Like a Best Friend | ✓

chapter seven

The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign is further from the main action than I thought, down past Mandalay Bay, by the airport. We take a cab there after lunch – of the hotel's twelve restaurants, three are included in the package Levi and I chose, but I anticipate spending most of our meals in the buffet, so much choice with about eight cuisines on offer at all times and plenty of options for all dietary requirements. The other two are an all American diner that specializes in cheeseburgers – kinda basic, and Kitty keeps kosher so it's a no-no – and an Italian restaurant that features a lot of pasta and tomato dishes, which I'm not keen on.

"It's smaller than I thought," Kitty says, holding her hair off her face as we look up at the sign.

"Yeah, why did I think it was, like, fifty feet high?"

It's probably half that. The legs of the sign look too short for its width. But it's kitschy and cool, especially with the palm trees growing behind it, and it's not too busy so I don't feel bad when we take several minutes to get the perfect photos with the sign. Kitty's brought her proper DSLR camera and it's like pulling on a comfortable sweater, slipping into my old role. The best friend, the sidekick, the one behind the camera taking the pictures that her followers praise. I get down on one knee and angle the camera up so the sign looks bigger; Kitty sits on the floor and I take a picture from right down by her feet while she raises a hand towards the sign and tips her head back, her curls a chlorinated tangle after our morning by the pool.

"My turn," she says after I've snapped her in several different poses. She makes grabby hands at her camera and takes it off me, nodding at me to take her place.

"Oh no, I'm good." We have a selfie of the two of us in front of the sign already, and selfies are pretty much the only way I ever end up in a photo.

"Felicity Campbell, you look hot as shit. Let me take your picture."

I gasp with faux shock and whisper-yell, "Jeez, Kitty, don't full name me in public! What if there are stalking perverts around?"

She laughs and flicks my forehead and marches me into position. I almost trip over my feet, and in these wedges, I'd probably break an ankle. Kitty's just being kind, I don't look hot as shit. I'm in my summer basics: light wash jean shorts with rolled hems; the push-uppiest of push-up bras beneath a tucked-in white tank top; an undone salmon pink button-down shirt. One of my go-to outfits in this kind of weather. I own three pairs of these shorts in various shades of denim and I have an entire drawer of tank tops and probably ten button-downs. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"Right, put your left leg forward. Angle your hips back a bit. A bit to the right. Yes!" Kitty beams as she directs me, holding the camera up next to her face. It's weird, being the one being told how to stand. "Right arm back, by your side. Left hand on your neck."

It feels unnatural but I follow her every command until more people start to arrive and line up behind us and I can't hold them up any longer.

"You look amazing, trust me," Kitty says, looping her arm through mine as we cross the street to the Deuce stop – easy to take a cab to the sign, not so easy to get one back. Who'd have thought it'd be illegal to pick up passengers off the strip?

She shows me the pictures and, okay, yeah, I look pretty good. My outfit matches the colors of the sign, my hair a bright pop against the blue sky. I look like a different person.

"What kind of magic is this?"

Kitty peers over my shoulder as I flip through the dozens of pictures she snapped – way more than I thought – and she says, "That's the beauty of a good camera. Helps to have a beautiful model, too."