“Meaning you didn’t want me to murder your aunt, so you kept everything quiet so you wouldn’t have to explain about her,” she summarized.
I nodded. “Precisely.”
“Well,” Six sighed. “That makes sense.” Then she narrowed her eyes into tiny slits. “I’ll be dealing with your aunt from now on.”
“No,” Lynn disagreed. “You won’t. Hunt is on top of it. Now come inside. You’re letting all the air out. Were you raised in a barn?”
Six rolled her eyes at her husband, who was now standing inside the wide-open front door.
“I was raised in a Catholic school for girls, just like Wyett. The doors were self-closing,” she pointed out.
Lynn snorted and caught his wife up in his arms, then gestured for me to follow them inside.
I threw the door closed and followed them, only to come to a stop when I saw that the living room was absolutely full.
“Six,” I said as I looked around the living room, stopping by my best friend who’d been put down by her husband and was now standing right next to me. “You have a house full of people, and you just aired out almost every bit of my dirty laundry for everyone to hear.”
Six looked around at the room full of people. Then she started to introduce them.
“This is Beckham, and her man Trouper. That’s their son, Hiro.” Six pointed at a very cute couple with the cutest little boy sitting in their lap. But just as quickly as I looked, my gaze darted to the next set of people. “That’s Swayze and Trick. They’re seriously named after, for real, Ghost people. But they don’t find it nearly as amusing as I do,” she continued. “This is Zach. He’s always this dark and broody.”
I was more than used to my best friend’s sense of humor. Or, honestly, lack thereof. Sometimes she said things that I was fairly sure she hadn’t meant to say. But where most people would care, she did not.
“Then there’s Bruno.” She pointed to the man that’d been her friend in high school and had ‘left her hanging’ according to Six. “We don’t talk to him still. Remember?”
For Bruno, I spared him a dangerous glare.
Six was my best friend. I would always protect her in any way I could, even if she was a bit eccentric. But Bruno had gone out of his way to ignore her when she’d needed him the most, and for that I just couldn’t excuse him.
“That’s Laric, you know him,” Six continued.
I’d met these people before, of course. It’d been for a very short amount of time, in a highly volatile situation, but still, I’d met them. She was acting like I was meeting them for the first time, though.
Then again, I’d just leave her to do what she would. She’d do what she wanted anyway, and I’d learned not to waste my breath.
“That man there is Absinthe.” She paused. “Sin for short. But I try not to call him that, because then it gets me to thinking about sinning, and I’m not all that good with the Lord at this moment being with the man I’m with. A man that does illegal things. Speaking of being with men, why is your hair wet, when were you going to tell me that you’re married to a felon, and did you just have sex? Because you’re walking really funny.”
I was wondering when she would get to that.
I felt my eyelid twitch.
“Six.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why must you embarrass me?”
“Your husband’s not a felon,” Hunt said as he started to do something on his computer. “But he’s done some things that would get him the death sentence in all fifty states.”
Six burst out laughing. “How do you know?”
“I know because I have access to everything that I want. Including all of his personal files.” Hunt paused. “But I’ve heard about him in prison. Way before y’all even met. His reputation is very… colorful.”
Lynn grunted out a laugh and then walked to the kitchen where he opened the fridge door.
“Wyett, would you like a drink?” he asked.
“I’ll have some of Six’s grape Kool-Aid,” I answered as I walked to my man and sat down next to him.
“You still haven’t told me why your hair is wet. You never leave the house with your hair wet. Is something wrong? Are you dying?” Six asked as she took the seat on Hunt’s other side.
Leaving Lynn to take the recliner after he handed me my drink.
“Thank you,” I replied softly.
Six leaned into Hunt, stole my glass, and took a large gulp before handing it back.
This being the norm for us, I took a sip before telling her what happened at Hunt’s parents’ house.
“Wow,” Beckham shook her head. “That’s one of my biggest fears. We got a pool when we were younger. About nine or ten. Dad made everyone who was under the age of five wear a life jacket. And if you couldn’t swim, you wore one, no matter what your age or if you could touch. It was really, really embarrassing when a sixteen-year-old would come over that couldn’t swim and he’d make them wear one. But my dad didn’t want anyone drowning on his watch. You just can’t be too careful.”