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CHAPTER NINETEEN
Epilogue - 1 month
“It’s really…” Vi started, looking over at Gracie. “Is there a nice way to say it’s a dump?” she asked, getting a horrified look out of Gracie who knew I could hear them.
“I know it’s rough,” I agreed, waving a hand out toward the house that I’d gotten on a song. Because of all the fixing up it needed. “But that’s kind of the point of having friends, right? To help you DIY your new house.”
“Um… I don’t know what friends you think you have, but we are not the DIYing sort. Unless it counts that I put these rips in my jeans myself. By, you know, falling on them on the asphalt while chasing a skip.”
“They’re nice rips,” Layna said, nodding at her. “The asymmetry gives them charm.”
Her face and body had healed over the past few weeks, but Layna was still crashing couches between Hope, Gracie, and Willa’s places. Trying to get her mental health back in check after the card game that went so south that she had barely been able to walk away from it.
“Unlike the asymmetry of the roof,” Violet said.
“They said the roof was new,” I grumbled.
“New in the Nixon era, maybe,” Vi said, getting an elbow to the side from Gracie.
“I can totally see the potential,” Gracie said, giving me an encouraging smile.
Gracie was the spoonful of sugar in the sour lemonade that could be our friendship group. What can I say? Vi, Layna, Hope, and I were all kind of rough-around-the-edges sorts. No filter. And since Willa was out crushing it with her career and Billie was enjoying her bliss with Rowe, it left pretty blonde-haired, big-eyed, soft-hearted Gracie all alone in trying to keep us all civil.
“You are a horrible liar,” I told her, smiling.
“No! Really! It has a certain charm to it. Don’t listen to Vi and Layna. They aren’t good at looking past what is in front of them. I can see below the, ah, tough years, and the future it has.”
“By ‘tough years,’” Vi said, “she means decay and disrepair.”
“Shush, would you?” Gracie hissed at her. “Listen, my dad said it has good bones and foundations. That’s what matters. Everything else is just cosmetic.”
Gracie’s father, Duke, wasn’t exactly in construction. But his whacked childhood in a, well, cult, meant he knew a thing or two about building stuff.
And he hadn’t been the only one of the dads who had come over to stare and making grumbling noises at the house when they’d realized I was buying it.
It was actually kind of funny to see them all walking around it, kicking at the foundations, checking the basement for water damage, deciding what trees needed to be taken down, and estimating how long it was going to take to get all the work done.
My own father made comments about running a separate septic line in the basement connected to a raised metal tub that a fire could be placed under “just in case” I needed to do any melting of enemies.
It was sweet, really, the way everyone had come together. Even people who I hadn’t been closely connected to in the past.
Sure, a part of it was because of Valen. His dad was in the club, so the whole club became our family. But they’d been super welcoming to me too.
The girls club had already been around to throw in their suggestions about different finishes and paint colors.
But none of that could be done until the place was pretty much gutted.
Which was what Valen, Voss, Nave, and a couple of the other guys were inside doing. All I’d heard since I showed up with coffee was slamming and sawing and hammering.
“Is there a reason you girls are all out here instead of in there doing work?” Hope asked as she walked up, looking just as tired as every time I’d seen her since being back in town.
Her job, apparently, sucked. As did her coworkers. And no one really understood why she put up with it.
“Um, because we don’t want to do manual labor?” Vi said, shrugging.
“I’m all for, you know, the feminism and breaking down of gender norms,” Layna said. “But I think the men should do the wall-tearing-down thing. And not just because I’m afraid the place is full of black mold.”
“It’s been a… supportive morning,” Gracie said, giving Hope an eye roll.
