Chapter 26
Devyn
S pill it! How’s the sex?” Lemon bounces up and down in the booth, adding a fourth sugar to her coffee. That finally explains where her energy comes from.
“Shhh! My brother owns this little gem, did you forget?” I search the Sugar Stable for any signs of Dustin, but thankfully, I find none.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jeremy waves me off, “big scary brother, we got it. Now, give us the details. What’s better? Isaac eyes or Isaac thighs?”
“Oh, my God, Jeremy, you can’t say stuff like that in public!” Shana turns bright red. I giggle, noting how nothing seems to have changed with her pretentions since childhood. Still, even she looks at me expectantly.
I hate to disappoint the peanut gallery and all, but there is no story to tell yet. I mean, there’s been a whole lot happening, that’s for sure, but it’s been exactly what I asked for… slow and steady.
The thing is, I didn’t realize slow and steady with Nearly-Shirtless Nick, the Internet famous cowboy, would be such a damn tease. Between watching him teach kids how to bottle feed baby goats and filming videos where he quite literally humps a tractor, my vajayjay has some demands.
“We haven’t had sex,” I tell the group, which consists of Shana, Jeremy, and Lemon. My friends , I guess. That brings a smile to my face, having actual friends again.
I squeeze Shana’s hand and turn to face her. “Thanks again for being so understanding about the other night, Shay. You didn’t deserve what I said. I wasn’t right, and—”
“Stop apologizing,” she says, pursing her lips and scolding me about it for the thirtieth-something time since I got here.
I can’t help it. I feel horrible . I will apologize to her for years, probably. If the time I was rude to the Home Goods manager two years ago still haunts me in my sleep, this will for sure. To be fair, everyone knows BOGO strictly implies free, unless otherwise specified, so it was absolutely false advertisement. Still, I may have been less of a Devyn and more of a Karen that day. And I can never un-Karen that moment in my brain. Par for the course with an overthinker.
“I’m thrilled you two are on good terms again and all,” Lemon interjects, “but can we perhaps circle back to the main itinerary?” She blinks at us, waiting for me to say something more, but there’s nothing more to say. She rolls her eyes. “What do you mean, you haven’t had sex?”
Jeremy snorts, shooting me a look that needs no words.
“I mean we haven’t had sex. We were broken up for a decade. It’s not like I can just spread myself wide open for him after only a few days just because I’m…horny,” I say, exasperated. But I’m not sure if it’s at them or at myself, because I’m right there with them, wondering how the hell we haven’t ripped each other’s clothes off and broken a few bedposts by now.
“It’s my fault,” I whine. “Believe it or not, I asked for this. I told him I wanted to take it slow, and ever the gentleman he always was, he’s been listening to me.” I frown. “Being respectful .”
“Mmm, hate that for you,” Jeremy says.
It shouldn’t feel like a problem, but it does. I let out a much-needed sigh, giving in to my friends and letting it all come tumbling out. “He hasn’t even grabbed my ass all week. It’s like the very day I told him I needed to slow down, he just…he listened!”
Everyone laughs, even me. Because it’s absolutely ridiculous.
“What am I supposed to do, y’all? On the one hand, I want to take it slow and build back what we had. Take our time. He has a kid, for goodness’ sake.” I narrow my gaze, looking each of my friends in the eyes. “A kid who I’m still mad at all of you for not telling me about.”
“Hey,” Shana says, “I tried on the phone and at the bar. You didn’t even let me get my drink order in before you stormed outta there like a madwoman.” She looks around the table and lets out a heavy sigh, leveling her stare at me. “And none of us wanted to tell you about her before that because…we didn’t imagine you’d ever come back, Devyn. Not me, your brother…honest truth. There wasn’t any point bringing you back to those crippling memories. You were in such a better place…or so we assumed.”
“Point made.” I sigh, stirring my water so the ice clinks against the glass. “On the other hand, I have spent the last six days waking up to him making coffee…shirtless, and like, I’m not trying to buy into the thirst traps or anything, but I’m jealous as hell of those stupid haybales. I wish he’d throw me against a barn wall for once, ya know?”
“You have it bad.” Jeremy pats my hand across the table.
“But the good news,” Lemon interjects, “is that you both want it. So just take it.”
