Page 25 of Nave
“Well, actually, yeah, about that.”
“About what?”
“I need some help. Well, actually, a friend of mine needs help. Your help.”
“My help?”
“Well, yours and Ria’s. You still have that camper you traveled in for years, right?”
“Yeah, of course. Too many memories to get rid of that. I mean, it isn’t really a camper. More of a small motorhome. Why? Do you need to borrow it?”
“I want to… rent it.”
“Rent it?”
“Alright, long story short. I knew a girl in my travels. She was being kept, well, captive by her boyfriend for years. I told her if she ever needed help to come find me.”
“And she found you.”
“She found me. But the thing is, this isn’t a normal situation.”
“When it’s one of you guys and women, when is it ever a normal situation?” There was a shuffling and the groaning of a bed as Kit, I imagined, sat up. “Alright. I’m up. What’s going on?”
I gave her a quick summary, leaving off any too personal details, but making it clear that Lolly was in danger and needed to lie low somewhere without cameras.
“And so you thought of our homestead.”
“I mean, I know you guys vlog for a living, but you can easily avoid catching Lolly on camera.”
“Oh, totally. Ariah and I are constantly trying to avoid filming each other when we are working on content. Alright, well I have to talk to Ria. But I’m sure she would be game to have a guest. The motorhome is just sitting there, not being used. And it has everything she could need: solar, a compost toilet, and it will having running water as soon as I hook it up to the water catchment system. Which won’t take long.”
“Would it be possible to talk to Ria before tomorrow? I would really like to have answers for Lolly when she gets up in the morning. She’s, understandably, stressed the fuck out.”
“Yeah. I’ll go wake her up and talk about it. Keep your phone on you in case she has any follow-up questions.”
She didn’t.
And it was the two of them on the line, going on and on about how it was an ideal situation for Lolly, and how they would be happy to have another girl around.
“Thanks, guys. Really. I really appreciate this. And I’ll bring the cash for the first six months when we come by tomorrow.”
They’d tried to wave off the cash. And, objectively, they probably didn’t need it. Their travel vlog channels had become homesteading channels. Judging by the views, they were still killing it. But if there was one thing I knew from hearing the princesses talk, it was that homesteading was expensive. Because of something called “chicken tax” and the concept of “gateway animals.” I was sure the rent money could be put to good use.
“That’s still not necessary, but I’ve known it’s useless to try to out-stubborn you since we were kids and you spent an entire weekend trying to knock or pull your loose tooth out. No matter how much I begged you to stop,” Kit said.
All the cousins were close growing up, but we obviously all had our little groups of deeper connections. For me, I’d been a little closer with the cousins who were closer to my age. Seth and Kit—my Uncle Repo and Aunt Maze’s kids—were probably who I’d been closest with, thanks to proximity.
But then I’d grown up and hit the road. And Kit had teamed up with Ariah, who was also interested in traveling and vlogging their adventures, and we’d drifted apart over the years.
A big part of my time since coming back had been devoted to rebuilding relationships with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends whom I’d mostly lost touch with over the years. Because we’d all become different people. Kit and Ria almost more than anyone else, since they’d had a complete professional and personal rebrand since returning to Navesink Bank. They’d gone from packing light and never putting down any roots to actuallyrooting deep as they built gardens and orchards, to becoming completely tied down to the whims of all their animals.
It was high time I dragged my ass up there to check things out. The only time I’d been on their homestead was when they’d conned all the male cousins into coming and assisting in cutting down a bunch of trees so the two of them could plot out the spots that would become their homes, coops, sheds, and everything else.
“So, what time can we head up? I don’t want to wake you guys up,” I said, getting a chorus of laughter. “What’s funny?”
“That you think you’d possibly be up before us,” Kit said.
“Yeah, we’re up with the rooster. Who thinks four a.m. should be sunrise, despite what the sun itself thinks.” Ria explained. “So literally anytime before seven, when we morph into eighty-year-old ladies in our housecoats and knitting.”
