“I just want to give up at this point. I feel like I’ve either dated and rejected, or already rejected all the possible candidates. None of them are right. There’s something wrong with every fucking guy and it’s driving me crazy.” She handed me another dish and I found a place for it.
“Then maybe take a break from dating? I mean, I met Hunter when I was definitely not looking for someone. I think it can happen when you least expect it.” That had been true for a lot of my friends. Hell, Renee and Paul started off as a hookup that somehow turned into love.
“Ugh, that is the same thing everyone says. I hate that shit,” she said, flinging a coffee cup at me with so much force that it shattered on the floor.
“What happened?” Mom yelled from the living room.
I looked at Tawny.
“Nothing,” we said in unison.
“So what did my mom grill you about?” I asked Hunter as we climbed into Sassy to drive back to school. I’d been doing a ton of driving lately because he refused to give up on his piece of shit car. Even the mechanic he took it to had told him to take it to the car morgue, but he wouldn’t. Right now he was searching for a part that hadn’t been made for fifteen years and not having much luck.
“Nothing you need to worry your pretty head about,” he said and I gave him a look. There was no way they just had a friendly chat about the weather.
“For real. I’m not screwing with you. She really just asked about school and you and my family and so forth. It was all very normal stuff. Nothing crazy.” He put his hands up as if I was attacking him. I narrowed my eyes.
“It’s true!”
“Stop laughing at me!” I said, reaching over and smacking him in the chest. He just kept laughing and I growled.
“You’re so cute when you’re mad,” he said, grinning at me in a way that made my heart want to stop beating.
“Shut up,” I said, turning on the radio. I flipped to the country station, which was playing “Mean” by Taylor Swift and I started belting out the lyrics at the top of my lungs. Instead of turning off the radio, or telling me to stop, Hunter started singing equally loud until it became a contest to see who could irritate the other more with their obnoxious singing.
I stopped at a red light and all the cars around us were staring, but neither of us cared. Of course, one of us started laughing and then the other started and it went downhill from there.
“We’re ridiculous,” I said, looking over at him. The smile on his face made everything else vanish into the background.
“We are. But at least we’re ridiculous together.” He took my right hand and kissed the back of it.
“Forever,” he said.
“Oh, that’s right. I’m going to be chained to your ass forever.” Hunter made an offended sound.
“Um, I happen to know that you love my ass.” It was true. I did. To be fair, it was a fantastic ass.
“Not as much as you love mine,” I sang and he sighed in defeat.
“I hate that you’re right, but I don’t think I could love anything more than your ass.” I made a disgusted sound.
“Pig.”
“Hey, you were the one who brought up asses.” He pointed an accusatory finger at me and I grabbed and bit him lightly.
“Ouch! If you’re that hungry, let’s stop somewhere.” Now that he said something, I was kind of hungry. It had been a few hours since lunch. I squealed with delight when I saw that the next exit had a Panera.
“Oh, so you were serious about the food,” he said when I pulled off.
“Uh, yeah. I’m always serious about food. Do you know me at all?” He chuckled and told me what he wanted.
On Sunday afternoon, Taylor and I decided to take a walk around our neighborhood.
“It seems like a Sunday afternoon couple thing,” she said, seizing my hand and dragging me out the door.
“Sure, Missy.” If she asked me to take a stroll on a trail of razor blades, I probably would have done it.
“See? This nice,” she said, swinging our hands together as we walked. Her legs were shorter than mine so I pulled up my stride so I didn’t outpace her.
“I wonder if Steve is home,” she said, glancing down the street toward Stephen King’s house. It was easy to see which one was his. Surrounding the red Victorian with cream trim was an impressive iron fence, with spider webs and gargoyles. Taylor liked to touch the fence as we walked by.
“I’m hoping the magic will rub off on me,” she said. “I mean, you can’t feel too bad about going to a State school when Stephen King went to the same one and he seems to be doing okay.” She laughed.
“True,” I agreed, distractedly. Talking with Taylor’s mother about the wedding yesterday had put it back on my mind. I didn’t want to bring it up again and upset Taylor, but we really needed to sit down and talk about it. Figure out a timeline that worked for both of us.
I hated that we were on different pages when it came to timelines, but what could I do? I couldn’t force her to marry me.
“Whatcha thinking about?” she asked, noticing my silence.
“Your ass,” I said, giving her a lazy grin.
She rolled her eyes.
“So typical. Stupid boy. Why do I even bother with you?” We bantered back and forth, but I still had that voice in my head telling me we were headed toward something that was either going to make or break us.
I just didn’t know which way things would go.
On Tuesday night I got another call from Hope.
“Oh, hi, Hunter, I was just calling because I was making some pies for Harper’s school bake sale, and wanted to know if you all would like me to make a few for you?” Her voice was sweet as sugar, but I saw straight through her ruse.
“Um, yeah, I don’t think anyone in this house would turn down pie,” I said, walking into the unoccupied kitchen.
“Did someone say pie?!” Renee yelled out. “If that’s your aunt, tell her I want lemon meringue!” I heard Hope laugh in my ear.
“Is that Renee? I’m guessing she wants lemon meringue?”
