Chapter 40
chapter forty
Audrey
Today's vocabulary word: embolden
I glanced at the low-slung building with Woodchucker's in lights across the front—but Billy's on the door. All part of the charm, I was sure.
Emme, clad in a short, sparkly veil, belted out a laugh. "Am I allowed to ask why it's special? Or will I figure it out when we're inside?"
This was the third and final spot on the bachelorette bar hop. We'd all piled into a small party bus after the welcome celebration wrapped and hit the town. Or as much as anyone could hit this small, coastal town where almost everything was closed by ten.
"You get to throw axes the night before your wedding," Shay said.
"Say less," Emme said.
"Not that I'm expecting anything bad to happen but I know for a fact that the boys could be here in less than twenty minutes if needed," Shay said.
"It sounds like there's a story in there somewhere," Grace said.
Shay beamed as she held the door open. "Oh, there is."
"It's fun that y'all decided to wear heels tonight even though you're both eleven feet tall," Jamie said, swinging a glance between me and Ruth. "I look like an American Girl doll next to you two."
"Yeah, it's such a tragedy that you're petite and adorable," Ruth said to her.
"You're adorable too." When Ruth only rolled her eyes, Jamie added, "Shut up and look at you!
You're gorgeous. Like, when did the Hunters of Artemis pull up?
Let's talk about that hair. I know the color's natural and I take offense to that because every time I ask my stylist for it, I come out looking like the burned bottom of a muffin.
My god, those lips. Do you know how much people pay to get lips like yours?
A lot. And this figure? Girl, please. Don't know if you've heard but strong is sexy as fuck. "
Ruth waved her off. "You're just being nice."
"Jamie is not actually nice," I said. "She's kind, which is very different from nice. She doesn't bullshit and she won't say it if she doesn't mean it."
Nodding, Jamie added, "I know men who'd cry for the privilege of licking your toes."
"I—I don't think I want that," she said. "But thank you? I guess?"
"Anytime, babycakes." Jamie hooked her elbows with me and Ruth, following our group inside. "You're gorgeous too, my dancing queen."
"Thank you, sweetie." I patted her hand. "We should start making plans to buy tiny houses next to each other when we retire. Where should we go?"
"My bones need heat." She clutched her jean jacket to her chest and faked a shiver. "Bring me back to my true love, the sun."
"We could be like Janet and Rita." After we polished off the cookies, we'd talked about Jude's mom and the life she'd made for herself as she recovered. I was disappointed I wouldn't be going back there. "Accidentally high on X all the time, making mosaic art, and dating the neighbor dudes."
"It doesn't sound terrible," she said.
Ruth grabbed drinks for us—for whatever reason, bartenders always paid attention to her—and we settled around a high-top table near the axe-throwing lanes. Ruth's sisters Chloe and Amber had already started a round and appeared frighteningly good at it too.
When we glanced at Ruth in question, she said, "We grew up chopping wood. New Hampshire, you know? And they have a lot of unprocessed rage."
"Don't we all?" Jamie drawled as she fished a cherry out of her ginger ale.
As with our previous bar hops, we'd arranged our phones on the tabletop. Jamie for her dad. Ruth for work purposes. She was a corporate attorney and, according to her, never off the clock. I had the least compelling reason: waiting on a boy who wasn't waiting on me anymore.
I tapped a finger to Jamie's phone. "How's your dad doing?"
She pursed her lips around the straw. "You mean how's he dealing with not being allowed to shower unless someone's there in case he falls?
Or with the diabetes dietitian who won't let him eat a pound of peanut M&Ms before bed?
Or the part where he wants a detailed itinerary of what I'm doing and where I'm going every day along with a list of phone numbers in case he needs to reach me? "
"Doesn't he have your cell phone number?" Ruth asked.
"He finds this inadequate," she said.
"How are you doing with all this?" I asked.
"About the same but I'm sure I'll get over it. I just have too much time to obsess right now." Her shoulders lifted. "My therapist thinks I have some inner child work to do if I'm feeling this much friction about moving back home."
"Maybe I need some inner child work too because I'd sign on as legal counsel to the mafia before I moved back home," Ruth said.
"Is your therapist offering a group rate for this? Because I could use some of that too," I said.
