AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, let’s do this.”
The girls walked out of the door first, but before I could follow them, Tori’s hand landed on my arm. “Hey, are you doing okay?” she asked as those big blue eyes stared into my soul as if her whole livelihood depended on me being okay.
My stomach flipped, and my eyes instinctively traveled from her eyes down to her lips. I quickly brought them back up. “I’m okay, I promise. But if you keep looking at me like that, I might tip over to a nine.”
Tori chuckled, and it was too late. I was already there. “I’ll try my best not to be so charming.”
She went to turn around and without her luscious lips teasing me, I could finally think straight. “Hey, wait.”
When Tori spun back around, her expression was more serious but still just as adorable. “What’s up?”
“Are you okay?”
“That’s a very loaded question. On one hand, it’s Pride and I get to celebrate it with some of my favorite people in the whole world. On the other hand, it’s in memory of my best friend who I still miss every single goddamn day, and it just reminds me how unfair it is that we have to miss her.” Tori threw a hand over her eyes as if she was shielding them. “You’re also looking at me like you want to kiss me right now, and I honestly don’t know what’s worse—the guilt over how much I want you to or the agony of how much it sucks that you won’t.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I pointed out of the door to where the girls were impatiently waiting by the car. “We should probably go before one of them decides to drive.”
The first thing we did when we got to Pride was walk around and talk to all of the vendors as they set up for the day. The girls loved it since everyone gave them so much attention. As we came up to a booth with multiple paintings of naked women, my first instinct was to cover Emery’s eyes, but I didn’t want her to think that the female body was anything to be ashamed of, so I let her look.
As expected, her eyes practically bulged out of her head when she noticed the paintings. She looked from the paintings to me, eyes still wide. “Why don’t they have clothes?”
The girl behind the booth laughed at the question, but looked at me to answer, clearly trying to avoid saying anything I might not approve of.
I shrugged, because I wasn’t sure how to answer either. “It’s art. It shows us that all bodies are beautiful.”
Emery looked from me over to the girl behind the booth. “Did you make these?”
“I didn’t. It was my girlfriend.” She pointed to someone walking toward the booth. “Speak of the devil, there she is.”
Bella turned and tilted her head at the dark-haired girl who was now standing beside us. “Why do you paint people without clothes?”
“That’s a great question.” The dark-haired girl knelt down in front of Bella. “I don’t know. I guess I like showing the body through art, because it’s so beautiful.”
Emery squeezed my hand and bounced up and down. “That’s the same thing my mama said.”
“Well, your mom is very smart.” The girl stood up and held her hand out toward me. “I believe we met last year. My name is Dakota. Rosemary, right?”
“Impressive,” I said with a laugh. I thought her face looked vaguely familiar, but I never would have remembered her name.
Dakota put her hands in her pockets and shrugged. “I’m sure you have talked to so many people here. I only had to remember a handful of you. By the way,” she motioned behind the booth. “I’m not sure if you were introduced yet, but this is my gorgeous girlfriend, Ashton.”
Tori smiled over at me, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was thinking the same thing I was. That desperate pull to have what these two clearly had. A lump formed in my throat as I watched Dakota put her arm around Ashton and kiss her cheek. It made me miss Willow so much, but also made me miss what I would never have with Tori. Life was so unfair. Why did my heart have to open itself up again just for me to fall for someone I could never have?
A hand landed on my back, and I looked over to see that Tori was now standing beside me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good. Thanks.” I put on my best fake smile, and even though I knew I wasn’t fooling Tori at all, she nodded in return and removed her hand from my back as if it would catch on fire if she left it there too long.
We spent a few more minutes talking to Ashton and Dakota, most of that time dedicated to the girls asking them a million questions that they graciously answered. We continued to walk from booth to booth until it came close to the time the parade was starting. We went to where all of the floats and parade walkers were gathering and found Silas and Aaron already over there, helping them get organized. Thank god for beards turned into best friends.
“How is everything over here?” I asked Silas after giving him a hug.
Silas answered with a thumbs up. “All good to go.”
I walked down the long row of awaiting parade participants and confirmed that there were no last-minute issues. Emery followed behind me and gave everyone high fives.
When it was time for the parade to start, we stood at the beginning of the parade route to watch. Since this was the first time doing the parade and it was pretty small, it only took twenty minutes for the last float to pass us.
Emery clawed at my leg while repeating, “Mama,” over and over again.
