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“This is going to be amazing.” Aspen logged into her computer.
I looked over at Emma and Jenna. “Do you know what we’re watching?”
Their grins both said yes.
“We thought you needed a little help getting over that d-bag, Ryder,” Jenna growled.
“Technically, I was in the wrong.” That’s what made it so much worse.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Perhaps, but after the way he treated you at the café, we all hate him now.”
He had hurt my feelings, but honestly, I couldn’t blame the man. Thankfully we hadn’t had any more run-ins. Even Bobby Jay had known to stay away from me. Why he thought inviting us both to dinner was going to turn out well, I had no idea. And thanks to him, Macey and Marlowe knew we had been engaged. I wasn’t sure who told them, but I overheard them talking about it at home. Macey had commented that since I was the one who broke up with him, I probably wouldn’t mind if she asked him out. Marlowe proceeded to smack her, which only confirmed that Marlowe was already seeing him. I went and hid in my room for the rest of the night after that. If my heart wasn’t so set on my little yellow house, I would be looking for a place to move.
“Let’s not talk about him,” I suggested. “How are things going at the eye center?” I asked Emma instead. They’d had their grand opening on Wednesday. I’d popped over for the ribbon cutting. I swore half the town showed up for it. There was even a big front-page write-up about it in the paper. I guess when your dad owned half the town anything you did was a big deal. Not to say it wasn’t or they didn’t deserve all the attention. They truly did.
Emma beamed. “So good. Sawyer loves having his own practice. Several of his old patients from . . . Oops.” Emma cringed.
“It’s fine. I’m happy his patients followed him. He’s an excellent optometrist. I don’t feel any loyalty to Hobbs Eye Care Centers. I never have. Besides, look what my own flesh and blood did to me.”
“Speaking of flesh and blood, it’s time.” Aspen clicked on one more screen before sitting down, excited like a child on Christmas.
I was getting more and more worried. “When you say flesh and blood, you aren’t talking about naked men are you?”
They all laughed at me.
“This is better,” Jenna commented before holding baby Elliot against her chest to burp him. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the chubby little guy. “Though if we want to put on Magic Mike or something afterward, I’m down.”
Emma smacked her.
“Shh,” Aspen hushed us. “It’s time.”
Suddenly the screen was filled with a giant cockroach resting in someone’s hand, the likes of which I’d never seen, and that was saying something considering I grew up in the South. I shivered just from the thought of holding the nasty creature. To make it worse, it hissed.
“This guy here is named Leland,” the woman on what looked like a live feed of some sort announced.
“Yes!” Aspen shouted.
I was very confused. I looked at Aspen to clarify, but she was glued to the screen.
“He was named by a viewer in Colorado who goes by the name of Aspen. She wants to wish Leland a painful death and hopes his soul goes to hell.”
“What in the world is this?”
Emma and Jenna were giggling so hard they couldn’t answer me.
I tuned back to the screen to see the woman holding the cockroach approach an enclosure filled with meerkats. “Where is this person?”
“It’s a zoo,” Emma said through her fits of laughter. “During Valentine’s Day they allowed people to pay to have a cockroach named after their ex fed to a meerkat. It was so popular they do it every Saturday now. All the money goes to help the animals at the zoo.”
The woman knelt and several meerkats came to the edge of the enclosure and stood on their hind legs, begging. Some of them even bared their teeth. The cute things began to look vicious. The hissing cockroach was then dangled in front of the littlest meerkat. He snatched it quick-like and began devouring it.
“Oh my goodness, that is disgusting.” I turned my head.
“It’s freaking brilliant,” Aspen shouted. “Die, Leland! Die!” She stood up and cheered on the meerkat with all her heart.
It was then I remembered her ex-husband who’d abandoned her and her daughter was named Leland. It suddenly all made sense.
Once the meerkat had devoured its prey, she fell into her seat next to me and blissfully sighed. “That was the best thing ever.” She smiled over at me. “Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?”
“Yes,” she smiled, “look who’s up next.”
With a churning stomach I faced the screen one more time. A new large and hissing cockroach was in the woman’s hand. “This fella here is named Ryder.”