"You're saying throuples therapy is cool but a friendly little threesome is not? Rude." Jamie rolled her eyes. "I'll ask next week."
"Check these two out," Ruth said.
Chloe and Amber finished their set and now Emme and Ines were locked in a battle of their own. No one was keeping score, and even if they did, it would be tied at zero-zero since they couldn't stop laughing long enough to put anything into their throws.
But the trash talk was pristine.
"You couldn't hit the broad side of a bus with that aim," Ines called.
"I know you like to be the best but you don't have to work so hard at missing every bull's-eye," Emme called back.
"Sounds like something you'd say to your husband after a bad game," her stepsister said.
"I just hope your husband knows how to find the target better than you do," Emme replied.
"You throw like you have five percent battery life," Ines said.
Jamie snorted into her ginger ale. "These two have the jokes tonight. Whew. Remind me to hydrate them before tucking them into bed."
My phone buzzed across the table, clattering into the other phones as Emme and Ines kept on with the insults. I reared back when I saw the notification.
Jude: can you give me a call?
Jude: sometime tonight, if possible
"What? What's wrong?" Jamie asked.
I pointed to my phone. "Jude. He texted me."
Ruth rolled her hand. "And what did this text say?"
"He wants to know if I'll call him," I said.
"The answer is yes," Ruth said.
I blinked at her. "Is it?"
Jamie hopped off her stool and pointed to the door. "Outside, children. We're not calling your fella from the middle of a bar with yet another Oasis song blasting in the background and the bride snort-giggling like a piglet over there."
"But what do I say?" I asked as they herded me to the exit.
"Let's find out what he wants before we throw ourselves into the deep end," Jamie said. "There's nothing wrong with putting a man on hold for a few minutes."
"Huh," Ruth murmured as we stepped into the damp evening air. "Never thought of that."
"I'll explain the deep magic to you later," Jamie said. "Right now, we need to get Audrey's fiancé on the phone—"
"He's not my fiancé," I said.
"—and find out when he's coming to collect his future wife."
"I really don't think that's how it's going to go," I said.
"Call him and find out," Ruth said, stomping a foot on the gravel with each word.
I sucked in a huge breath as I stared at his contact on my screen. Before I could talk myself out of it, I placed the call. He answered immediately.
"Hey, there you are," he said, those quiet, raspy words sliding around me like an old familiar blanket.
I wanted to stay there forever. Right inside that warm, gentle There you are. In the place where I knew who I was. Here I am.
"I, uh—" He paused. "How are you? Did you get back all right?"
"Yeah, everything went fine." Even to my ear, my tone was crisp. I knew he heard it because he heard everything. "How are you? How's Seattle?"
"It's been a busy week. Flat-out, all day, every day," he said, a thin apology buried somewhere in there. "Percy was pissed because I nodded off in the middle of reading a story over a video call a few nights ago."
I breathed out a laugh. "Understandable."
"I realized the other day that I never got to talk to you about his school stuff," Jude said. "I don't know if you remember but—"
"I remember." I paced away from the bar as I stared up at the night sky. Tons of stars out here without the city lights. "I think I tried to convince you I was sober. Not sure why I thought that was a good idea."
"Yeah, it was amusing," he said. "I'm trying to figure out what would be best for him. I figured you'd have some insider knowledge."
Jamie snapped her fingers, urgently gesturing for me to come back toward her and Ruth. I held up a hand, stayed where I was. "Maybe, yeah. I'm not an expert on special education but I could talk it through with you if that helps."
"I'd like that."
He was quiet for a long moment that reminded me of driving through the night from the Salt Lake airport to—wherever it was we ended up. Back when we didn't know how to talk to each other and everything we did was wrong. I didn't know how we'd wound up back in that thicket again.
Before I could offer to call him sometime next week, after the wedding and the day or two I'd need to physically and mentally recover from all its events, he said, "About your friend's wedding."
I glanced back to Jamie and Ruth. They made several frantic gestures I couldn't interpret. "What about it?"
"Are you still looking for a date?"
I staggered back a step and heard Jamie cry, "Oh my god, she's going to faint."
I waved her off, saying to Jude, "Why do you ask?"
He made a noise, something that lived on the spectrum between a growl and a groan. "Because I'm leaving on a red-eye flight to Boston in two hours, Saunders, and it would really help if I knew where to find you when I land."