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“I think I have the same straws at home.”
“I don’t think you do,” she said.
He walked past her and into the hall, where some of the laundry baskets filled with favors were stacked. “Shall we carry these out to the truck?”
“I really should’ve left them. Instead of unloading them in the house.”
“No big deal.”
He grabbed them, in one stack, and stuck them in the bed of the pickup truck. Then they got inside the truck, and she felt a little bit less confident than she had before. In her decision-making.
Because suddenly being in such a tight space with him made her feel... Warm. And made her feel very tingly between her legs.
This was dangerous. He was dangerous.
She swallowed hard.
“Let’s go.”
She was trying to untangle her own motivations. What if she wanted to test herself and see if she was pure? Or did she want to fail the test?
None of it sat comfortably with her.
She felt scratchy.
Very, very scratchy.
She wasn’t used to having to figure out her motivations. She was just used to existing. Get up, help her parents with chores around the ranch, work on her beading for a few hours, watch TV. Eat sometimes in between those things. Visit with Juniper maybe. Her life was simple. This wasn’t simple. And she didn’t know what to do with this more complicated calculation of behavior.
It was a short drive to the barn, and when they got there, they pushed the doors open and found it set for the ceremony. There were chairs, and in the back part of the barn there were tables for dinner.
“Wow. I really didn’t think Juniper would ever get married. She was more of a love-them-and-leave-them kind of girl.”
“Chance wasn’t any different.”
“I guess it makes sense that they’d end up together, then. Similar mindsets. And neither of them prepared for it.”
He chuckled. “I suppose so.”
She and Kit were different. Shelby was a lifer. That was the problem. She had wanted to be committed to one person forever. It was her ideal. It was what sounded like life.
She didn’t want to go to bars and hook up. Didn’t want to get to know anyone. The idea of having to fall in love all over again was... It actually just sounded exhausting. She had married a man who had known her since she was a child. He understood her. Melding their lives together had been easy. And now she was firmly set in her ways, and... The very idea of trying to figure out how to shape her life around somebody new made her want to lie down.
So maybe she wasn’t a lifer anymore. She didn’t want to date particularly, for all the afore considered reasons, but... She didn’t really want love again either. She couldn’t even imagine it.
“I’m glad they found each other. Either way. Expected or not,” she said. “It’s a... It’s a good thing for them.”
“Yeah,” Kit agreed.
She cleared her throat and started to get all the little tulle-wrapped bubble bottles out of the laundry baskets. With their glorious ribbon curls trailing from them.
“There’s supposed to be one for each seat at the table,” she said. “Because everybody is supposed to blow bubbles when they walk through to go cut the cake.”
“That seems very fluffy for Juniper.”
“Yes. But apparently the wedding has made her fluffy. At least, she’s fluffy in regard to the decorations. I don’t think she would appreciate being called fluffy in general.”
“No, of course not.”
