Hard by Eve Jagger Page B

have a rule about Saturday mornings,” she says. “I skip
them til they’re Saturday afternoons.”
     
    ***
     
    True
to her word, it’s after twelve when Shelby calls me the next
day, and by two o’clock I’m strolling along the sidewalks
of Virginia Highland with her and Avery and Ruby, meandering in and
out of the neat little clothing boutiques with their local, handmade
jewelry and silk-screen printed t-shirts and billowy spaghetti strap
maxi dresses. I love shopping at Lenox, but it’s such a
beautiful summer day—warm but not too humid, sunny but not
blinding—that I’m glad we’re getting to spend it
outside.
    We
sip the lemonades that Avery bought us all while we browse shoes.
Ruby holds up a pair of stilettos, shiny and red, like they’ve
been lacquered in nail polish. “Thoughts?” she says.
    “Like,”
says Avery.
    “Like,”
says Shelby.
    “Love,”
I say.
    Ruby
hands them to me. “You should try them on then,” she
says. “I can’t deny someone something they love.”
    Avery
and Shelby laugh. “What?” Ruby says.
    “At
Nordstrom last week, you practically punched the woman who took the
only size seven in those Tory Burch sandals you liked,” Avery
says.
    Ruby tosses her head, her copper ponytail landing over her shoulder.
“That woman was wearing Birkenstocks with socks. There’s
no way she’s appreciating those sandals as much as I would
have,” she says.
    Shelby rolls her eyes. “You sound like Jackson when he sees
someone driving a Maserati,” she says. “One time we got
behind one in Buckhead and, totally seriously, he actually said he
thought the car would prefer him at the wheel.”
    “He knows Cars is not a documentary, right?” Ruby
says. “And anyway, Jackson drives a Porsche. What’s he
jealous of?”
    “That’s the deal with all three of those boys,”
Shelby says.
    Avery inspects a pair of leopard-print slingbacks on the shelf. “They
always want what they don’t have.”
    “Or what they can’t get,” Shelby says.
    “Which, let’s face it, isn’t most things,”
Ruby says. “I mean, how many times have you ever seen anyone
withhold something from any of those guys?”
    Shelby slides into a pair of black snakeskin heels and examines them
in front of a full-length mirror. “Jackson’s been like
that since we were kids,” she says, turning to the side,
looking at her reflection over her shoulder. “He’d get
into trouble, but when the smile came out and the charm turned on
with the teacher or our mom or the baby-sitter, it was like their
short-term memory was erased or something.”
    “Remember how Cash was seeing that one girl a while back and
then he decided he kind of liked her roommate, too?” Avery
says.
    “Oh, yeah,” Ruby says, shaking her head. She leans toward
me to dish, a smirk playing across her lips. “So one night he
makes out with the roommate in a booth at Altitude, like, not even
trying to hide it, and that’s when the first girl walks into
the bar.”
    “Oh wow,” I say. “So…totally busted?”
    “Not even,” Ruby sighs.
    “A flash of dimples later and he goes home with both of them!”
Avery says.
    “Just another average night at Altitude,” Shelby says,
teetering in the snakeskin heels to rifle through a nearby rack of
dresses. “Where the sky’s the limit on good martinis and
bangable chicks.”
    “They should call that place Sexy Bastards,” I say. “More
accurate.”
    The girls laugh. “Well, I don’t think they’ve
picked a name for the new club yet,” Shelby says.
    Ruby sits to pull on a pair of tall gladiator sandals over her
tanned, curved calves. “It’s like they’ve got some
Jedi mind power over women.”
“I think it’s
called being hot,” Avery says.
    “Whatever it is, it works,” Ruby says. “I’ve
even seen Ryder do it with a lady cop, when he first started running
fight night. She’s demanding to know what’s going on in
the warehouse, he’s trying to keep her out of there, so