Chapter 33
GROUNDBEAVER DAY
Cricket
Once Heath returns, he and I sit with Ten for a solid three hours.
Ten sleeps and snores.
Heath and I whisper stories to each other about our own most drunken moments.
He plays with my hand, pausing to kiss me every few minutes.
I tell him more about growing up under the crushing expectations set by my parents and their stories about my sisters.
He tells me more about the legal battle over Lav with his in-laws and the complexities of his marriage to Ava, how it likely wouldn’t have been great if she’d lived, but how he’s never felt safe to say that out loud before.
To acknowledge that sometimes, people aren’t suited, even if you love them and want to take care of them.
I fully get why he’s so hesitant to date, from the weight of the world that he already carries to the scars left from his in-laws trying to take his daughter to the insecurities that come with a lot of years of feeling like a relationship failure.
And I hope we can save this place so that we can keep taking our time finding if we fit.
If we suit.
Or if we’re just in a moment in time where we each need right now.
I hope that’s not the case, but if it is—well.
If it is, I’ll deal with it.
Maybe.
“My ass!” Ten suddenly howls. “I can’t feel my ass! Who stole my ass?”
Heath shifts immediately into paramedic mode. “It’s still there, bud. Just asleep. How you feeling?”
“Turn off the lights,” Ten grunts.
“Already as low as they’ll go,” Heath says. “You wanna head back to the house and get some sleep in a real bed?”
“Is fun Mabel there?”
“Is he talking about me?” I whisper to Heath.
“No idea,” he murmurs back. Louder, he says, “No one but you in your house tonight. Caro said you’re a bed hog, so she’s having a sleepover with Ginny instead.”
“Fucking girls. They have all the fun.”
“Looked like you were having plenty of fun here yourself.”
He coaxes Ten to his feet while I gather the wine glasses, and then the three of us slowly make our way across the property to the mother-in-law house.
I carry Dean’s ashes.
Sometimes I think Pip misses him more than she lets on.
Other times I think she really does enjoy torturing his remains.
She’s just as complicated as I suspect Ten is—outwardly free and unbothered, but inwardly, I think there are scars.
“I’ll watch him a while longer,” Heath murmurs to me in the kitchen of what was supposed to be my quarters when I got here last month. “You should go get some dinner. Olivia’s making her famous chicken alfredo. Fucking delicious.”
I squint at him. “I’m very picky about my pasta.”
His smile lights my entire world. “You’re picky about something?”
“Very picky about my pasta.”
“Then you should go see if she can make it to your standards.”
“Mabel’s eyeball!” I say. “I forgot about Mabel’s eyeball. I’ll go see if she still needs it.”
Pip was playing with it in the sitting room.
Using it as a die in a game of Yahtzee with Lav yesterday.
Heath pulls me in for another kiss.
“You amaze me,” he murmurs as he pulls away. “I know it was your idea to use Ten to convince Pip to sell the wine.”
How could I not love this man?
He believes in me.
He sees me.
He appreciates me.
“Was it?” I bat my lashes.
He smiles softly and traces my nose with his finger. “Was it?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Fucking genius.”
“If Pip remembers and still wants to do it when she’s sober.”
He kisses me one last time, and then I dash back to the house.
The eyeball for the costume Mabel’s working on is exactly where I expect it to be, so I snag it and dash up the stairs.
She’s not in the bedroom she’s been using as a secondary workspace, so I open the attic door and let myself up. “Mabel? I heard you were missing an eyeball. I found it—ahhhhhh!”
A giant beaver missing one eyeball turns to look at me.
Tail swinging, furry body shifting, vacant eyeball staring at me.
“Cricket. Shit. Shit. This isn’t—don’t freak out.”
A beaver.
A fucking big-ass beaver.
“The zipper’s stuck,” Mabel says from inside the beaver costume. “I didn’t want you to see—shit. This isn’t about what happened to you. It’s an order. They paid me a fuckton of money. I do this. It’s—”
A laugh bursts out of me as I grip the railing, and soon, I’m laughing so hard I have to sit down.
Mabel lumbers down the stairs in the beaver costume and sits on the step beside me after figuring out what to do with her beaver tail.
“Sorry,” she mutters again.
“This is so—fucking—perfect,” I gasp out between peals of laughter.
“Are you losing your shit, or are you losing your shit?” she asks, her voice muffled inside the costume.
“Hilarious,” I pant.
“Seriously?”
“Fuck the trolls.” I sit straighter. “Oh my god. Fuck the trolls.”
“Why does that sound like it means something it doesn’t?”
“I have to find Ginny.”
“Wait! Wait. Can you please unzip me?”
I rise and tug at the zipper until it releases, and a moment later, Mabel’s head pops out of the costume.
Her dark hair’s standing up like she rubbed a balloon all over it, and she pulls off her fogged-over glasses to give me a look. “You’re okay?”
I grin. “I’m great.”
“Sorry about leaving you with the ass.”
“Ten? He’s easy to manipulate when you know what you’re doing. We got him drunk, so he’ll sleep it off all day and you’ll be asleep before he’s up.”
She stares at me for half a second, then barks out a laugh.
I tilt my head at her. “What did he—”
“Don’t ask.”
Okay then.
Off-limits.
Got it.
“Oh! Your eyeball. Here.” I snag it off the stairs where I dropped it, then hand it to her. “I have to go talk to Ginny.”
“Try the event space. Caro wanted to map out tables inside.”
“Thank you!”
“Sorry about the beaver,” she calls after me as I race down the stairs.
“I’m glad they’re paying you a fuckton of money for it,” I call back.
Fuck the trolls.
It all makes sense now.
I know what we have to convince Pip to do.
And I think she’ll agree.
“Cricket?” Heath says, popping his head out of the mother-in-law house as I race by.
I wave at him. “Fuck the trolls,” I call.
Have to talk to Ginny.
Ten can apparently talk Pip into anything when she’s tipsy.
But Ginny—Ginny can hopefully do it when Pip’s sober.
We’re saving our home.
And we’re doing it with ourselves.
Our own story.
If Ginny agrees.
I burst into the event space building, and Ginny and Caro both turn to look at me.
“Cricket? What’s wrong?” Ginny asks.
“Ten convinced drunk Pip to sell all of the old wine but rebrand it and I think we should call the new line Fuck the Trolls wine and name all of the flavors after us and how we went viral,” I say without taking a breath.
“Does wine come in flavors? Or is it varieties?” Caro asks.
Ginny doesn’t answer.
I don’t answer.
We just stare at each other, me panting, her with her eyes going rounder and rounder and her lips parting more with each second.
“Oh my stars,” she whispers.
I pause.
Then wince.
“It’s a terrible idea, isn’t it?”
“No. Cricket, it’s fucking brilliant.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck the trolls!” Lav cries from the doorway into the kitchen.
Caro chokes on the white wine she’s sipping.
“What’s the rule?” Ginny says to Lav.
“We only experiment with our words at home, not at school or camp,” Lav recites with an eye roll. “I know, Ginny.”
“Can she be my flower girl?” Caro asks Ginny.
“She can be your flower dragon slayer,” Ginny replies. “If it’s okay with her daddy.”
They all look at me, like I’m the one who’s supposed to convince him.
As if Lav won’t say Daddy, can I be a flower dragon slayer? and Heath won’t say yes.
“Have you met the man?” I say.
“Seriously, have you met the man?” Lav parrots.
Caro claps a hand over her mouth like that’ll be enough to hide how amused she is.
Ginny smiles at Lav. “I suppose I have,” she says. “But we still have to ask.”
He’ll say yes.
It’s what he does whenever he can.
For all of us.