She stood there in the driveway of the farmhouse where they would be having their girls’ night. And she felt like that thought fell a little bit flat. It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with her.
There was something sad in her.
Something a little bit dampened.
Broken.
Something that wondered if it would ever feelaliveagain.
Yeah, the thing about grief was, it changed. It didn’t go away.
But there was a hole in your life where someone had once been, and the passage of time didn’t make it stop being there. It didn’t make that person not gone. For a while there, the grief had gotten worse.
Because it had been even longer since she’d seen Chuck. As silly as that sounded. For a few months it had been like... Maybe he was on a trip. Maybe he would come back. But at six months... She remembered very distinctly realizing she had not been away from Chuck for that long ever. Not since she had met him. It wasn’t a vacation amount of time. It was significant. And it left her feeling raw and hollow.
That had gone away. That part of it. There were all those firsts she had to get through.
And there is a first you haven’t gotten through yet.
She just didn’t want to. Not yet.
She had kind of underestimated how her sister’s being in a relationship would bring a bunch of stuff up to the surface for her, and she didn’t want it to poison this experience. She wanted her sister to have this. Wanted her sister to have a good time. Wanted it to be all about her. Wanted it to be special.
She did not want it to be about her pain. She just... She couldn’t bear her own pain. She was sick of herself.
So she focused on her immaturity, her amusement at it all. And started taking trips from the house to the car.
The ranch was beautiful, set high atop a mountain overlooking the valley below. It had a gorgeous little farmhouse, a huge barn where they held all of the events, very rustic, and different from the one on Carson land, which was a bit too slick, according to Juniper.
There was another house spaced out in a different part of the property that Juniper had mentioned the men would be staying in.
The men.
Well, they weren’t here right now. Shelby was by herself.
As if that’s remarkably different from every other day?
No. She supposed it wasn’t. But at least she wasn’t alone in her house. It was a different kind of alone. It almost felt like a vacation.
She saved the load of penises for last. And she did laugh, when she pulled the big laundry basket that contained all those party favors out, and began to cart them toward the house.
“Well, fancy meeting you here.”
She turned around, her eyes wide, and jostled the basket, one phallic straw springing out and down to the ground below.
Great.
Her basket of cocks overfloweth. In front of Kit.
“What are you doing here, Kit?”
“Same thing as you, I imagine.” And then, he seemed to realize what was in the basket she was holding. “Well, no. Not the same thing as you.”
“Did you not have a basket of dick paraphernalia for the bachelor party?”
“Suddenly I feel remiss,” he said.
She was doing her level best to cling to what little dignity she had and it was tough. It was real tough.