach of her dog—whose name, she’d informed us the day before, is Snow White (“After the Disney princess”)—“not his country’s food.”
    “Well,” I say. “You should try it, at least, before you decide you don’t like it.”
    Ava shrugs and takes a bite. Her mouth occupied, I turn back to Tiffany and Monique, who are wiping their eyes from their shared—if disgustingly raunchy—joke.
    “Seriously, you guys,” I say to them, addressing my remark into the phone. “Do you think I should try talking to him? Luke thinks he’s depressed. What if he’s right? Maybe if I talked to him about it, it would help. To bring about closure, you know? Sometimes when things are out in the open, they don’t bother people as much.”
    “Says the girl who can’t keep a secret to save her life,” says Tiffany with a laugh. Although frankly I don’t see what’s so funny about that remark. Also, it’s not true. I’ve kept lots of secrets.
    I can’t happen to think of any right now. But I’m sure there are some.
    “What are we talking about?” Ava wants to know. She’s already gnawed off a quarter of an inch of the sandwich half I’ve given her. Snow White is busy with another quarter of an inch. It’s not hard to see how the two of them stay so trim.
    “Lizzie’s fiancé’s best friend is in love with her,” Monique says lightly. She’s split her vegi muffuletta with Little Joey. “And she doesn’t