My lips twitched. “Probably true.”

He grinned, and a dimple appeared in his left cheek. “See you in a little bit.”

Roxy waited to make her way over to me until Reece was back at the table near where a pretty serious-looking game of pool was going down. I glanced at her as I tossed the caps into the trash. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why do you walk away every time Reece comes up to the bar?”

She pulled off her huge glasses for what had to be the first time since I’d met her and wiped the lenses off with the hem of her tank top. Without the glasses, I got a good look at her face. The girl was literally as cute as a pile of kittens sleeping together. Tiny, pert nose and baby-doll-looking lips, paired with big brown eyes. Those bow-shaped lips pursed.

“I don’t serve him,” she said as she placed her glasses back on.

Before I could further explore that statement, the words “Calla-freaking-Fritz?” were shouted from the door of the bar. “You really are working here!”

What the?

I spun to where the sound traveled from, and at first I had no idea what I was seeing standing there.

It was a life-sized Barbie.

Kind of.

If Barbie had smaller boobs and dressed like a stripper.

The female prancing toward the bar was wearing some kind of skintight Lycra dress that covered her from her butt cheeks to her boobs, and nothing else. It looked like someone had taken a bedazzler to the dress. She was as sparkly as a disco ball on New Year’s Eve.

Her blond hair was blown out and large and as she hurried toward me on sky-high shoes that had see-through heels in them; her hair flowed like she was strutting down the runway.

As she got closer and her big smile spread, I started to see past the glitter on her cheekbones and eyelids. I recognized her.

“Katie?” I placed my hands on the bar, stunned.

“You recognized me!” She stopped and then did something in those heels that I’d break my neck doing. She jumped, bouncing as she clapped excitedly. “No one recognizes me!”

I could see how. Katie Barbara had been a quiet girl in high school. Some would’ve called her different. She’d always brought her lunch in a Hello Kitty lunchbox, straight through senior year. She always had her nose in a book and always wore floppy hats that at some point during the day a teacher always made her take off. I vaguely remembered her giving a speech in English class in the third person. Throughout school, her hair had been a multitude of colors—blond, brown, black, purple, and fire engine red. Pink had been a favorite, though, and still was, because now I could see that the ends of her hair were dipped pink, matching her dress.

“You do look . . . different,” I said, at a loss for what to say.