36. Dev
thirty-six
dev
You Look And Smell Like A Skunk’s Asshole
[Menon-Parker Wedding]
Brandy
Hey guys! Great news! U2 is confirmed to play at your wedding! Party Popper emoji. Dev, Bono was touched by your call last week and happy to know that U2 is your mom’s favorite band. They’re looking forward to celebrating with you guys and to meeting Claire as well.
I bring my phone closer to read the text from our wedding planner before tossing it back on the nightstand. Brandy won’t be getting much of a response; she hasn’t with the past three messages she’s sent.
My bloodshot eyes land on an unfinished crossword puzzle—one I planned to finish with Piper three nights ago, before she left and took my fucking soul with her.
Except now it’s unclear if the damn puzzle will ever be solved.
Or if I’ll ever get my soul back.
There’s no misery worse than this. This constant reaching for my phone every time it buzzes, hoping it’s her. This sifting through her socials, hoping to get a recent glimpse of her. This endless wondering if she’s thinking about me or if she’ll even show up to our wedding four days from now.
I need to be admitted to a mental institution or become a case study for how your phone can become your emotional support device. Maybe they can also do a study of how confessing your feelings to the woman you love can be both the best and worst decision of your life.
My confession echoes in my mind, along with her silence. I should have read the signs then. I’d scared the lights out of her. She’d stayed for the few minutes afterward—even laid in my arms and asked me about my shitty day—but then her body had caught up to her mind and she had a fucking panic attack.
All from what I’d said to her.
And even as I watched her demons surface and her breaths shorten, making it one of the scariest moments I’ve experienced, I still couldn’t get myself to take my words back.
I love her, and that is a truth I’ll never not feel.
I promised myself the day she left that I’d respect her request for time and space. That I wouldn’t drive by her salon or check in with her friends to see if she was okay.
But with every day that passes where I’ve gotten nothing but silence from her, that promise hangs precariously on a frayed line.
When she told me she needed time away, the gravity of her words didn’t quite register. I’d understood that she needed space to be able to think with a clear head. What I didn’t realize, until I saw her bag and her caged rabbits at the front door, was that she meant real space. Actual time apart.
The vision felt familiar, much like the way Camila had left, but the searing pain was different. A thousand times worse. The type of pain I don’t see myself ever getting over—at least, not without the help of a lobotomy—unless she comes back .
I run a hand through my hair, getting a whiff of myself and cringing at the smell of booze and perspiration. Yeah, so personal hygiene has taken a backseat to wallowing in misery over the past few days. I might have also had most of that fifty-year-old bottle of Glenfiddich. Add that to the list of my fucking problems.
Thankfully, I’d taken this and next week off work for the wedding, so my dad isn’t also up my ass about missing meetings. Though, after the less-than-amenable conversation we had last time, I’m not sure he’s going to be saying anything for a little while.
My doorbell rings, followed by a sharp knock, and I bring up an app on my phone to view who’s at the front door.
Hudson Fucking Case.
A part of me thought he was joking when he said he was on his way to my house, but I should have known better. The man is as irritatingly loyal as he is grumpy. And though he lives in Portland now with his wife Kavi, he’s always made time to meet up when he’s in town, either for business or to check on his ranch. I take it this visit coincides with the wedding he thinks he’s going to—mine.
Well, I have news for him . . .
Wait, actually, do I have news for him? I might have given him that news already in our group chat, hence the reason he’s shown up.
I chuckle at my internal use of hence, knowing my sister would roll her eyes, calling me an artifact or someone from mid-century Europe.
Okay, so maybe I’m not at my Sunday best today. Specifically, I might still be slightly inebriated after a night of consuming more than I usually do. It could also explain why my head feels like it’s going to explode.
Hudson rings the bell again, and I sigh with a mix of annoyance and begrudging gratitude. The man is nothing if not persistent and one of the only people, besides the Meyer brothers, who could give two shits about my wealth or name. Sure, he is plenty wealthy himself, but he’d be just as likely to show up here, ready to be annoying, if I lived in a cardboard box.
I click on a button on my phone to chat through the speaker at the front door. “Go away, Case. I’m sure there are some rowdy teens having a party you need to report or an episode of Matlock you’re missing.”
“Open the door, jackass. I’m only ringing the bell as a courtesy. I have a keycard to get in.”
Jesus. What the hell? How does he have access to my damn house?
I blow out a resigned raspberry and unlock the door from my phone for him to come in. Not ten seconds later, he’s in my room, bulky arms folded and looking at me lying on my bed like I’m the most pathetic excuse for a human.
“Jesus. You look and smell like a skunk’s asshole.”
I groan, shoving my head into my pillow. “Get out before I call security to take your overgrown sasquatch ass out of here.”
He rolls his eyes. “Get the fuck up. I have a couple slices of pizza for you out there and my helicopter waiting. You’re going to take a fucking shower, eat something, and then we’re heading to my ranch.”
“I hate pizza. And who the fuck eats that shit at nine AM?”
“Who hates pizza?” he asks, screwing up his face. “And who the fuck polishes off a fifty-year-old bottle of whiskey at nine AM?”
I’m sure I protest, tell him to fuck off a couple more times, and insist that I’d mostly polished off the bottle last night. Okay, so I might have used the last bit as mouthwash ten minutes ago. But the bastard digs his feet in like a bad case of syphilis .