“It’s not that easy. I don’t feel right sleeping in the same room as him, not with Ellie living there. It’s not fair to her. I’m just some new fling in her eyes. She doesn’t know about our past,” I tell them, leaving out the part that really drives me crazy. That I’m not sure how long Hunter and I will last. That I don’t want to be another woman coming in and out of Ellie’s life. I know what that’s like, as a child of divorce. I won’t be that to her. “So, what am I supposed to do? Sneak into his room like we’re teenagers at the lake? Besides, things are good right now. We’ve been catching up and addressing things we really needed to address between the two of us. What if sex messes it all up and we go backward?”
Nobody seems to have an answer for that.
I didn’t think so either.
“I’d just do it,” Lemon says, leaving Shana to roll her eyes.
“Of course, you would. You’re impulsive to a fault. You’re the reason they’re married to begin with,” Shana says.
Lemon gives her a strange look that I file away for later, because as much as I want to trust her, and I think I do, I still have a hard time trusting anyone. Let alone someone who turned the pageant community against me after I lost my baby. As if losing her wasn’t enough, people I cared for suddenly didn’t care for me, all because I wasn’t what they thought. I wasn’t a perfect, pretty, good girl. I was a fake.
Good girls don’t get pregnant in high school.
Not in Pine Forest.
Lemon clears her throat, breaking me out of my head.
“All I’m saying is it’s only going to get worse. He’s going to get more attractive, more naked, and more thirst trappy, so bang it out and go from there. It’s not like you can’t take things slow emotionally and still avoid driving yourself crazy with need in the process.”
“She’s got a point,” Jeremy agrees. “Don’t hold yourself back just because you’re worried about being a ho. Everyone knows the Ex to Ho Ratio states the longer you’ve been apart from someone, the sluttier you’re allowed to be. You have chemistry, history, probably even algebra. We don’t know. That’s the point. Only you know. So, ho it up, girl. Get your slut on if you want to.”
“Maybe you have a point. But it doesn’t help my other problem. I don’t have a way to raise money for Classy Country’s charity without a pageant. And even though they don’t care about the competition anymore, I still feel like there should be a pageant. Like old times.”
“Would it be hard to start your own?” Shana asks, ever the voice of reason.
I shake my head. There’s so much to do to get a pageant program up and running. Not only that, but there aren’t any participants.
“We’d need actual kids for that.” In a small town like this, where everyone works blue collar jobs, half the girls who’d want to join wouldn’t even have after school transportation. “Clara had a carpool system that made it manageable for parents.”
Lemon thinks, tapping her long, painted fingernail to her chin. “I got it!” she exclaims, tossing her hair back over one shoulder, eyes gleaming. “What if we hold practices at the farm? We could use Hunter’s recreational bus. It already takes a load of kids to his property after school for his Farm to Friendship program, and there’s a pavilion he uses for town events that’s usually vacant unless it’s bingo night. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind us throwing some girls in there for a few weeks.”
“Farm to Friendship?” I ask, my forehead creasing as I look around the table at Jeremy and Shana. But they don’t seem surprised. “Is that the name of his little rodeo group?”
“Little group?” Jeremy sputters. “Dev, his program is not little by any means. It’s the top non-profit youth farming program in the region.”
“What?” I ask, rearing my head back and leaning against the booth. “He has busses and everything?” I look at Shana for confirmation from my oldest and most loyal friend. She offers me a small smile.
“Remember when you asked me about the renovations to the town and the bar?”
I nod.
“Well, that was Hunter.” She blinks. “Hunter Isaac practically is the town. He’s everyone’s hype man and a gracious benefactor of the small business in town. He grew up, Dev.”
I swallow the hard knot in my throat, blinking at my friends, speechless. How is it possible that one person can change so much?
But my heart swells with pride, too, because I’m not sure how much of that is change and how much of it was always there inside the boy I’ve always loved. The kind one who read me stories before I could make out the words, the brave one who defended me at parties, the genuine one who held my hand and spoke of a day where our kids would never want for more.
He never left.
I did.
But I don’t run from my problems anymore. This new Devyn doesn’t do that. She faces them.
“Let’s do it,” I tell the others. “Let’s start us a rodeo pageant!”