Wishful Thinking Read online

  Phil tried to put the doubt to the back of her mind but she felt a niggling apprehension as she drove on towards Starfish Cove. Well, she reminded herself as the wind whipped through her hair, whatever happened, the most important thing was to let Josh knew how she felt. Nothing else mattered.

  Starfish Cove was a quiet beach with spotless white sand edged by tall feathery bushes Phil didn’t know the name of. She was fairly sure that her nana would have known since she loved to garden and made a mental note to ask her. The bushes provided some privacy and formed little nooks along the beach where covered picnic tables and outdoor barbeque grilles had been erected. It was perfect for a gathering the size of BB&D’s, Phil admitted grudgingly. The last office beach party had been located at a noisy public beach.

  She parked in the sandy parking lot and got out, the scent of cooking hot dogs wafting through the air. Her stomach fluttered as she adjusted her bikini top self-consciously, grabbed her big straw beach bag, and headed toward the beach. She was hoping like crazy that Josh would already be there but she wasn’t too surprised that his Hybrid wasn’t in the parking lot yet—her best friend had never been on time for anything in his life that Phil knew of. Instead, the first person she saw was Kelli. She was wearing a bright yellow one piece suit with an electric blue towel wrapped around her narrow hips.

  “Hi, Kelli.” Phil waved, determined to treat her coworker in a professional and adult fashion despite the debacle in the HR review the day before.

  Kelli scrunched her nose and frowned. For a minute, Phil didn’t think she was going to answer. But then her talkative nature seemed to reassert itself and she greeted her grudgingly. “Hi, Philomena. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. How’s the party so far?” Phil asked, feeling that things were going remarkably well all things considered.

  “It’s all right. You know, I wasn’t going to talk to you today. Not after what you said about me talking too much in that HR thing, anyway. But I’m not the kind of person to hold a grudge.”

  Of course she wasn’t, not when there was a chance she could get someone to listen to her yap. Phil was profoundly glad she didn’t feel compelled to say that out loud, though, and since she was going to be working with Kelli for the foreseeable future, she decided it was better to smooth things over.

  “You know, Kelli, what I said in the HR review didn’t really come out the way I planned,” she began. “What I really meant to say was…” that we should limit our non-business conversation while we’re at work. To her surprise, what came out of Phil’s mouth was, “we don’t have enough hours in the day to catch up with each other.”

  “What?” Kelli frowned. “That’s like, so not what you said it in the meeting.”

  “I…I…know but…” Phil frowned. She was giving Kelli the wrong idea and if she didn’t get things straight her coworker would begin talking her ear off again.

  “I mean, I thought you said you thought I talked too much?”

  “I did say that and…” sometimes you do talk too much, especially when I’m trying to work. “And I was wrong. You don’t talk too much at all. I really enjoy your conversation, especially when I’m working.” Phil was horrified.

  “Really?” Kelli was staring at her.

  “I…I…” Phil shook her head violently, trying to make the words come out right. “What I meant to say was…” I hate the way you’re always talking about yourself and the trivial details of your life when I’m trying to work! Your constant yapping drives me insane! “I love to hear all your fascinating little stories while we’re at work. They really brighten my day.”

  “Well, isn’t that sweet. Come on, the party’s over here.” Kelli linked her arm through Phil’s, drawing her through the large feathery bushes and onto the expanse of white sugar-fine sand. “I guess you were just having a bad couple of days. Probably that time of the month—I know I turn into a total bitch when my aunt Gazelda comes to town.”

  “Aunt…Gazelda?” Phil asked hesitantly.

  “Oh.” Kelli gave a high pitched giggle that drilled through Phil’s head. “That’s what we used to call it when we got our periods. I have six sisters, you know, and we used to get into all kinds of trouble! The stories I could tell…” She gave Phil a sharp look. “But I don’t want to bore you.”

  Phil felt strongly that hearing Kelli tell about her six sisters would be the most boring thing imaginable but when she opened her mouth to say so (in a tactful way, of course) what came out was, “Oh, no please! It sounds fascinating.”

  “Well, then. There was this one time…” Kelli dragged her down the beach towards the BB&D party while Phil tried to figure out what was going on. This had to be due to her birthday wish and her fairy godmother’s maliciously lazy magic again. Would she now be forced to lie to everyone she met? Or was it simply that she was going to have to keep saying nice things she didn’t mean? It would probably tickle the FG’s funny bone (if she had one) to make Phil unable to say anything but insincere compliments after the way they had lambasted her yesterday morning.

  “…so glad I can talk to you because, you know, Mister Dickson has expressly forbidden anyone who wasn’t actually at the review to talk about it. On pain of losing our jobs—can you imagine?”

  At least Kelli’s prattle drew Phil’s attentions from her own problems. Apparently they had moved from her coworker’s childhood and back to the disastrous HR review.

  “Did he really say that?” she asked weakly, glad that her words came out as she intended.

  Her coworker nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes! In fact, I—oh, wait. Don’t talk about it now. Hello, Alison!” she cooed as their coworker came strutting down the beach. She was draped over the arm of Greg Hansford, who was generally acknowledged to be the second most eligible bachelor at BB&D. He was smiling broadly, apparently unaware that he had replaced Davis Miles in Alison’s affections only by virtue of his sexual orientation.

  “Howdy, ya’ll.” He grinned, showing big white teeth like tombstones. He was from the Dallas/Fort Worth area and he always reminded Phil of the Westerns her nana had made them watch when she and her sisters were younger.

  “Uh, howdy,” she said, trying to smile. “How are you, Alison?”

  “I’m just fine; don’t you worry about me.” Alison gave them a catty smile and pressed closer to Greg, rubbing her breasts against his arm. She was wearing a pink bikini so tiny it might as well have not been there at all. Phil had been of the opinion that she would never see a smaller or more revealing bikini than the red mesh one she’d tried on for Josh at RipTide the day before, but Alison’s outfit left it in the dust.

  Alison seemed to read her mind. “How do you like my suit, Philomena?” she asked, giving Phil an arch look. “Greg here just loves it, don’t you, Greggy?” She pressed her breasts against his arm again and Greg’s chest puffed up with pride.

  “Sure do, kitten.” He gave Alison a wide grin and his eyes took a leisurely visual tour of her skimpy attire. “I think it’s right pretty.”

  Greggy? Kitten? Phil felt like she might be sick. She would have liked to tell Alison exactly what she thought of her little pink bikini, but when she opened her mouth what came out instead was, “I think it’s lovely, Alison. Very tasteful.”

  “Really?” Allison gave her a surprised look as Phil struggled inwardly. Then it hit her—the way her wish was screwed up. Rory’s off-hand statement about Phil needing the exact opposite of her first wish had given their fairy godmother another loophole and now Phil was stuck saying the exact opposite of what she felt.

  Phil went weak in the knees. How could she go through the next month or however long it took the FG to get back from Patagonia saying the exact opposite of what she was feeling?

  “Philomena?” Kelli was nudging her. “Alison asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Phil looked up from her dazed contemplation of the sand around her flip-flops.

  “I said, do you really like my suit or are you just sayin