Clyde zoomed by the sign, blurring its absurdly fake message … without incident.
Layla laughed loudly. I exhaled shakily into Bobo’s fur.
Griffin told us with a happy slap to the wheel, his relief stark.
Brady asked.
“Fuck me,” I muttered. I hadn’t even considered those possibilities! So much for my relief. Any of those things could still happen!
Hunt said.
Griffin said as he continued to drive the empty stretch of road, his shoulders relaxing against his seat back, his hand loose atop my knee since he didn’t have to shift gears.
Brady said.
Layla said, for once serious despite her suggestion involving nudity.
Hunt said.
Griffin said with a wink to me and one of his true, natural smiles.
I waggled my brows at him.
His smile widened while Layla groaned and then whined,
My stare was eating up how fucking hot Griffin was, and how amazing it was that I could openly ogle him. I didn’t immediately register that Layla had trailed off for good reason, until Griffin’s stare hardened on the road up ahead.
His throat bobbed as he asked aloud, “Uh, guys … what the hell is that?”
Layla was already perched on the edge of the back seat, peering between the front seats. Hunt and Brady also scooted forward to better see while I bobbed my head around Bobo’s rump and tail.
Griffin pointed at a sign that was fast coming into view.
None of us uttered a word until we read it.
Welcome to Ridgemore, where strangers become friends. Make yourselves at home and stay a while!
Griffin slowed Clyde to crawl past it. There was no mistaking the upbeat scrawl—an identical stylistic match to the farewell signage—or what it said. As to what it meant … fuck if I knew.
When the sign was far enough behind us that it was the size of a postage stamp, Layla broke our stunned silence.
“How thefuckcan we be entering Ridgemore when we just freaking left it?”
I didn’t answer. Neither did the others.
“Huh?” she insisted, a hysterical edge creeping into that
single-worded demand. “The fuck, guys? Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,fuuuuuck!”
Though surely we were all thinking something along those lines—I certainly was—an entire additional minute passed, during which Layla’s breathing grew heavy, like she was maybe about to hyperventilate, something she’d never done before.
“Guys, I think I’m … I think I’m losing my ever-loving shit,” she panted. “Right now. Right the hell now.”
After the Magnum times four sexcapades we’d witnessed the night before, I didn’t think my mind could be blown open anywider. Butdamn, if the universe didn’t love to tell me to hold its beer andwatch me top that shit, motherfucker.
All I kept thinking was,We just left town and now we’re being welcomed back into it. That was it. No deductions or conclusions. No brilliant hypotheses as to what that implied. No if A leads to B, then C must be true. Nothing but a numb repetition of that one glaring fact.