Which is why, an hour later, I’m knee-deep in horseshit. No, not figuratively. Literally . Because nothing says friendship like forcing your buddy to clean out horse stalls while he’s nursing a hangover that could rival a heavy metal concert.
“Fuck,” I groan, taking a spot on a patch of wildflowers with my bottle of water. The fucker wouldn’t give me a beer like I asked him to after making me work like a dog for the past three hours.
Since the minute we landed at his ranch, he’s put me to work. From scooping out the stables—I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much horse shit!—to patching up a few fences, I’ve done enough manual labor to last me a decade. I have cuts on my hands, my back is stiff, and I’m sweating out last night’s whiskey through every pore.
The sounds of Hudson’s boots have me turning over my shoulder to see him approaching. He throws back his head to take a long swig of his beer before he settles down next to me.
We’re silent for a few moments, watching his horses graze, before I feel Hudson’s eyes on me. He isn’t the type to make friendship bracelets and polish your nails, but he cares . . . in his own irritable, grumpy asshole way.
“Alright, spit it out. What’s going on with you and Piper? I’m in no mood to drag it out of you like I had to drag your ass here.”
I sigh, thumbing the label around my bottle. “It’s not much more complicated than what I told you guys in the chat. Somewhere in the middle of pretending, I fell for her. And when I told her how I felt, she freaked out. Said she needed space to figure out her feelings. ”
“I’m assuming you also told her you wanted to make the marriage real?”
I nod. “I do. I want her to be my wife, and not just temporarily. I love her.”
“And you haven’t tried to contact her since she left?”
I shrug. “I sent her a text a couple of days ago, telling her I love her and that I’d be here for as long as she needs, but no, I’m giving her the space she asked for.”
Hudson nods, peering off into the distance, seeming to mull over my words.
“I met Piper a few years ago when she and her best friends had just started the salon,” he says after a few moments. “She cut my hair, and since I’m a sucker for routine, I never went to anyone else. Not saying I didn’t think about it though, because fuck, the woman can talk. After every haircut, I felt like I’d just gone through a stage-rendition of her entire life story, complete with a couple of musical numbers and a cast of forgettable men named after sausages.”
I snort out a laugh even as something pierces my chest. What if she doesn’t give me another chance to hear her endless babbling?
“But I’ll tell you what,” he says after taking another sip of his beer. “In the times we’ve texted,” he side-eyes me, knowing I’ll act like a possessive asshole at the mention of him talking to her, “she’s never once forgotten your name.”
I grunt, plucking a flower from the grass and throwing it. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No, I just mean you were different. You meant something to her from day one.”
Hudson rolls his bottle around in his fingers. “But in the time that I’ve known her, I also found out she’s had a complicated history with her dad. The way he treated her mom and both his kids, the way he walked out on them, and the marks he left on Piper’s impressionable self-worth? It became the lens she used in the future to view love and marriage. Add to the fact that both her best friends have gone through messy divorces . . .”
He shakes his head. “Now, I’m not saying she doesn’t have feelings for you or that she doesn’t believe you love her. What I’m saying is, she doesn’t believe she can hold on to that love. Hell, she probably doesn’t even believe she deserves it! It’s why she’s always chosen these half-brained deli meats who’ve wanted nothing but a few nights in her bed. It’s why she’s always had her rules?—”
“She told you about her rules?”
He rolls his eyes. “Anyone who’s sat in her salon chair a few times knows about her rules. The girl’s an open-book.” He eyes me for a moment. “But I might be one of the only ones besides her closest friends to know that she broke those rules for you.”
I take a wobbly breath, looking back out at the horses.
“And I thought that was interesting,” he says cryptically.
I puff out a breath. “Okay, so what you’re saying is she has feelings for me and knows I have feelings for her, but she doesn’t know if they’re enough for us to last?”
“Precisely.”
I reel back, annoyed. “Well, this has been fucking enlightening. Thanks for the tarot card reading, asshole. I’d like my money back.”
“Before you have a full-blown billionaire hissy fit,” Hudson says, unruffled. “Let me ask you something. What’s really eating at you?”
What kind of question is that? Has this guy not heard anything I’ve said?
Hudson must see the frustrated look on my face because he clarifies. “What I mean is, at the heart of it, is it the worry that she’ll be a no-show at the wedding? Is it the promise you made your mom to fulfill her wish? Or is it something else? ”
I ponder his questions for a long moment. “Look, it would suck to be left at the altar and to see my dying mom’s heart break,” I respond, chest tightening at the thought. “But . . . that’s not really what I’m afraid of anymore. What’s killing me is the thought of losing her. Of not spending the rest of my life with a woman I’m crazy about. I love her more than anyone in the world, and the idea of not being able to show her that every day. . . it’s fucking crushing me.”
Hudson nods. “Then, my friend, I think there’s only one thing for you to do.” He tips his bottle back, draining the last of his beer. “You wait.”
My brows pinch. “That’s your sage advice? To wait?”
“I’m not saying you twiddle your thumbs while you do it,” he clarifies. “I’m saying, give her the space she needs, but show her that your love won’t vanish like she expects. For as long as it takes.”
“And what if she never comes around to it?”
“Then you know you did everything.” He turns to me. “But given that you’ve been the only one to scale her high walls and break her rules, I have a feeling she knows she’s fighting a losing battle. The question is, will she find the courage to surrender?”