Chapter One
Four Years Later
Happy four years of the Usual Suspects—or US—the boy band that’s taken the music scene by storm and swept the charts.
Which member’s your favorite? The chill and cheerful youngest of the group, Leon Ward?
The sophisticated, flirtatious Brit, Phillip Maan?
The intelligent and fearless Aspen Ray? Or the bad boy of the group, the mysterious and rebellious Jake Moody?
Let us know online with the hashtag #oneofUS!
—What’s POPpin
We need to talk about your thieving.”
Two green eyes met mine, widening in faux innocence.
“Don’t give me that look. You’ve already looted enough from customers to fund a secret online poker addiction, or maybe a vacation to Florida,” I scolded. “What are you planning to do with all of it, Rumpelstiltskin?”
The gigantic Maine coon blinked at me unrepentantly as he clutched his newest score: the café’s TV remote with light-up buttons.
As soon as I realized it’d gone missing, I went into Rumple’s back room, and sure enough, there it was—with him on top of his hoard, sitting between a pilfered steel straw and a key I really hoped someone didn’t need.
Besides becoming our permanent café resident because Mom and I decided we couldn’t bear to part with him, Rumple also had become a seasoned kleptomaniac.
“Okay, how about this?” I bargained, taking a cat toy out of my half-apron pocket. “You give me the remote, and I give you a brand-new crinkle ball.”
He seemed to consider this.
“Why do you want the remote, anyway?” I questioned, bouncing the ball in my palm. “You don’t even have thumbs—”
“Lucy!”
Turning, I saw Amber coming into the back room.
“Lucy,” Amber repeated, keeping her voice low so the customers out front couldn’t hear. “You’re never going to guess what’s happening in there.”
“Well, if someone’s ChapStick has gone missing, I think Rumple has it,” I replied, squinting at his hoard. “And I really don’t think they’ll want it back.”
“No, it’s worse than that. I think a couple in the cat room are breaking up.”
“What?” Criminal feline forgotten, I stood. Who’d break up at a cat café? “Why do you think that?”
“Because this guy just told his date, ‘I think we should break up.’”
Well, I couldn’t argue with that evidence.
“He left,” Amber informed me. “But now the girl looks like she’s going to start crying.”
“Wha—” I shook my head. “What are you going to do?”
“Me? I’m getting you.”
“Why me?”
Amber gave me a pointed look. “Because since your mom’s not here, that technically makes you my boss right now, remember?”
Right. It still took some getting used to. Since Mom’s car accident and her knee surgery a couple months ago, she hadn’t been able to manage the café. I’d stepped in for most of the summer.
“So,” Amber said, crossing her arms in amusement, “what are you going to do, boss?”
“Tell you to go back out there and talk to her?”
“What? Come on, Lucy, please handle this one,” Amber begged. She clasped her hands together and batted her eyes pleadingly, nearly blinding me with her bright—but admittedly cool—micro-glitter eyeshadow. “You’re really good with people,” she plunged on. “And I’m . . . not.”
“It’s not that you’re bad with people,” I said encouragingly. “It’s just that you value honesty and being up-front.” Amber had a habit of saying whatever was on her mind, unapologetically loud and unfiltered. “But sometimes strangers don’t, uh . . . take to that as well as the cats do.”
“See?” Amber replied, gesturing in a Did you just hear yourself?
way. “Example A. Good with people. You successfully avoided telling me I’m terrible.
” I laughed as she continued. “I know your break just started, so I’ll make it up to you by letting you choose the music for the rest of the day.
” Amber was in charge of the playlist during all her shifts.
“I know you’ll want to change the playlist I’ve got on now because it’s got, like, six Usual Suspects songs. ”
I paused slightly, a familiar zing going through my pulse.
“‘Lovely, Aren’t Ya’ is on there,” Amber added, coaxing me to take the deal. “And I know you must hate that song because you always get a weird look on your face when it plays.”
I what? No I didn’t. Did I?
“I don’t get a weird look,” I argued.
“Yeah, you do. It’s the one you’re giving me right now.” Amber contemplated my expression, squinting one eye and holding her hands up like a frame around my face. “It looks like the kind a cat makes before coughing up a hair ball.”
Seriously? I resisted the urge to find the closest reflective surface and take a look.
“You know what? You’ve got yourself a deal,” I said, skirting away from the conversation. “I’m going.”
Making my escape, I left Amber behind as I stepped into the cat room.
I surveyed The Tiny Tiger, looking for the girl who just got broken up with. At first, all I saw was cats. There were three in front of the TV, intently watching a celebrity gossip show. Two on the winding catwalk overhead, enacting the infamous Mufasa and Scar scene, and . . . there.
A girl about my age sat alone at a table against the back wall, across from an empty chair, sniffling.
Before I could approach her, something soft and silky wove against my legs, and I looked down to see one of the friendliest cats in the café.
“Hey, Snickers,” I whispered, reaching down to pet the Siamese. “I’ll come back to spend some time with you later.” I glanced over to where the girl sat, dejected. “I just have something I’ve got to do first, okay?”
Snickers looked up at me, conveying something like, Godspeed, Lucy.
Or, you know, Give me flaked tuna treats.
I approached the table with a little wave. “Hi,” I said, racking my brain for the name the girl put down when she booked the time slot. “It’s Becky, right?”
“Oh no,” she moaned, clocking my sympathetic expression. “Does everyone here know I got broken up with?”