“Yup. And probably a blackberry, a strawberry rhubarb and a coconut cream.” I didn’t feel bad asking for so many. She was going to make at least four or five whether we wanted them or not.
“Okay, sounds good. How are you doing, honey?” My heart twisted when she talked to me like that. Her voice was so similar to my mom’s. Made sense, since they were sisters. Sometimes if I closed my eyes, I could imagine that it was her, talking to me again.
“Fine, I’m doing fine. I ah, went to talk to someone about everything.” I hadn’t told anyone other than Taylor and Mase that I was seeing a counselor.
“Oh, good. I’ve been so worried about you and I know Taylor has, too. You’re just so determined not to let anyone take care of you, Hunter.” Yeah, so I’d been told. Especially when Joe had been trying to get me to take the money I’d inherited.
“I know, I know,” I said with a sigh.
“Well, you just let that girl take care of you. And tell JJ to call me. I haven’t heard from him in a week and I have half a mind to drive up there and pay him a little visit.” I snorted. That would go over real well with Mase.
“Yeah, I’ll give him the message,” I said, going to the fridge and getting a soda.
“You’d better. Okay, love you, sweetheart.” I said it back and we hung up. Just as Mase walked into the kitchen.
“Dude, call your mom. She threatened to show up here with pie if you don’t.” The look on his face was totally worth it. He muttered something under his breath, pulled his phone out of his back pocket and immediately called her.
I laughed under my breath. If Hope told us all to jump we would ask how high she wanted us to go.
Hope didn’t show up with the pies, but she did make Mase go home and get them, and bring Darah with him. Hope adored Darah as much as she loved Taylor. How my stupid cousin and I had ended up with two such amazing women would be a mystery for the ages.
; Mase and Darah came back not only with pies, but also with cupcakes and cookies. They loaded up the dining table with the baked goods and we all stood around and stared.
“It’s a good thing there are so many of us,” I said when everyone else stayed silent. It was enough food for our own bake sale.
“Um, I’m not sharing these with anyone,” Taylor said, going right for the red velvet cake cupcakes and snatching the box. “These are mine and I will fight anyone for them.” She bared her teeth in a vicious grin that totally turned me.
Shit, anything she did turned me on, so this was no different.
“And I’ll fight anyone who takes something from my girl. So,” I said, giving everyone a look.
“Thanks, baby,” Taylor said, skipping over to me with the box and planting a kiss on my cheek. “You always have my back.”
“And your front,” I added.
“Ugh, if you two could take that somewhere else, that would be fantastic,” Renee said, making a disgusted face.
“Speak for yourself. We all heard you the other night,” Taylor snapped back at her. “I hope Paul never goes down on you again.” Renee snarled and I stepped between the two to prevent any sort of fight from breaking out. Not that they would get physical. I mean, Taylor hadn’t punched anyone in a long time. And Renee was all bark and no bite. Unless she was biting Paul. I’d seen the marks on his neck more times than once.
“Okay, okay, let’s do this democratically,” Darah said, ever the voice of peace and reason. She wrote down a list of what baked goods we had and how many of each there were. What followed was an elaborate sort of auction where somehow everyone ended up mostly happy with what they got.
“You’d think we would be better at dividing this stuff up after living here for this long,” I said as Taylor sat down on the recliner with her cupcakes.
“Hmm? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of delicious cupcakes,” she said, peeling off the paper and then breaking the cupcake in half and turning it into a sandwich.
She gave me a satisfied grin that turned into a moan as she took her first bite. That moan went right to my dick and I wanted to toss the cupcake aside and give her something better to do with her mouth.
“Don’t make that noise unless you want me to throw you over my shoulder and haul you upstairs,” I said with a growl.
She just took another bite and moaned again. She was going to be the death of me.
“Do that one more time,” I said, holding up one finger.
She laughed and just kept eating her cupcake.
“Nothing is coming between me and these cupcakes. Not even you,” she said, pulling her feet up and licking some frosting off her lips. I was inches away from smashing the cupcake box in an effort to get to her, but she held up her other hand to stop me.
“Don’t even try it. I am not giving you a blow job right now.” I huffed and sat down on the couch as she slowly tortured me.
“I love you, but right now I don’t like you very much,” I said. Everyone else was in the kitchen, similarly occupied devouring their treats.
“You’re so mean to me,” she said, pouting as she pulled out a second cupcake.
“That’s not true. I’m very nice to you. I recall being nice to you this morning,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows.
“Um, we both know you enjoy that as much as I do.” Damn, she had me there. I loved, loved, loved going down on her. The taste and the noises she made. If I didn’t have to go to class or work, I would probably spend a significant portion of my day with my face between her legs.
She just grinned in triumph, but then held out the cupcake to me.
“I’m gonna kill you with kindness,” she said as I narrowed my eyes at her.
“You’re so much trouble, Missy Girl,” I said as I slid closer to her and took the cupcake from her sticky fingers.
She laughed again. I knew she was thinking back to the first day we met. She’d thought I looked like trouble. With a capital T.
Taylor finished her second cupcake and I ate one as well.
