a dish towel. “Not a real blindfold but it should work. No peeking.” She paused in front of Stephanie, grabbed her hand and started to pull her off the couch. “We’ll go ahead with the dart in case we win and you need to jump on a plane quickly. You like to be prepared.”
Giving in to Jen’s demands, Stephanie eased up off the couch and smoothed down her Holly Heights High School T-shirt over her hips. “You act like you don’t trust me.” She yanked on her ponytail to tighten it and then waved her hands. “Wait, you act like we’re actually going to win the lottery.” Either one was a crazy thought.
Rebecca trotted back into the living room with a giant map poster and a dart. “I’m not sure all these countries still exist, but Paris should be there.” She yanked open a closet door and taped up the poster. “Remember when we had a dartboard here? Daniel smoked us every time we played.”
Stephanie crossed her arms over her chest and said nothing. She didn’t have to. Jen and Rebecca both turned to stare at her.
“I got an email from him yesterday. Sounds like things are going well,” Rebecca said and studied her carefully. “And then there are his Facebook updates.” Rebecca raised her eyebrows and dared Stephanie to say she had no idea what she was talking about.
The thing about best friends is that they never forget your first love or first crush or whatever it was she’d had for Daniel Lincoln, her best friend’s older brother and the first male to shove her into the role of friend when she’d wanted more. Bravely asking him to dinner had been an un-Stephanie kind of thing to do. Doing it on his worst day ever was poor planning.
Nobody had forgotten it, actually. But that whole fiasco had happened a long time ago. Now he wasn’t even in Holly Heights, and her friends had already established she could never leave because the town would fold without her.
The risk she’d taken in telling him how she felt hadn’t paid off. His easy rejection had made it clear he’d never seen her as anything other than an adopted little sister.
That didn’t mean she’d made a mistake or that stepping out on a limb this time would mean failure. If she never made a change, she’d never know what was possible.
“Give me the blindfold. I’m ready to hop on a plane to anywhere, you wait and see.” She tied the dish towel over her eyes and held out her hand. Jen pressed the dart into her palm and said, “See the map. Be the map.” They all chuckled, remembering countless slumber parties where Daniel had tried to show them how to hit the dartboard instead of the innocent closet door.
Rebecca put her hands on Stephanie’s shoulders and spun her around once. “Do your best!”
“Come on, Paris!” Her heart racing with excitement and fear, Stephanie tossed the dart and hoped to hit land. She could see herself stepping off a plane. Floating on a boat, not so much.
She tried to yank off the dish towel but Jen shoved her glass of wine in her hand. “Before you see where you’re landing, let’s make another toast. To new beginnings and lottery winnings.”
Thinking they were spending a whole lot of time making plans for something that would never happen, Stephanie held out her glass, waited for the clink and took a sip. Then Jen yanked off her makeshift blindfold and said in her best game show host voice, “Let’s see where you’re headed.”
The three of them lined up in front of the map. Somehow she’d completely missed France, not to mention the tiny dot of Paris. In fact, she’d overshot Europe as well. The dart was planted squarely in the middle of nowhere Peru.
“That’s impossible. There’s no way I missed the entire continent of Europe.” The images of Peru that came to mind were of llamas and Machu Picchu, which she might enjoy seeing, but that was not where the dart had landed. No, apparently she was going to...Alto, a place she’d heard of once in her life thanks to a posting on Daniel Lincoln’s Facebook page. She narrowed her eyes at Rebecca. “What did you do?”
“Have another cookie,” Rebecca said and blinked her eyelashes as she held out the plate. Of the three of them, Rebecca had always been able to put on the best innocent face.
“I have no clue what you mean.” Jen yanked down the map, folded it and handed the dart to Rebecca. “It seems your first destination is the Andes. When we win.”
Stephanie wagged her finger at Rebecca. “You moved the dart. You had to. There’s no way that I, the dart queen of 2001, would have missed by that much.”
“Now why would I do that?” Rebecca asked.
Thanks to years of experience, Stephanie was skeptical of her perfectly angelic expression.
Rebecca narrowed her eyes at Jen. “Did you see me move the dart?”
“I did not.” Jen shook her head firmly. Her boots shifted on the hardwood. “And for what reason would Rebecca send you to the area where her brother is working? I mean, what could she hope to gain from it? Have another cookie. You’ll feel better.”
Stephanie studied the plate of cookies Rebecca was waving under her nose. She crossed her arms again. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t win. I don’t know why you’d... What? Push me in his direction. If you’ll recall, I tried that once. He patted me on the head and told me he liked me too much to try dating. Remember? And he could never kiss me.” She wrinkled her nose in the same way Daniel had when he’d said the word as if she’d asked him to kiss the south end of a north-bound donkey.
“People change, Steph. Maybe he has, too. He’s lost his job, moved halfway around the world. That’s got to cause some careful consideration of what’s important in life.” Jen turned to Rebecca. “He’s not dating anyone, is he? Not that it matters.”
“No, he’s not dating. And getting involved with a man like Daniel would be a terrible idea. He’s married to his job. But...” Rebecca shrugged.
When Rebecca didn’t add anything else, Jen dropped back into her usual spot and kicked one jean-clad leg over the arm of the chair. “It’s not like running into the guy you measure other guys against is a bad thing, is it? Maybe that’s all you need to get out of the friend rut and on to the road to love, happiness and Favorite Teacher. Well, that and a few million dollars.”
At the reminder of the nonexistent money needed to fuel this imaginary trip, Stephanie eased back against the couch again. They could tease her all they wanted. Nothing would come of it unless the numbers the machine had spit out were winners. She’d ask the math wizard in the group what the odds were, but she didn’t want to let them know how shaken she was at the idea of either a trip to Peru or seeing Daniel Lincoln again in his no doubt trailblazing glory.
If she needed a mentor in learning to make new paths instead of waiting for things to change, he would be a solid choice.
As far as either of them knew, she’d had a crush and now it was over. Right? She watched Rebecca, her best friend since first grade, finish her cookie with what seemed to be a touch of smugness.
Then Rebecca and Jen glanced at each other and the smugness bloomed and spread.
Faking a stop in the Andes Mountains couldn’t be that hard. She took a deep breath. Lying might not be the most honorable solution, but it would definitely be the easiest, and she wouldn’t feel the least guilty about cheating a couple of dart-moving cheaters.
“We’re