“No, no, of course not,” I replied, which wasn’t really a lie, because there were only two customers here and the one in the back corner had their AirPods in.
I slid into the chair across from her.
“Listen, it’s going to be all right. Relationships end. That’s life,” I said. An old memory crossed my mind and something inside my chest twisted. “Sometimes we don’t even know why.”
“He said he met someone else.”
I cringed. Or sometimes we did know why.
“I’m so sorry. He doesn’t deserve you,” I said, making a mental note to give Becky a free bear claw on her way out. “But great things are going on happen to you, okay? Lots of great things.”
My eyes caught on Snickers, who’d followed me, still looking for attention. I leaned forward, wiggling my fingers over at Becky and directing Snickers’s attention over to her. “Here, pet the cat.”
Becky sniffled, looking confused. “What?”
“Pet the cat. It’s soothing,” I explained.
This sentence seemed to make sense to her, because she reached down and started stroking Snickers, who let out a pleased brrr.
“People leave,” I said. “But life goes on, and you figure out what else makes you happy. You, Becky, are going to do so much better than . . .” I waved a hand dismissively behind me. “What’s-His-Face. The Cat Café Mood Ruiner.”
“Todd.”
“Yeah. Todd! You don’t need him. You seem really nice,” I told her honestly, watching as Snickers tried to climb onto her lap and the gentle way Becky bent down to help her up.
“And you’re going to be sad about it for a little bit, but you’re going to find someone else, if that’s what you want.
Or you could focus on yourself too! Which is never a time-waster. Either way, it’s going to be okay.”
She nodded seriously.
“Soothing, right?” I added, nodding down at the way Becky was snuggling Snickers. “Are you feeling any better?”
“You know what? I actually am.”
“That’s great! See? You’re already—” I cut off mid-sentence, distracted by the sudden newsflash on TV. Becky turned around to look too.
“No one does it like US,” the gossip show host announced.
“In the early hours of the morning, Jake Moody—one of the singers in the popular boy band the Usual Suspects—was caught swimming in the famous fountain of the elite Las Vegas hotel, the Gilded Pearl. Police arrived on the scene and escorted Moody away—but not before he signed a few autographs.”
The studio cut to footage from a field reporter’s camera, and then suddenly there was Jake. Swooping dark hair and hypnotic hazel-brown eyes. High cheekbones and a jawline as sharp as a knife—and enough swagger to suggest he was a pirate in another life.
I rolled my eyes but didn’t turn away.
On-screen, it was dark, and Jake stood in front of the iconic hotel fountain, fully dressed and soaking wet.
His slick leather jacket shone against the camera flashes, and damp strands of his hair fell over his eyes, leaving beads of water on his long lashes.
Policemen and reporters surrounded him, but he looked entirely unbothered.
Bored, even. Like taking a dip in a famous off-limits fountain was simply a way to beat the summer heat.
“Jake Moody! Jake Moody!” reporters called out to him, all shouting at once. “Would you like to apologize? Or make a statement?”
“Yeah,” he said, slow and easy. “I’ll make a statement.”
He took a step forward and stared straight into the camera with a devious glint in his eyes.
For a split second, I didn’t recognize him.
An odd, mind-bending thing, considering how close we used to be.
You haven’t spoken to him in four years, I reminded myself.
This isn’t the boy you knew. Jake’s someone else now.
Even his speaking voice sounds different.
Slowly but purposely, Jake leaned toward the microphone. A sly grin slipped across his face like quicksilver. “Stream the Usual Suspects’ latest single, ‘Midnight Swim.’”
Reporters erupted into pandemonium, flashbulbs bursting like fireworks.
“He’s got style,” Becky commented, watching as Jake slipped on a pair of sunglasses and turned his back to the reporters. “I’ll give him that.”
“He should’ve taken the jacket off before that stunt,” I muttered, thinking of the designer details I’d catalogued: Racer cut.
Full-grain noir leather. Gunmetal accents.
The embossed crown logo on the pocket. I knew enough about fashion to say Jake definitely shouldn’t be using a quality piece like that as a scuba suit.
“You know,” Becky said thoughtfully, “Jake’s advertised as the band’s bad boy, but I still think there’s a heart of gold in there that just doesn’t get much publicity.”
“I can see that,” I said mildly. I had several years’ worth of memories to support her theory, despite the way he acted now. Jake helping me with my English worksheets. Jake tidying up at the café just because he was there at closing. Jake going out of his way to walk me home after school.
But that was before he left. Now, seeing him on TV was like watching a show with a character I didn’t know, played by an actor I’d seen before. It was him in every way—but it also was not.
Becky sighed. “At least if Jake Moody broke my heart, he’d do it with a little more flair than dumping me in a cat café.”
The irony.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked distractedly, eyes still on the TV. “Because he seems like the kind of guy who’d be full of empty promises and just vanish into thin air one day.”
From across the table, Becky let out a confused, “Huh?”
“Never mind,” I muttered, forcing my gaze away from the TV. I didn’t know this person anymore—and I didn’t even know if I’d like him now if we met again.
I looked across the table at Becky and Snickers.
“Anyway,” I continued brightly, refocusing her attention to what mattered, “there’s an important lesson we can learn here!”
“A lesson?” Becky questioned, only half listening as she scratched behind Snickers’s ears. “What’s that?”
“Crushes are temporary,” I said. “Cats are forever.”
Then I reached into my apron pocket, pulled out adoption papers, and slid them over.