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“Funny.”
I flip down the visor, examining my face in the mirror. My freckles are fading a bit in the winter weather since I’m spending less time outdoors. It bums me out some, because I’ve always thought my freckles make me cute. And the green eyes. Apparently they’re rare, but both Rusty and I got them from our mom.
Wiping a smudge of mascara from under my eye, I consider whether Jackson liked my freckles last night…if he even saw them as we moved from the dim lighting of the bar to the darkness of his hotel room. Then I roll my eyes and smack the visor back closed. It doesn’t even matter.
“Time to spill the beans,” I hear from the speaker. “I remember him having an amazing butt, though not much else.”
“See, I knew you’d eventually agree with me.”
“Abby.”
“Okay, fine. Yes, I hooked up with him last night, a decision you completely supported, in case you don’t remember. He’s a tourist and like a full foot taller than me, and I’ve never orgasmed that hard in my entire life.”
“That is quite the endorsement.”
I snort. “Ten out of ten, would recommend.”
“Really that good, huh?”
I hum my agreement. “I almost regretted not leaving my number for him when I snuck out of his room this morning, but then I realized it would have been stupid, you know? To leave it and then wait for him to call when I doubt he ever would.”
“It was smart to leave without attachments,” she tells me. “Especially if you’re just interested in a little fun.”
I nod, though I know she can’t see me.
Briar’s right, and so am I. Leaving my number would have put an expectation on things, and the point of last night was exactly what Briar said. Have a little fun.
She and I have had quite a few conversations about the importance of finding a guy to just enjoy for a while. It’s a recommendation I’ve given to her more than a few times in her life and one that eventually led her to her relationship with Andy.
Being at least partially responsible for them ending up together makes it harder to admit that sometimes I have a difficult time following my own advice. Even though what I said I wanted was some casual fun, I still have trouble separating the physical from the emotional. So, maybe what I actually meant was that I wanted something fun that could turn into something more.
I shake that thought off, trying not to dwell on it too much. Maybe someday what happened for Briar will happen for me. Last night wasn’t it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the future. That I won’t find my own someday with the right man.
We shoot the shit for a bit longer, each of us promising to connect soon about our furniture situation for the new place—which is looking bleak as hell—and then we get off the phone, Briar likely curling back into a ball at Andy’s to nurse her hangover as I head inside and try not to daydream about the man from last night.
I grab my purse off the passenger seat of my old blue VW Bug, climb out, and lock up before taking the path around the side of our house to the front door.
My mom put the stones in for the little walkway back when I was in junior high. The stones and all the little pink flowers that used to line the path. When she and my dad passed away at the start of my sophomore year of high school, I didn’t know anything about taking care of plants or maintaining the outside of a house. Neither did Rusty. When those flowers suddenly died, having been scorched by the sun after not being watered, I was devastated.
Then one day when I came home from school, there were all new flowers lining the walkway. Rusty had gone down the mountain to one of those massive hardware stores that have a garden department, bought hundreds of dollars’ worth of flowers, and replanted them along the edges. Yellow this time. Mom’s favorite color.
Right now, there are just empty brown patches where the flowers used to be because the temperature is so dang cold, but they’ll be back in a few months. After Christmas, after the yearly snow in January and February, the temps will start to warm up around mid-March, and that’s when the flowers will be back. Bright and sunny and yellow.
Although, I guess this year, I won’t be living here to see them bloom.
As excited as I am to move, that thought has my heart dipping a bit as I walk through the front door. I may have moved away for college, but this has always been my home. Moving in with Briar on the other side of the lake changes that in ways I’m probably going to be learning to adjust to for quite a while.
“Hey, Rus,” I say, rounding the corner from the entry.
My brother looks up from where he’s bent over a bunch of papers spread out across the kitchen island. “Hey, Abs. How was work?”
“Good. Lots of tips today.”
Dropping my purse at the foot of the couch, I shrug out of my jacket and walk over to hang it in the small closet off to the side of the six-foot Christmas tree we put up together last weekend. Then I crawl up onto one of the stools at the counter and reach over to the bowl of peanut M&M’s sitting out.
As I stuff a few in my mouth, I register the unfamiliar phone on the counter, along with the notepad and pen resting in front of the other bar stool.
Then I hear the downstairs toilet flush.
