AllFreeNovel
Share Us
DREW
The next several days flew by in a weird sort of no-strings-attached/glimpse-of-what-a-future-with-Sadie-could-be-like kind of way. She kept waking up before me, making me breakfast and packing me a lunch. She left me dirty notes about what she wanted to do to me later. While I appreciated the food and the notes, the thing I appreciated most was the fact that she never saw my whole morning ritual. The stretching. The donning of my liner. Then the prosthesis.
Even though I was glad she wasn’t there for any of that, it was bittersweet to wake up alone.
Her notes invariably resulted in me sexting her and us meeting up for midday romps. Then she’d scamper off to go write or do something festival related with Kobie again. She never pried into what else I had planned for the day, and she had plenty of excuses to keep us from hanging out any more than necessary during the daylight hours.
Nervous energy tingled through my veins while I waited to see when she was going to walk back through the front door. I didn’t want to get wrapped up in something at the Jackson Street flip and miss the opportunity to be with her, but hanging around my house with nothing in particular to do was slowly driving me insane. It led to me constantly doing the math on exactly how many more times she would walk through that door before her days here were up.
I never liked the answer. So I blamed temporary insanity for today’s plan.
Sadie had some meeting she’d promised to attend with Kobie to provide moral support. Said she wouldn’t be back until late tonight. Even though I wasn’t tuned in to the inner workings of much of Kelly Bay these days, I secretly loved it when she rambled on about the various little projects she was working on with Kobie. It wasn’t that I cared about what color bunting got hung around the fairgrounds pavilion, but that I got a bizarre sense of satisfaction that she was so plugged into this event. It felt like she was a part of Kelly Bay now, even if that was wishful thinking.
I was on my own tonight. Rather than knock around my place going crazy all evening, I’d invited Ben and Will over to my flip to check out what I was doing with the place and grill some burgers. The kitchen was still in the early phase of remodeling and was unusable, but the stone patio with the built-in gas grill was good to go.
Honestly, I’d made the suggestion in our group text on a whim. Now, as the minutes until their arrival ticked down, I had second thoughts. I’d be back to my regular routine of solitude soon enough. Sadie wasn’t going to be in town forever and I wasn’t about to start socializing on the reg. Tonight was a one-off.
“What’s up, motherfucker? This place is a dump.” Ben crashed through the front door.
Will trailed behind him, shaking his head. “And you wonder why he never wants to hang out.”
They both grinned. I snorted out a laugh and my shoulders immediately relaxed.
God, I missed these assholes.
Emotion punched me square in the chest, but I brushed it off as I gave them each backslap bro-hugs before showing them around the place.
“Hold on.” Halfway through the tour, Ben pulled out his phone to read a text. “Brody said it’s intermission, and he wants me to FaceTime.”
Brody was busy with a school play for the twins. He’d made his disappointment about not being able to come tonight known in the group text.
“Wow. This is happening.” His voice boomed as his face filled Ben’s screen.
“You think I was gonna cancel at the last minute or something?” I asked.
“Honestly? I thought maybe you knew about the play, they were pretending they were going to be at your place, and this was some elaborate prank to get back at me for the vacation rental thing.”
“How exactly would that be getting back at you?”
“Are you kidding me?” Brody tugged on his hair. “I’m missing out on the first Drew-initiated social interaction in years.”
“You saw me last week at the Tipsy Elk.”
“Where you yelled at me. That’s different. Have you yelled at Ben and Will tonight?”
“Not yet,” Ben said.
“Give Ben another hour. He’ll give him a reason,” Will joked.
“See. This is totally different.” Brody pouted.
“Do you want the tour, or do you want to whine?” Ben asked. “Because I will hang up on you.”
“I can want both,” Brody snapped. “But I’ve only got five more minutes before intermission is over, so yeah, get back to it.”
I finished the tour of upstairs and gave Brody the highlights of what he missed downstairs before Lydia called for him to get your ass back in your seat right now or you’re going to be the one up until three in the morning sewing costumes for the next one of these things.
By the time we were done with the tour, the burgers were ready to come off the grill. The weather was semi-decent, so we sat out on the patio and shot the shit while we ate. They filled me in on what was going on in their personal lives, along with telling me stories about some of the more interesting calls they’d had at the fire station over the last few years.