“We shouldn’t even bother with dinner tonight,” she said after she’d consumed a third cupcake. “Oh, I have a question. Three cupcakes is like, the equivalent of one normal piece of cake right?”
“Yes, that’s exactly right. I think some scientists at Harvard proved that just the other day. Read it in an article,” I said with a serious face.
She just wrinkled her nose and grabbed another cupcake.
Hunter’s second week of seeing the counselor went even better than the first. He seemed to be getting control of his nightmares, which was a huge relief. I was dealing with my own demons.
I’d picked up some extra hours at the crisis center and it was wearing me out. Not physically. Emotionally. When I got home I just felt like all of my wells had been drained. I had nothing left. My own problems were so insignificant compared to what some of these people were going through. The guy who had an abusive boyfriend. The mom who was having trouble with her daughter. The husband who was scared his wife was going to kill herself when he wasn’t watching.
The stories filled my head until it was hard to see anything good in the world. Going home to Hunter helped, though. It helped so much. Seeing the joy in his face when I walked through the door took some of that weight away.
But it wasn’t all gone. It stayed with me. Permanently welded to my shoulders. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to totally burn myself out before I even got started. I couldn’t let that happen.
I thought I was hiding my stress well, but one night when Hunter was at Steiners practice and everyone else seemed to have something to do, Darah tapped me on the shoulder.
“Are you doing okay?” she asked, her dark eyes serious underneath her blunt-cut bangs. She was a total goddess and I wished I had her cheekbones. It was no wonder Mase had been struck dumb the first time he saw her.
“Uh, yeah, why?” I asked, trying to play it off. She put her hand on my shoulder, guided me to the dining room table and pushed me into one of the chairs.
“I’m just worried about you. You’ve just seemed so low these past few weeks.” I wanted to kick myself. Guess I hadn’t been hiding it as well as I thought.
“I’m fine,” I said, with one more attempt to brush her off.
Darah just made a face that told me that she didn’t believe me one bit.
“You know you can talk to me about anything. Anything.” I knew that. She, Renee and Jos were like my surrogate sisters. I’d never tell Tawny that, but they were. Not sisters of my blood, but sisters of my heart.
“I know,” I said, sighing. I slouched on the table. “I don’t know if I can do it,” I mumbled, not looking at her.
“Do what?” Her voice was soft and soothing. There was something about Darah that just put you at ease. She was the steady hand, the calm foundation of our little family. Consistent. Reliable. Unshakeable.
“Everything. School is crazy and Hunter wants to get married ASAP and working at the Crisis Center is harder than I thought and I just feel like I’m failing at everything.” The words came out in a rush, as if they’d been lined up and waiting for me to speak them for ages.
Darah laughed.
“Okay, thanks,” I said, starting to get up, but she grabbed my hand to stop me.
“I’m not laughing at you. I swear. I’m laughing because none of us has any idea what we’re doing. We all feel like we’re failing.” I gave her a look. I found it hard to believe that Darah ever met a problem she couldn’t handle. She kept herself together, Mase together and the rest of us together. Darah was fucking glue.
“Uh huh,” I said in a tone that told her I was skeptical.
She shook her head and pushed her bangs out of her eyes.
“I know I seem like I have everything together, but I really don’t. I broke down and cried in the middle of the Union the other day.” I gaped at her because I’d had no idea.
“Why?”
She laughed a little and waved
her hand.
“Honestly? I think I was just really tired and had too much homework and I realized that my bank account was almost out of money and then I got an email about an assignment I had missed and it was all too much. I lost it. Right in front of the pizza place. Fortunately, Mase was with me and he took me outside and helped me calm down, but it was still totally embarrassing. He forced me to skip class for the rest of the day and come home and nap with him. Well, we tried napping.” She gave me a little wink. Darah was more close-lipped about her sex life than me or Renee, but you didn’t have to see into their bedroom to know that Mase and Darah were all over each other every chance they got.
“Wow,” I said. “Just… wow.” I sat back in my chair, totally flabbergasted.
“So. You’re not the only one who can’t seem to keep her shit together.” I snorted. Darah didn’t swear very often, so when she did, it was kind of amusing.
“Well, that does make me feel a little better, I guess,” I said.
“See? We’re all a mess. Every single one of us. None of us knows what we’re doing at any given moment and we’re all just doing our best.” She squeezed my hand and I found myself giving her a hug.
“Thanks, Dare. That means a lot. And anytime you want to cry, you let me know.” I sniffed a little and wiped my eyes. Knowing I had people around me that would do whatever they could to make sure I was happy was just the best feeling.
“I love you,” I said. She smacked a kiss on my cheek.
“Love you too, doll.”
After my chat with Darah, I noticed that Mase was watching me a lot more. I’d catch him giving me this searching look, as if he was trying to see into my brain. I finally confronted him about it two days after I talked with Darah.
“Hey, Mase, can we have a chat?” I asked sweetly, pointing to the door to the basement. I figured he’d feel most comfortable surrounded by all his workout equipment.
“Uh, so, what is this about?” he asked, crossing his massive arms. He was about twice my size. But I could tell he was nervous. Ha.