Page 15 of Fire in You

“What about you?” queried Abby, her stare pointed. “When are you going to give up the pole and have some kids?”

“Give up the pole?” Katie tipped her head back and laughed. “If and when I have kids, that doesn’t mean I’ve got to give up dancing.”

I pressed my lips together to stop the giggle building in the back of my throat as I pictured a pregnant Katie working the pole. If anyone would strip while obviously pregnant, it would be Katie. She’d work it, belly and all.

The waitress finally arrived with our checks and we headed out into the bright August morning sun. As I pulled the sunglasses off my head and over my eyes, I promised Katie I would try to visit her tonight at the club.

I always promised her that.

I never went to the club she worked at.

Not because I had anything against strip clubs. I just knew, knowing my luck, I would run into a family member and that would be about seven different kinds of awkward.

My family was so large, you couldn’t throw a rock and not hit a Lima. Cousins and nephews and nieces, and—oh God—uncles were literally everywhere. It was like a higher being threw up, spraying Limas all over the city of Philadelphia. Once, I went to a gyno appointment and my uncle Julio was in the damn waiting room with his much, much younger wife.

Younger, as in Nicole was only six years older than me. Brock’s age. She was a ring-card girl. It was love at first booty shorts and bikini top sight. Nicole was super sweet. Super hot. And super pregnant. Like, every time I saw her, she was pregnant again. During Christmas I always managed to almost forget one of their kids. They had an entire litter. Julio was one of the middle brothers, younger than my father, and in his early forties, so you’d figure at some point he’d run out of active sperm.

The answer was nope.

Anyway, the gyno appointment run-in had been horrifying. Since Julio believed that I had to be a virgin, he hadn’t understood why I would be at the gynecologist. As if women didn’t have any other reasons for visiting the gynecologist outside of having sex.

I loved my uncle, but he was an idiot sometimes.

He’d promptly called my father and insisted that I must be sexually active, and when I’d gotten home that day, it was like A&E had showed up and an intervention was about to go down.

So, yeah, I knew if I went to where Katie worked, I’d probably end up sitting next to an uncle or a cousin while boobs were jiggling in my face, and that would lead to therapy.

Abby lingered by the driver’s side of my used Camry, watching Katie fly out of the parking lot in a new Mustang. “She’s nuts and she’s an acquired taste.” Abby turned to me, squinting. “But I love her.”

Smiling, I leaned back against my car as I brushed my heavy bangs to the side. I really needed to let them grow out, because I was getting so sick of them, especially in the summer. Something I’d been telling myself since I was, oh, about fourteen. But I always cut them, the same way I’d always cut them. Straight and thick, brushing my eyebrows.

Maybe I’d let them grow out this time.

Maybe.

Or maybe I’d cut my hair like Abby’s. It was dark and brushed her shoulders. Mine was the color of milk chocolate and long, all the way down past my bra strap. I never wore it down though. Not anymore. It was always up in a bun. So why keep it long, especially when it was such a pain to dry and style?

“Jillian?”

Realizing I was staring at the road, I turned my attention back to Abby. She smiled at me again. Abby was a pretty woman, but when she smiled, she was stunning, and she smiled a lot more since reconnecting with Colton. “Yes?”

She studied me closely. “You know Katie meant well, right?”

My shoulders tensed. “I know.”

“She can just be a little . . . brash at times,” she continued, stepping closer. “But it comes from a good place. She worries about you. So do I. So does Stephanie.”

I frowned as I shifted my weight from one foot to the next. “Why would any of you worry about me? I’m a hundred percent fine.”

Abby tilted her head to the side and the smile slipped a little. The look that crossed her face was full of doubt and then she exhaled slowly as she nodded. “Okay,” she said after a moment, and then hugged me, giving me a quick squeeze before kissing my cheek. “We’re still on for lunch tomorrow with Stephanie?”

Relieved she wasn’t going to push it, I hugged her back. “As long as Nick and Colton let you two out long enough.”

Abby laughed as she stepped to the side, hitching the strap of her purse up. “As if they could stop us.”

Considering that both couples—Abby and Colton, Stephanie and Nick—were experiencing an extended-honeymoon period, I really couldn’t blame them if they’d rather hole up in the house all weekend.

“See you tomorrow.” I wiggled my fingers and then pivoted around. My cell dinged as I climbed into my car, alerting me to a text.

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