Chapter 14 Honey #2
“Mm-hmm,” she hummed.
“It isn’t that,” I negated quickly. “I think you probably got from yesterday that he’s not a man who won’t go after what he wants.”
“Oh, I got that. Maybe the best pickup line I’ve ever heard is, ‘You followin’ me or am I followin’ you?’”
There was precisely one man of my acquaintance who could pull off that level of cocky.
And it was Hutch.
“Okay, first,” she began, “non-negotiable, Brett and I are going to be keeping company with you up there too. If those people are watching you, I think you should have a lot of folks driving in and out of your place. I’ve heard of that outfit.
The rumors aren’t positive, especially since we know those men don’t make those pies, and we’ve never seen any women.
But you want to live and expect others to let you live, you return the favor.
Them writing you that note is concerning.
So Brett, and me, and once he hears of this, probably some of Brett’s friends are going to find occasion to drop by. ”
Her voice lowered when she went on.
“I know you like your alone time, Mabel. I know you’ve got a fierce independent streak. We’ll have a mind to that. But you have to let us do this. When Brett finds out, this plan is the only thing that’s going to keep him from going direct to those folks and sharing a piece of his mind.”
I was afraid of that.
“I do like alone time, Abigail, but I also like people. So if it makes you feel better, and Brett, I’ll make us dinner this week and maybe, I don’t know, have a party or something.”
“I know this, Liam was all about that sang-you-wary this morning. It was the only thing he could talk about. So maybe you can talk to your dog trainer about setting up that tour on Saturday, then we can all head to yours.”
“That sounds good. I’ll talk to Hutch.”
“Now, about Hutch.”
Moxie jumped up on my stomach, stilled like the landscape was going to change and she needed to be prepared for it, then positioned herself horizontally on my chest and belly, and the minute I started stroking her, she closed her eyes and started purring.
All this happened while I said, “Again, not a thing.”
“Honey, you called him ‘honey.’”
I did?
Oh shit!
I did.
“I have a confession to make. I know Hutch,” she admitted.
My hand stilled on Moxie’s soft fur.
Her eyes opened.
I resumed stroking.
Her eyes closed.
“You do?” I asked.
“Right, not know him. I’ve heard of him. And I’ve heard of him because I know Bree Waddell. She’s been in the store a few times. She likes Gemma’s candles and Ida’s oatmeal mask.”
“Bree Waddell?”
“A woman in town who suffers from a pathological case of Pretty Girl Syndrome.”
Uh-oh.
“They dated,” Abigail told me. “I’m not in Bree’s friend posse, because she doesn’t have one due to Bree being Bree, but when that whole thing blew up, everyone in town was talking about it.”
I tensed and asked, “Blew up?”
“Restraining order.”
My voice was pitched high. “Against Hutch?”
“No, sister. Bree.”
Oh God.
Oh no.
Crap.
“I think they dated awhile,” Abigail said.
“I also think Bree never heard the word ‘no’ in her life. Men bending over backward, kissing her ass. Women wanting to occupy her orbit in hopes of castoffs, but instead finding she wasn’t recruiting mean girls, she just was a mean girl.
I never liked her. She’s beautiful, I’ll give her that.
And she knows it. After the whole thing went down with Hutch, though, people started calling her Caroline. ”
“Caroline?”
“You heard Outkast’s song ‘Roses’?”
Holy hell.
I laughed but said, “Yikes.”
“Yeah. She keeps her head low now. And there’s a reason why.
Hutch rocked her world by seeing through her, getting shot of her, and she didn’t like it.
She also didn’t want to lose him, and she thought she could teach him a lesson.
Gossip gets exaggerated, but I heard one story where she texted him one hundred times in a single day. ”
I’d had a taste of this, nowhere near as bad, so I was feeling nauseous, listening to the fact Hutch had endured it.
But Abigail wasn’t done.
“She’d pitch up at his place just to yell at him.
He’d be sharing a drink at The Hole or The Halfway with Doc Riggs or Jaeger Rhett, and she’d turn up and give him shit.
This went on for months, with things escalating, until she somehow got wind he was at the feedstore.
And this isn’t exaggerated. There were witnesses.
She laid into him. Followed him around the store, shouting at him.
All that ‘Who do you think you are?’ and ‘You think you’ll do better than me?
You’ll never do better than me,’ nonsense. ”
Gross.
