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“Oh. Hi,” I said, blinking rapidly.
“Hi,” he said, then his eyes lowered and he pushed past me. He was wearing a raincoat and I turned, following him with my eyes as he pulled the hood up over his head and jogged right into the pouring rain towards his truck.
Hi. That was it. One syllable. That was all I got from him these days.
Ruth was standing and running down the stairs, stopping just short of heading into the rain. “Where are you going? We’re going to the bar tonight, I told you at breakfast. Out at Landlubbers, by the lake. You have to come!”
“Sorry, gotta make a run to town,” was all he shouted back, barely heard through the rain.
“Meet us there then!” Ruth shouted, almost simultaneously as his truck door slammed shut.
I felt my shoulders slump. “That was weird, wasn’t it? It was weird.”
Ruth nodded. “Totally fucking weird.”
I smacked her on the arm. “You’re supposed to disagree with me.”
She shrugged.
I rolled my eyes at her, just as another car pulled in the driveway. Good timing, because Reece hadn’t pulled out yet, and I don’t know how he and Olivia’s sporty little Honda would have passed one another on the one-lane road into the ranch.
Ruth clapped. “Yes! Now the pre-party can begin!”
“I forgot about going out tonight,” I said, looking down at my mud-spattered clothing.
“Go shower and change. Olivia’s here to do our hair and makeup.”
I looked out at the rain, falling harder than ever. “Won’t it be hard to get to town in a storm like this?” Part of me was looking for an excuse to get out of it. More than part of me. I was so tired lately. I wanted to go upstairs with a glass of wine, take a pill, then sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep with no dreams.
Ruth just waved a hand. “It’ll probably have stopped by the time you’re done with your shower. Besides, I haven’t been out dancing in ages and we’ve all been cooped up in the place for way too long.”
I nodded, knowing once Ruth got something in her head there was little chance of changing her mind. And she was right, we had been cooped up here. Maybe that was why I’d been feeling so… off lately.
It was just a little harder to get out of bed in the morning. All the fire and steam that had brought me this far, gotten me out of Jeff’s house finally, pushed me through the mad dash across the country, and seen me through the first month here… well, I was running out of steam.
Leaving was supposed to fix everything. It was supposed to be the end of all the bad stuff.
I was supposed to be able to start over as a new person.
I went upstairs and blasted hot water for several long moments, feeling the hot needles punching through the numb cold of my toes, my shoulders, my nose.
How did people do it? How did they keep putting one foot in front of another, day after day, year after year, for an entire lifetime? I slumped against the shower wall. Some days it felt impossible.
The water had started to run lukewarm by the time I finally washed and rinsed my hair and stepped out. That was selfish of me, in case any of the guys needed to shower. But I’d just sort of blanked out in the enveloping heat. That happened sometimes lately. I’d just kind of drift out…
I shook it off and got dressed, then ran back downstairs. Ruth was right about the storm. It wasn’t raining anymore. It was so strange, completely different from California. There when it rained, it rained all day, for weeks at a time sometimes. And there was rarely, if ever, thunder or lightning.
Here it seemed like the storms were determined to live up to the state motto, Don’t Mess with Texas. They had to be bigger and better. Louder, flashier. Storms came in with dramatic thunder, even more dramatic lightning.
They could roll in, dump gallons of rain that sometimes caused flash flooding, then be done thirty minutes later. It was completely nuts.
Ruth and Olivia had replaced the noise of thunder with loud music in the kitchen and the TV in the living room blaring some reality TV show. It was no less jarring after the silence and solitude of the shower.
Right as I stepped into the kitchen, the cacophony got even louder as Olivia hit the blender on what looked like a margarita mix.
“I thought we were going out,” I said, gesturing at the blender.
“These are the pre-bar drinks. I like to have a buzz before I get there.”
