Bad Luck

Tricky

Chapter 7

Tricky

After Frankie had finished telling me all the gossip she had stored, I got dressed in my favorite jeans, a blue tank top, and an old loose hoodie. Frankie insisted that I'd wear something nice, like the floral cotton dress she'd given me for my birthday, but I wasn't in the mood for it. I'd be stuck all afternoon in the store working, so, what was really the point of dressing up for that anyway?

Before we headed upstairs to have lunch with Marie, I tried to tame my curly mane. I was never very successful at it. Usually, I just tucked my hair in a messy crooked bun and was done with it.

We left Lucky sprawled on the carpet of the basement and I locked him in there before Frankie and I skipped up the stairs to the apartment. We quickly sat on the kitchen table to wait for Marie to get our lunch ready when I heard the kitchen door being slowly nudged forward.

"And three, two, one..." I counted under my breath as Lucky pranced all perkily inside the kitchen on cue. "It's like he's frigging Houdini!" I wailed theatrically to the room.

He didn't even dignify looking at me as he curiously inspected the kitchen.

Lucky loitered beneath the kitchen table while we ate our meal, snatching up all the food that Frankie 'accidentally' let fall on the floor. By the end of lunch, she wasn't even bothering to keep up pretenses and was feeding him directly from her hand.

When I tried to give him some food, he blatantly rejected it, as if my food wasn't worthy of his sophisticated palate. I think he was still resentful because I had tossed him out of my basement and slammed the door in his face.

When lunch was over, Frankie convinced me to go out to the Reef's Pier and eat ice cream together. It was Sunday after all and tomorrow I'd have to stay to work at the Pet store or help Marie with the CLinic. It was a good way to finish the weekend.

"It's cute that he's following you around outside now too." Frankie noticed as we walked along the sidewalk.

"Who's follow-" A black furry feline skipped right beside me. "Oh, it's you again."  I glared down at him. "I don't get it. You made it perfectly clear that you hate me, why won't you leave my side now? I really want to hear what you have to say about that, you know."

"Uh, Mia, sweetheart,"  Frankie interjected. "You know how we talked about you talking to cats in public as if they were real people?"

"Yeah," I mumbled awkwardly.

"And what did I tell you?"

"To stop doing it."

"You can't complain that people call you 'crazy cat lady' if you keep doing this, hon." Frankie patted me sympathetically on the shoulder. "Let's try to have conversations with humans only when you're out in public, kay?"

"Fine." I huffed, embarrassed.

We arrived at Reef's Pier and headed straight for the ice cream shop where Frankie wanted to go. The second I stepped inside, I realized the real reason for my best friend's sudden ice cream craving. Frankie's new boyfriend Bobby-what's-his-face was sitting at one of the tables with Adam Campbell at his side.

"Oh, look, it's Bobby and Adam! What an incredible non-planned coincidence this is!" She chirped with the most fake-innocent face in the world.

"Frankie, please tell me you didn't orchestrate this," I grunted at her.