Abigail continued, “Word is, he didn’t even glance at her.
Just bought his dog food, put it in his truck and got in.
The problem was, he’d backed into a spot, behind which was the store, and she stood in front of his grille, shouting at him through the windshield.
This went on a long time. He couldn’t leave.
Eventually, the cops were called, by Hutch or someone else, I don’t know.
They took her away. What I do know is, after that, Hutch slapped a restraining order on her. ”
“Did it stop?”
“Word got round, some of that word got back around to her, it penetrated her Pretty Girl forcefield, that and the fact she could suddenly no longer snap her fingers and bring a man to heel. So yeah. It stopped. That was a couple of years ago, though, and small-town folks have long memories. I can’t know, but I don’t think she’s even had a date in all that time.
I’m thinking that’s why she keeps her head low. ”
“That would be why,” I muttered, upset for Hutch that he had to go through that.
And not insignificantly, maybe understanding why he was Mr. Grouch. Why he was a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am, get-your-orgasm-and-go kind of guy.
Maybe even why he extended his peace offering yesterday.
In the time in between, I’d proved I wasn’t a psycho.
This didn’t anger me.
It wasn’t only women who men tore through, making them cautious, distrustful, which in turn made any new folks, romantic or not, but especially romantic, have to stand the test of time and prove themselves.
Men experienced that too.
And it sounded like Hutch sustained a wallop of it.
I hated that, and the strength with which I hated it stunned even me.
But I did.
I wanted to find this Bree bitch and punch her in the throat.
I told myself this was because he won Emma her teddy bear and made Liam’s year by offering him a private tour of the sanctuary.
And I knew it was that.
I also knew it wasn’t only that.
“He’s into you,” Abigail said into my reverie.
My heart clenched. “I really don’t think he is.”
“Mabel, my guy is a husband. A dad. But he’s also a man. Emphasis on man. I have men friends. Brett knows what we have, who he is to me, and that I’m in it, at his side until we’re arthritic and drooling and drive our RV off a cliff to die side by side Thelma and Louise style.”
I started laughing.
She had amusement in her tone too as she carried on, “Brett doesn’t know that plan.”
“Spring it on him at the minute,” I suggested.
“I will,” she replied. “But back to what I was saying. I have men friends. A lot of them. And even if I might get caught up in a moment like the moment at the basketball net and gave a guy a hug, if he was my friend, he wouldn’t catch me and drag me up his body, or Brett would rip his head off.
But he just wouldn’t do that because that’s not what guy friends do. ”
My stomach whooshed, and I whispered, “There’s a lot more about me you need to know.”
“I guessed that,” she whispered back. “A guy?”
A guy.
And other stuff.
“A guy,” I said.
“Well, I’m a mom now, and with motherhood comes wisdom, says me.
So listen to me when I say, just be in it.
Don’t overthink it. Don’t draw a line in the sand you’ll regret you put there because you wished you’d crossed it.
Don’t follow your head, or your heart. Follow your intuition.
You’re a smart cookie, Mabel. If he’s moving you to the friend zone, then good.
He seems like a super cool guy, and everyone needs friends.
If it’s more, don’t close your mind to it. You with me?”
Boy, the wisdom that hit her at Liam’s conception was killer.
“I’m with you, Abigail.”
“And just have fun,” she went on. “I want to hear the story, but my guess is, it’s a doozy. So after we navigate the shit times, it’s all about the good times. Let yourself have some good times, Mabel.”
“I am. I will. And can I take this moment to reiterate how danged lucky I am you applied for that job?”
“I know. I rock nearly as much as Nickelback.”
Moxie shot me a glare at disturbing her when I burst out laughing.
“I think you rock more than Nickelback, babe,” I replied.
“Talk to Hutch. Let us know about this weekend. I hope he’s into it, because I think Brett thought he was the shit too.”
“I’ll talk to him and let you know.”
We gabbed for a while, then we let each other go.
Moxie’s purrs had stopped, which meant she was asleep, and this meant I couldn’t move.
I didn’t mind.
Tonks had curled in her dog bed, a soft rain had started to fall, life was good.
And I’d called Hutch “honey” yesterday, and he hadn’t said anything rude or done anything to reestablish boundaries.
Just be in it, Abigail had advised.
“Just be in it,” I whispered.
And on a rainy, chilly day on a mountain, with my babies hanging with me, I just laid there…
In it.