Shopping for a Billionaire 4 by Julia Kent

but smiles and links her arm through mine as we walk across the bridge from the car park to the shopping mall building. “You and your coffee. Why not just stop and get an iced coffee from—”
    I stop her before she names a ubiquitous coffee and donut shop. I also shudder. “That’s what you drink when you have no choice.”
    “No, Shannon—that’s what you drink when you mystery shop for a living.”
    Twenty minutes later, good lattes secured, we pull out of the lot and head toward Smith College along Route 9, a slightly scenic route to our destination. I’m driving slowly, as traffic is thicker than usual, when the long, slim, swanlike body of a tall blonde catches the corner of my eye. I slow the Turdmobile down, and a guy hauling trash on a bike—a trailer full of actual garbage cans, five or so in a straight line—makes his way past me with effort.
    “Nice piece of crap,” he calls out in a jocular tone. Mom waves and says something friendly.
    My eyes are locked on Jessica Coffin. “Yep. She sure is,” I say.
    A group of pedestrians clogs a zebra-striped crosswalk and I’m forced to stop, my eyes eating up the scene. It’s definitely her. Without a doubt. She looks over and her eyes fix on a spot above my head, her nose wrinkling in distaste. She’s seen the coffee bean on the hood of my car and correctly determined it looks more like a piece of—
    Her.
    My impulse to give her the finger remains firmly suppressed, though what’s the harm? She can’t possibly realize it’s me, right?
    “What are you staring at?” Mom asks.
    “Jessica Coffin.”
    “JESSICA COFFIN?” Mom screams. And by “scream,” I mean bellows like a foghorn being amplified by a Gillette Stadium sound system.
    Blonde hair down in a white curtain around hips slimmer than my thigh, she shimmers as she turns and her eyes narrow. Eyes on me (or my car, or maybe my mother, who is wildly waving her arms and screaming, “Jessica! I love your tweets!”), Jessica slips her hand through the kinked elbow of a man standing with his back to the road. She leans in to his ear, whispers something, and then clings to him like a lover with casual access to her man.
    In profile, the two look like something out of a Vogue article. A giant banner across the courtyard between the buildings announces the opening of some new children’s wing near an art museum. Or a botanical garden.
    The man turns just enough for me to see that it’s Declan McCormick.
    Maybe that new children’s wing is in hell.
    Cars behind me honk as I sit here, frozen, going out of my mind. Jessica and—
    “DECLAN!” Mom squeals. “SO GOOD TO SEE YOU!” She’s half out the window, and if I push the button and slowly close it on her, maybe she’ll snap in half, ass remaining in the car with me and screaming head rolling down the street, scooped up by the next bicyclist carrying away the trash.
    Speaking of trash, I look at Jessica once more, and a white wall of rage takes over my vision.
    BEEP.
    Mom pulls her body back in the car as someone behind me screams profanities about my feces-topped car. I hit the gas and thud into something, just hard enough for me to realize I’ve made a terrible error in the heat of furious passion.
    A barrel of garbage goes flying up in the air and lands on the top of my car, rolls down, spewing food waste of every kind imaginable, then chunks of used tampons, and finally a thick batch of slime-coated paper.
    And Mom’s window is open. Wide open.
    By some miracle of divine intervention (for Mom) or craptastic luck (for me), the open end of the trash can is on my side. I get an armful of what smells like composted marijuana mixed into about four cups of semen. Fermented semen, that is.
    Sprouted, fair-trade, organic, non-soy spooge.
    Or maybe it’s just vanilla pudding. I should be reasonable here.
    Jessica’s derisive laugh can be heard over the screaming banshees in my head, and a thousand cars all start honking at me in unison. The