“It’s not about the violence,” I insisted. “Just something about her,” I said, shrugging.
“Sometimes our souls recognize each other,” she said. “And it tends to be really off-putting for you guys when it happens.”
“Us guys,” I repeated. “In general?”
“No, of course not! You know better than to assume I’m being sexist. I’m saying you guys as in the bikers in this club,” she clarified. “I think all that ra-ra-macho stuff kind of screws with your innate ability to see and feel a legitimate connection. Why do you think it tends to take life-or-death scenarios for all these guys to realize they love someone?”
Well, she kind of did have a point there.
“I bet she is a lovely girl,” Billie insisted.
“She’s like if Hope seeped in some bitter and rage tea for a few years, got squeezed out, then took a shot of whiskey.”
“That was… very on-brand for you,” Billie decided, letting out a little laugh. “References to food to describe someone. Well, she sounds very interesting. And I hope I get to meet her someday. Now hand me my bag. I am starting to leak,” she said, reaching up to gently squeeze her tit.
So, yeah, everyone went ahead and kept decorating, pretending we didn’t see her whip out her tit, strap some torture device on it, and let it milk her while she shot off texts to Rowe who was at home with the kids.
“We’ve all seen her boobs before,” Gracie said, rolling her eyes at Hope who wouldn’t look in that direction. “On like a thousand instances.”
“Listen, I have titty PTSD from seeing those things all inflamed and shit from the baby, okay?” Hope said, her whole body shivering hard. “Oh, God, you’ve got the ga-ga eyes again.”
“Oh, sue me, I want to have babies someday,” Gracie said, rolling her eyes. “That’s normal.”
“What’s normal?” Willa asked, walking up in her fancy-ass all-white business suit. She’d discarded the blazer, leaving her in the slacks and a white vest, but no less dressed down somehow.
“Wanting babies,” Gracie said.
“Willa is like me, married to work,” Hope insisted. “She’s not thinking about babies.”
But there was something on Willa’s face that said the exact opposite was true.
I liked being around the girls.
The guys, yeah, we all had a bond too, but the shit that the girls had was something else, something deeper.
Maybe it was because they grew up together, were part of this girls club in this male-centric world they grew up in.
“So, do we have an exact time for when Kit and Ria are getting here?” Willa asked, subtly checking the watch on her wrist.
“Don’t tell me you’re working tomorrow morning,” Gracie said, exhaling hard. “Come on, Willa. You work too hard.”
“I just have a conference call with some international markets.”
“A conference call, or multiple conference calls?” Gracie pressed.
“It wasn’t like I had anything going on tomorrow morning anyway,” Willa insisted.
“We’re supposed to get stupid drunk tonight, then stumble our asses to Fallon and Malc’s diner in the morning for pancakes, hash browns, and eggs to cure our hangovers,” Layna insisted. “We owe Vi at least that. This is the first birthday she hasn’t been off chasing a skip in ages.”
“I am going to be here tonight, I promise. And if everyone rolls out of bed before I need to leave, which is at ten a.m., then I will happily go to breakfast too. Don’t make this a whole thing. Please,” Willa said as she dusted some stray glitter off of the table.
I’d be finding that shit in my beard for months, I knew it.
“Alright,” Gracie said, dropping it, but not because she wanted to. Gracie just liked to keep the peace. “Did anyone hear back from Luna? Is she coming over after she closes the library?”
“I mean, she said she was going to,” Layna said. “But you know how she can kind of forget if she has one of her books waiting for her at home.”
“So where has Kit and R…” I started.
“Ria,” Gracie supplied. “Ariah, technically.”
“Right. Ria. Where have they been that it’s such a big deal that they’re back?”
“Well, originally, they both went backpacking through Europe,” Gracie said.
“And then they gave Asia a try,” Hope piped in.
“South America,” Layna added.
“Africa,” Gracie kept going.
“Basically, if you can think of it, they’ve been there,” Hope said, cutting to the chase.
“But for the past eight or so months, they’ve been in the States, just not anywhere near here,” Gracie explained.
“What have they been doing?” I asked.
To that, all the girls shared a smirk. “They’re, you know, vloggers,” Gracie supplied when no one else would.
“Vloggers?”
“Travel vloggers,” she clarified.
“I mean, they’re kind of famous for being hot girls in pretty places,” Layna said. “So I don’t know what they’re going to put up for content now that they’re going to be here for a few months.”
“They pre-film,” Gracie explained, always the one with her finger on the pulse of everything going on with her loved ones. Even ones she hadn’t seen face-to-face in ages. “Like they showed videos of Canada this week. They haven’t been in Canada since the end of last year.”