Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“And you call me dramatic,” I muttered, reaching for an emergency chocolate from the secret stash in my bathroom kit.
“Worst day of my life. Still. And that’s saying something after the whole unplanned pregnancy thing. I was a laughingstock.”
I stood up and stretched, wondering how much more of this I could take before I could sink into the musty lumps of my palatial sleeping situation. “So what’s our plan?”
She turned to look at me with a confused expression on her face. “How do you mean?”
“You’ve been stewing about that moment for ten years now, and now you’re both finally back in town at the same time. Are we seeking revenge? Are we taking the high road? Because I really think—”
Her face lit up when I said the word “revenge,” and my stomach dropped. I really hadn’t meant it. The last thing I wanted to see was Brooks Johnson get even more pressure from this town to be someone he wasn’t. I knew what it was like to grow up in a tiny town as a gay man. I knew how stifling and lonely it felt. Even if Brooks hadn’t had the addition of poverty and ignorant parents on top of it like I had, I could still imagine things hadn’t been as easy for him as they’d appeared.
“I want to break him and Paul up.”
I blew out a breath. “Babe.”
She held up a hand. “No, listen. Hear me out about Paul. That man’s no more gay than I am. So I think maybe he’s somehow gotten roped into dating Brooks under false pretenses. Like maybe he’s experimenting with his sexuality.”
I sighed, but she kept going. “Mal, damn it. If that man’s gay, I’ll eat my…” She looked around the tree house until her eyes lit on my candy stash.
“Don’t even think about it,” I growled.
“Just let me poke the bear a little, okay? Will you do that for me?”
I leaned over to pull the futon out into the sleeping position so I could put the sheets on it. “How do you mean, exactly?”
“Remember when we watched that episode of Gaybee where one of the contestants was flirting with a guy at a bar, and the contestant made a bottoms-up joke and the guy didn’t get it?”
Sometimes Ava made no sense whatsoever. I looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language.
She put her hands on her hips. “You said that if that man was actually gay he would have gotten the joke?”
“Oh, right. Yeah. It was actually… never mind. What does that have to do with Paul?”
She grinned her pageant-winning smile, the one with Vaseline teeth and sparkling—devious—eyes. “Let’s do that. But with Paul.”
“Out him as straight?”
She shook her head. “No, God no. I just… I just want to know for me. Like maybe he’s really straight, and somehow Brooks has manipulated him into—”
“Hon, Paul’s an adult…” I began. “If he’s straight, he’s probably helping Brooks out the same way I’m helping you out. He wouldn’t have wanted to come home single and deal with all this matchmaking-mother bullshit. Which, by the way, I totally see now and understand why you threw me under the bus.”
Ava headed toward the escape hatch and lifted it before tossing down the rope ladder. “Either way, Paul’s going to need a friend. I’m going to talk to him and figure out why he would agree to help Brooks out. And if he’s by some chance gay, and he thinks he’s in love with Brooks, I need to save the poor man from the same fate I experienced ten years ago. You didn’t see the way Brooks looked at Paul, like he was nothing more than a study partner. It’s like Lickin’ 2010 all over again. Brooks is no more in love with that man than he was with me, and Paul deserves better.”
She began climbing down but looked back up at me when only her head and her wild blonde curls were still visible. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the only one of us single and miserable at this damned Lickin’.”
I thought back to her blurted confession at the Johnson house earlier tonight.
“Who says you’re single?” I called down to her. “I thought I was your honey nugget!”
She snorted and shot me the bird over her shoulder. “Damned straight. And don’t you forget it.”
“I didn’t sign up for this,” I warned.
She spun around and peered up at me, the familiar bravado and determination clear as day on her face. “Join the fucking club, Malachi.” Then she turned to continue her trek to the main house.
Ava Ivey was the mercurial one. I’d always told her she was like two sides of a rare coin. On one side was the sassy, confident esthetician who worked hard and was beloved by her clients. The woman who dropped everything to come running when I needed her. The brass-balled tiger who’d once told my landlord that if he didn’t replace the shoddy flooring in my apartment, she’d report him to the housing authority.