CHAPTER 7
“Shay, can you help me really quick?” I ask as my arms strain with the weight of the door of my Jeep.
I want to have the doors off for the parade, but this damn back passenger side doesn’t want to budge, not letting me pick it up off the hinge. She squats next to me, lifting the door from the bottom.
“Push up while I pull by the handle. If that doesn’t work, we’ll need to grease it with something.”
“I have lube,” Willow yells from within her tent.
“Why did you pack lube? Were you planning an orgy we didn’t know about?” Shay asks, as she tries to push the door up off its hinge.
We work on getting it loose while waiting for Willow to answer. She emerges from her tent in a mesh red top with just a bikini underneath, her long black hair up in a high ponytail.
“A Girl Scout should always be prepared for any and all occasions,” Annie bursts out laughing.
Her caramel-colored eyes roll into the back of her head. The sight drives me wild. I want to be the one to cause her eyes to roll back, but out of ecstasy.
Shay pushes with all her brute force as I pull up with all my muster, budging the door off its hinge.
“We won’t need your lube. Now you’ll have enough for your secret orgy,” Shay laughs at herself.
“Who wants to go into town with me?” I ask, hoping only Annie says she will.
“I’m good. I want to go for a swim before we have to get ready for the parade,” Willow says as she slides on a flip-flop while hopping on one foot, trying not to fall onto her ass.
“She can’t go swimming alone, so I’m going to stay here. Just please remember to get more marshmallows and chocolate since we ate most of it last night.” Shay says.
They ate a sickening number of s’mores last night, crushing the week’s supply down to nothing in one single night.
Annie chimes in, “I can go. This way you don’t get distracted and forget something.”
Of course, that would be her excuse. She knows damn well I’ll never forget because I make lists on my phone and use them. She just wants to be alone with me, and I don’t care what she has to say to get that to happen.
“Great, I didn’t want to go alone anyway. What about Dove? Do we wake her?”
Dove is what we call a night owl. She goes to sleep around mid-morning and wakes early in the evening, staying up all night.
It’s an awful habit she picked up when she started working at the local dog shelter.
She does the overnight shift there, and has since she started being homeschooled freshman year of high school.
“I will leave her a note and text her. But I would bet she sleeps through the parade, and won’t wake up until dinnertime. Speaking of, can you get more ice and some ground beef for our tacos?”
I type her shopping list out on my phone.
“Got it. Anything else?” I ask as I disappear into my tent to toss on a different pair of jean shorts and a crop top over my bikini top.
My fingers tangle in my long hair as I try to use them as a brush before putting my hair in a braid. I dig through my backpack for my flag bandana to use for my hair while riding with the tops off. If I don’t, my hair gets in my eyes.
“We should be all set. If we think of anything else, we’ll text one of you. Just let us know when you get to the store and leave.”
Shay is always a stickler for that kind of thing, I suspect because her dad is a local deputy back in Maple Brook Falls and he has strict rules. One of them being you text when you get wherever you’re going.
“Come on, Buttercup, we don’t want to take too long and get stuck in traffic missing the parade here.”