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AVERY: [Angel emoji]
I rubbed a frustrated hand across my face and typed back.
ME: AVS! Your sister’s here.
AVERY: You need to work out your differences. And tell her WHY you’re a dick to her. Gem will understand.
ME: You know?
AVERY: Of course. Nol told me.
I honestly hadn’t expected that. Nolan was the kind of guy who kept shit close to the vest, but Avery was his wife, and he worshiped the ground she walked on. Who was I kidding? Of course, he told his wife.
ME: Why are you doing this?
AVERY: Payback. Gemma pushed me toward Nol, and now it’s your turn.
I groaned and dropped my phone on the bed.
Fucking Avery. I didn’t realize she could be so meddlesome. I half wondered if she and Declan planned this together because Declan had agreed to give me time off a little too quickly. He had a weird look in his eye when I told him Avery offered to let me stay at the cabin.
ME: Did you concoct this plan with Dec?
AVERY: I plead the fifth.
Assholes. Meddling assholes, the both of them.
With a sigh, I got off the bed and went downstairs to make something quick for dinner. Gemma hadn’t come downstairs when I finished cooking my pasta, and that was fine with me. It was better if we stayed out of each other’s way this week. Although, I was sure I’d wake up tomorrow, and she’d be gone. I was fine with that, too.
I took my dinner outside and sat on the porch with my sketchbook while I ate and sketched the landscape. I had to admit; it was beautiful up here. I planned to go back to the nature preserve tomorrow with my sketchbook. I was considering taking my canvas and paints, too.
A bottle of Mac Daddy appeared in my view, and I looked up and saw Gemma holding out the beer to me. She held a bottle of Area 267 in her other hand, and she looked uncomfortable.
I cocked my head at her.
“Okay, truce?” she asked and waved the beer at me.
I took the beer from her and sipped on it silently. I loved a good hefeweizen, but a lot of people didn’t know the difference between an American wheat and a hefeweizen. Not Nolan, though. He got it right with the distinct banana and clove flavor, and I loved it.
Gemma walked down to the fire pit while I drank my beer on the porch. She had changed into jeans and a hoodie, and had pulled her bright hair into a messy bun on top of her head. The change in clothes was likely because of the chill in the night air. I watched her collecting wood and putting it into the fire pit. At one point, she walked over to the garage and got an ax out. I watched as her lithe figure started splitting logs like a mountain woman and tossing them into the pit. I never guessed she was so outdoorsy.
“Hey, maybe I should have drawn you as the lumberjack on this beer!” I called down to her.
That got me a middle finger, and I snickered to myself.
Gemma disappeared from view and then came back and lit the fire. She walked back up the steps and went inside. When she came back out, she handed me a stick and was holding a bag of marshmallows.
“It’s not the first night of vacation if I don’t have a fire,” she explained.
She didn’t wait for me to follow her. I closed my sketchbook and put it back inside. I took my beer and stick and walked down to join her. She was already roasting her marshmallow while she sipped on her gross hoppy beer in front of the fire.
I sat in the camping chair next to her, stuck a marshmallow onto my stick, and put it into the fire. She turned her stick and pulled it out, coming back with a barely toasted marshmallow. She closed her eyes as she took it off her stick and popped it into her mouth.
“I love the first fire of summer,” she said with a dreamy sigh.
“I didn’t know you were so outdoorsy,” I mused while pulling my stick out of the fire. My marshmallow was nice and crispy. If I had left it in much longer, it would have been charred and black.
“Ew! That’s burnt. It’s so gross!” she said and pretended to puke.
