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house. I’ll show you what I mean when we get there.”
    “Hold up,” Janeane said before we could make our way to leave. “Nicola, I want you to make a pact with us before you go any further with this new story.”
    “What kind of pact?”
    “I want you to agree right now that you will only work on this book and messaging men on POF or SSD with us present. It can be a collaboration of sorts. You’ll spend time with us, we get to see your creative process at work, and we all get what we want in the end: time with each other. Do you agree?”
    “I can only plot this story with all of you?”
    “On Tuesdays and Thursdays at Gypsy’s after work,” she added.
    “Um.”
    “You have to pinky swear,” Kristina announced.
    Looking at the faces of the women I loved most in this world, I could hardly decline. Besides, it’d be fun to work on this together. Smiling, I stuck out my pinky and the others did as well. We laced our pinkies together, and I repeated the oath we’d used all those years ago in high school.
    “I, Nicola Grace Royse, hereby pinky swear that I won’t work on this book without the participation of Angela, Kristina, Kasey, or Janeane. I furthermore acknowledge that if I break this oath, I will set into motion events that will mean the destruction of this sisterhood.”
    I knew they were dire words, but dire words were needed when you were seventeen and more than one of your group liked the same boy. However, we usually only pulled them out in extreme circumstances . . . such as forgetting to tell a friend about a sale on shoes. They seemed silly now that we were grown women, but if it made them feel better, I was happy to give them some reassurance. After all, what could happen while plotting fiction?
     
     
     
     
     

Three
     
     
     
    It’s often been said if you remained friends with someone for seven years, you’d be friends for a lifetime. After fifteen years with these women, I’d say that’s true. I could go months without talking to them—I have a unique form writer’s block and forget the world around —yet, pick right back up where we left off, never missing a beat. Our connection was forged from love, sweat, and tears. There were no other women in my life, short of my mother, that I trusted more, which is why I’d agreed to let them see my process, to see the inner working of my mind as I plotted my next book.
    After leaving Gypsy’s, the girls followed me home. I was now lying on my bed, waiting for Kasey to put on my star-spangled bikini. Kristina was mixing amaretto sour in my kitchen while Angela and Janeane laughed about something Angela’s husband had said. The sound of laughter and cocktails being shaken, not stirred, made it seem as if time had stood still. Laying around my bedroom just as we did in high school gossiping about one boy or another was a familiar scene. Even Kristina mixing drinks like she did when my parents weren’t home hasn’t changed.
    Lying there watching as the girls laughed and Kristina served drinks I felt the restlessness that seemed to be my constant companion melting away. It hit me then why I’d been out of sorts recently. It was the familiar comfort of laughter and friends that I’d been missing these past few months, and having it back again was like a salve to my soul.
    Kasey had to get home to her kids since her parents watched them during the day while she was at work, and later on Tuesdays and Thursdays so she could have nights out with the girls. With this in mind, we wanted to take pictures of her legs first, and then the others would have their turn in front of the camera.
    My idea was simple. Each of us would wear the same sexy bikini while our assets were photographed in front of the same background. Boobs, legs, and ass all showing the same outfit would lend to the authenticity of the fake woman. My hair, which was long, thick and light blonde, would be taken from the side so my face would barely show. I decided that not