Chapter 55
The party goes until the rain rolls in, when everyone runs to bring everything inside. Bless the people of this town, the party may be ending, but no one lets it ruin their mood and everyone pitches in.
Taylor Rae comes up to me before leaving, saying, “Oh, it’s so great having y’all back here for the weekend. Stay longer! Move home!”
There’s that word again. Home.
Also … stay longer. Ha. “I wish we could.”
She tilts her head at me. “Are y’all able to keep the house?”
We haven’t talked about it again. Not since the accidental mushroom night when I privately realized I could never get rid of this place. Or to let go of any of this, any of them, ever again.
“I’m not sure yet,” I answer.
“I hope you can. Well, we’ll see you tomorrow for the service. Please, let me know if I can bring anything at all, I’m throwin’ some casseroles in the oven tonight.”
My heart blooms at her words. I’m realizing now that it wasn’t just each other that we had here.
We had a lot of friends. A lot of people around to make us feel whole.
I don’t usually idealize the past—maybe, if anything, I do too much of the opposite.
But this is good. Looking around this house, full of all these people who know their way around—who can empty trash and find the towels—it feels like what it takes to constitute a real life.
“Of course, Tay.” I reach out for a hug, and then breathe in the vanilla apple spice of her hair. “Thank you for coming.”
“And am I crazy,” she whispers, “or is there something going on between your sister and my brother?”
We look over to where Harrison and Sammie are standing. Sammie is fiddling with the end of her braid, smiling at him as he talks.
“I think you might be right,” I say.
Most everyone leaves over the next half hour and the only stragglers left behind are Charlie, his brother, Boomer, and Harrison.
“Okay, next stop is Dusty’s for karaoke,” Austin announces.
I gaze at him like a love-drunk schoolgirl. He’s tan from the hours in the sun and it’s only made his eyes and the slight golden luster of his hair pop more.
He catches me ogling him and I make a caught face that makes him laugh.
“We’re going to take the golf cart,” he says. “Harrison, you’ll go with the Ruckers, and we’ll meet you there. Snag a table. Sound good?”
“I have a booster seat in the back seat of my truck if you want me to take Nora,” Charlie says. “My niece is about the same age.”
Man, people really started having kids a couple years ago, didn’t they?
“Sure,” Matt says. When they go to set up the booster seat, I give him a look, and he asks, “What?”
“You don’t worry about letting someone else drive her?”
He sighs. “If you have a kid, you’ll realize that every single second of your life is an opportunity to worry. You have to remember you’ve got your own life too. She’s in the hands of good people. It’s safer than a golf cart and it’s about a two-minute drive. She’ll be fine.”
Something about his words strikes a chord in me.
Babe used to worry all the time when we were kids.
To the point of it being sort of annoying.
Like she couldn’t trust us to do anything on our own.
When she moved here, I took the change to mean she didn’t care anymore.
Maybe she just started to remember she needed care too.
It’s a whole production getting the golf cart out of the garage.
First, it’s under about three layers of dust and loaded with boxes, including the Halloween decorations and backup pots and pans.
Then, we can’t get the rain cover to stay shut, and the zipper threatens to break about ten times.
In the end, we give up and resolve to be damp.
Then, the battery is dead. This would stop most normal people, but Austin and I are uniquely stubborn, so we insist on following through. I hunt down the jumper box to charge it and then Austin’s truck.
The tinny little radio lets out a version of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” that is such bad quality it feels like something that would play in a fallout shelter, but we’ve all got a road beer for the five-minute (in a golf cart) drive, and everyone is in high spirits.
Matt and I are trying to remember our lines from a play in tenth grade.
Sammie is chatting in a stream of consciousness about everything that happened at the party earlier, and Austin is drumming out the rhythm of the music as he drives, one arm on the bench behind Sammie, listening to her chat, chat, chat.
Dusty’s is teeming with drunk locals, sunburned and waterlogged. The floors are wet and punctuated with yellow caution cones.
We find Charlie and Boomer on the small stage, untangling long XLR cables, Nora sitting contentedly at a table nearby with a Shirley Temple, a set of crayons, and a paper place mat.
“We had to beg him to get it out of storage,” Charlie explains when he sees us. “But we did it!”
Just the sight of the brothers makes me laugh. They are the exact same size and shape as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and I’ve always adored them. They’re the kind of guys who would give you their last dollar.
“What are you smilin’ about, Red?” Austin asks, coming up beside me.
“The Ruckers. I’ve missed ’em.”
We look up at them and as we do, Boomer slips off the stage and onto the floor a few inches below. This makes Nora laugh from her spot at the table, where she swings her feet.
Looking at this happy scene, you’d never know that shit is about to seriously hit the fan.