straightforward for her best friend.
"I can't imagine what that's like, worrying about when your parents
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are going to schedule in their 'face time' with their sloppy sides." Daniel leaned back as the waiter
delivered coffee cups and bowls of sugar to the table. "That's gotta suck."
Ariana inhaled sharply. No one at this table needed a reminder about how happy and functional
the Ryan family unit was. Noelle's dark eyes smoldered at the dig.
"Well, Daniel, not everyone can have the perfect family, perfect grades, and the perfect girlfriend,"
Thomas said wryly, teasing Ariana with his eyes.
"If we did, what would we tell our therapists about?" Dash joked.
"Or pop Xanax over," Thomas added with a short laugh.
"Like you need an excuse to pop anything," Noelle put in.
Thomas smiled. "Touche, Miss Lange." He snagged a sugar cube from the bowl and tossed it into
his mouth. "What about you, Ariana? Popped anything lately?"
Prickly heat assaulted Ariana's skin.
"Dude," Daniel admonished, sitting forward to glare at Thomas.
"What?" Thomas feigned innocence with upturned palms.
Ariana forced herself to glance at Thomas. He was looking directly at her with his searing blue
eyes.
Just then a camera flashed, illuminating the beveled edges of her glass with sparks of light. Ariana
flinched.
"Jesus," Noelle snapped, waving her napkin in the direction of the flash. "Sergei, enough with the
stalkerazzi act already. Find new muses."
Sergei Tretyakov stood just two feet from the table, a black Nikon with a telephoto lens hanging
from his neck. Sergei was a Latvian exchange student and an outsider at Easton. He had dark,
sloping
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brows, coal-black eyes, and a slightly crooked nose. He could have been quirkily attractive, but he
was painfully shy and had a tendency to stare. Plus he always wore these old, dirty tennis shoes no
matter what else he had on. He was even wearing them tonight, to a formal event. Ariana could