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Eventually I force myself off the boulder and hike back down the short trail to the parking lot just as the first cars filled with morning sightseers are pulling in. I go home, make coffee, and eat a breakfast of soy-sauce-free Chinese leftovers, cold and straight from the container.
By the time my phone rings with a FaceTime notification from Maren and Shelby, I’m wrung out and ready for bed. It’s all of 11:30A.M.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Oh shit, you saw already?” Maren says. She’s clearly in her office, from the amount of planed timber and the “Poisonous Plants of Northern Michigan” graphic over her shoulder.
“Hold on!” There’s the generic racket of construction happening over Shelby’s speakers, and I watch her gingerlystep out onto the green porch of some project or another, slamming the door shut behind her.
“What did I see already?” I ask dully.
“Oh shit, shedidn’tsee.” Shelby’s eyes grow wide.
Maren’s normally sunny face slips into an apologetic wince. “Drake’s post on Instagram this morning about you two going on tour together. You’renotgoing on tour together, right? You would have told us. I mean… not that there would be anything wrong with that.” She immediately changes course and I cut her off.
“No, I’m not. At least I haven’t decided yet but probably not.”
“Just probably?” Shelby asks, squinting in the sun and jabbing on a pair of what look to be Cameron’s sunglasses.
I release a breath and settle in against the back of my couch. “Almost definitely. It’s just…” and all of a sudden, I can feel the tears sizzling in the back of my throat. Fucking a. I wave a hand in front of my face, trying to stave them off.
“Lorelai!” Maren gasps, alarmed, as if she’s never seen me cry. Which, to be fair, she hasn’t. Aside from the snot fest last night, I haven’t full-out cried since my parents told me they were getting a divorce when I was a kid. Not even Drake dumping me after “Ohio”-gate made me this emotional, but these last few weeks have got me weeping like Shelby.
Which, ugh. Probably means something extra shitty.
“What happened?”
I take a deep breath. “Huck went down on me and it was perfect and then he got all weird and sent me home with leftovers.” The last part is half whine, half sob, and all embarrassing.
There’s a long, awkward silence before Shelby asks, “Did you say you hooked up with Craig?”
I nod.
Maren. “Isleftoversa euphemism?”
I shake my head.
Maren’s expression is baffled. I hear you, sister. “But why are you crying? Was it bad?”
“It w-was…”—I hiccup—“so hot. I’ve never come so hard in my liiiiiiiife,” I sob.
Through swollen eyes, I see Maren and Shelby exchange looks before Maren guesses, “So… you’re crying because it was good?”
I take another cleansing breath, trying to pull myself together. Then take two more for good measure. Yoga breaths. I fucking hate yoga, but the breathing thing is objectively useful. “I’m crying because afterwards he got all weird about it and sent me home with the rest of dinner. Alone.”
My best friends look pained, which is answer enough.
“I don’t know what went wrong,” I say. “We talked about our feelings…”
“You did? You told him how you feel?”
I think back. “Well, I sent him a sext… or a sexy song, anyway, like you said, and then I confronted him about the poetry account and we started making out and he just dropped to his knees right there in the kitchen.”
Shelby whistles low. “I mean. We all knew he had it in him, butdamn,girl.”
Maren fans her face. “I’m not trying to visualize, but I’m notnottrying, either. Sorry,” she confesses wickedly. “It’s been a while.”
I wave her off. “Fair.” I exhale with a huff. “So that’s that. I don’t know what happened and I need to talk to Huck,clearly. What’s this about a tour with Drake? I told him no when he showed up, uninvited, again, yesterday morning.”
