Jolene
“Did someone order breakfast in bed?” Dak’s voice interrupted my thoughs.
I sat up in bed. “That was fast, chef.”
Laughing, he held up two boxes of Poptarts. “Brown sugar or strawberry?”
“Strawberry!”
Wrinkling his nose with judgement, he tossed me the box. “Over brown sugar? That’s some questionable decision making.”
“I’m a simple girl with simple tastes.”
He snorted.
Bitch, I am!
“Were they down there?” I asked quietly.
“They were asleep. He was in the recliner, she was on the couch.”
I’m surprised they didn’t use the body heat method.
He spoke up, “Don’t let them get to you. Mr. Driggers said yesterday that the Department of Transportation salted the roads early to prepare for this weather and that they had snow plows ready to go.”
“Okay?”
He smiled. “That means when they wake up, they’re gone.”
Thank goodness.
“I’m surprised you didn’t wake them up when you were down there.”
“I thought about it, but I didn’t want to start off your snow day with a bunch of hollerin’.”
“I appreciate the consideration. I can’t believe they actually came here.”
He seemed surprised that I felt that way.
“I knew they would.”
“I guess I just expected them to go home together after they were caught,” I admitted.
He stopped chewing. “What? Why?”
Why wouldn’t they?
“They were caught,” I pointed out. “They could go home and be together.”
He shook his head. “They don’t want to be together.”
Eying him curiously, I asked, “how do you know that?”
“If they did, they wouldn’t be here right now trying to talk to us. They never wanted to be together,” he explained. “They wanted to sneak around, to chase the thrill.”
“There had to be some part of them that wanted to be together, knowing how much they were risking by doing it.”
“It may seem like that, but I don’t think so. In fact, I know they didn’t want to actually be together.”
“How?” I demanded.
“If they loved each other,” he began, “I mean, really loved each other, we wouldn’t have found out like this.”
Now I’m even more confused.
I stared at him waiting for him to explain.
“When you’re in love with someone, you don’t want to hide it.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
When you’re truly in love with someone, you don’t want to hide it…
“If they had wanted to be together, he wouldn’t have proposed to you, she wouldn’t have accepted when I proposed to her, and we wouldn’t be doing this right now. They would have sat us down and told us how they felt.”
“But would they, knowing that it would hurt us to hear it?” I pondered more to myself than to him.
“So, the alternative to that would be to do it like this? Knowing damn well that hurting us worse would be the outcome? That doesn’t make sense, Loo,” he chided gently.
My temper flared. “None of this makes fuckin’ sense! We have been planning this wedding for over a year! Y’all’s wedding is in, like, four months! So, tell me, what is the goddamn point!?”
He grabbed my arm firmly, hauling me into his lap. “You’re not going to be able to understand the actions of a shitty person because you’re not a shitty person. You can’t relate to how they think.”
I relaxed against him. “It’s all just so much,” I acknowledged tearfully.
“I know but Jack Daniels and I will get you through it.”
“That’s only while we are here, though,” I pointed out. I felt him tense from beneath me.
“What does that mean?”
I shifted in his lap. “We have to go home at some point. Hell, you’re supposed to be at work right now.”
He cocked his head to the side, thinking over what I had said. “I talked to the chief yesterday and explained what was going on. He already knew, of course, having been at the wedding, but he understands that I just need a few days.”
Fabulous. The next year of my life will be spent collecting looks of sympathy from everyone in Creek’s Edge.
“Okay.”
“We are wastin’ a good opportunity by sittin’ and talkin’ about this.”
Are we?
Before I could ask what he meant, he pressed his lips to my neck, and I stopped worrying about talking all together.