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Chapter 20
Danny
“Fuck, cock, pussy, yay!”
“Well, this isunexpected.”
“I can’t believe I had to get a babysitter for this.”
“Jesus, where are their pants?”
“Is my husband puking in the bushes, or is he looking for his shoes?
“He’s definitely not looking for his shoes. My husband iswearinghis shoes.”
“Where did they get a dog?”
“Bodhi!” Tess shouts from the deck of Dockside Eddy’s, where Birdie, Wren, Laura, and I are standing, after getting a phone call from Ed, the owner, saying to “come get your idiot men.” When her man doesn’t move, she asks, “Where in the hell did you get a dog?”
Bodhi sits up from the sand where he was making a sand angel, and the tiny, tan rat terrier that was sitting on his naked chest slides down onto his lap.
“He dropped down out of the sky like an angel, and I’m keeping him!” Bodhi informs her, scooping up the poor little thing who won’t stop shaking and holding him up in front of his face.
“Nope.” Dean quickly stands back up from leaning over into the bushes right at the base of the deck. “He stole it from a yard three houses down, because he said it told him to.”
“Shhh! He’s trying to tell me something again!” Bodhi scolds us, bringing the dog’s mouth up right by his ear.
“Are you done throwing up?” Laura asks Dean, resting her hands on the deck railing and leaning over it to get a better look at her husband, standing in his boxer briefs down in the sand.
“Nope.” Dean immediately leans back over and starts hurling into the shrubbery again. “I’m too old for this fucking shit,” he groans in between his heaving.
While Palmer is sitting on a cornhole board wearing nothing but his boxers and Dean’s motorcycle boots, and his legs spread around the hole in the board, Shepherd stands twenty feet away, also in just his boxers, pitching bean bags at the board like they’re baseballs and narrowly missing Palmer’s junk.
“Peanut says you’re doing great, sweetie, but he’d like to see bigger balls!” Bodhi shouts to Ryan. “You really want to be able to see those things from the sky!”
My dear, sweet, innocent Ryan, who has also stripped off his clothes out on the beach behind the bar and seafood restaurant, is happily hopping through the sand, dragging his feet while he goes, and making sand penises all along the beach a few feet away from where the tide has come in.
Thankfully, it’s after ten o’clock on a Thursday night, and Dockside Eddy’s is empty, everyone calling it an early night during the work week. Except for these five, ridiculous men.
“Man, now I know how they feel every time they’ve had to pick us up from a Sip and Bitch.” Wren lets out a huge sigh, shaking her head and running her hands over her pregnant belly.
We all let out an “Ooo!” and wince when one of Shepherd’s bean bags hits Palmer right in the crotch, and the poor man screams, grabs the family jewels, and then just tips over off the side of the cornhole board and into the sand, curling up in the fetal position and groaning in misery.
“At leastwe’venever gone streaking.” Birdie snorts as we all start making our way down the stairs, grabbing their discarded clothing and shoes as we go.
“Yes, we have,” Tess corrects her while we trudge through the sand. “Remember that one time after homecoming senior year when Wren bought that extra slutty dress, and then Shepherd never even came to the dance, because he had to go to some college baseball recruiting camp?”
“Oh yeah. We drove a golf cart into the ocean that night.” Wren laughs.
“And your homecoming dress got swept out to sea. Do you have any idea how much I paid for that extra slutty dress?” Laura complains, rubbing her hand against Dean’s back when she gets to him, while the rest of us disperse to wrangle up our own men.
Our own men. Ryan is my man…mine…right?
I mean, Ed didn’t exactly call me about Ryan. He called the other girls, who then called me, but that’s only because he didn’t have my number. Ryan is stillmine, even if we haven’t exactly talked about it or made it official.
My heart starts pounding, and I have to wipe my sweaty hands off on my skinny jeans as I make my way across the sand, not even understanding why I’m acting so girly. This is not me, worrying about what kind of label I need to put on what we’re doing with each other. As long as we’re happy, we don’t need to worry about anything else. And I knowI’mhappy. I’ve never felt this happy in my entire life.
But is Ryan really happy, or is he doing what he always does and just going along with things to makeotherpeople happy? Does he want to have a serious relationship with me, or am I just a part of this new leaf he seems to have turned over, trying new things to figure out who he really wants to be?
