Page 41 of The Run Home
Lydia: WHAT? WHO?
Lydia: I’m coming over.
She got over to my place in record time. I’d taken a shower, gotten dressed, and eaten the other half of that sandwich for breakfast before she arrived. I noticed I couldn’t stop smilingwhich meant I was entering dangerous territory. Having a crush on a guy and then sleeping with him was not good for my heart. I needed to keep that bish locked up tight. We hate-fucked. That’s it.
Lydia didn’t even bother to knock. She just crashed through my front door and hollered. “You better give me every fucking detail right now, you hooch hussy!”
She plopped down on the couch next to me, folded her arms, and waited impatiently. I offered her a cup of coffee but she just glared at me.
“Okay, okay. Sheesh.” And then I spilled every detail I could remember, and I was pretty sure I remembered every little thing. His words, the size of his dick, his hands on my ass, the care in which he pulled a blanket over me. I told Lydia about it all. When I was finished, her mouth was hanging open and her eyes had gone wide.
She sat up straight and put her hands out in the air, still not saying a word. Then she whirled on me. “Let me get this straight. You got hate-fucked on the washing machine within an inch of your life and then hefed you afterward?”
“Oh, yeah. He fed me alright. Hee, hee.” I waggled my eyebrows.
“And now you’re making dick jokes.” She hopped to her feet and began to pace. “You’re living every girl’s dream, Shae. Goddamn, I’m so happy for you! Jealous, of course, but so dang happy! The girls are going to freak out!”
I stood up too, smile and teasing gone. “No, we can’t tell them.”
“What? Why not? This is the best thing to happen to our group in years. We can’t hold out on them.”
I put my hands on her shoulders. “Lydia. Calm yourself. It was just a onetime thing. We both needed some kind of releasefrom the tension between us. I don’t want to tell the girls and then have this become a thing. It’s not a thing.”
“It’s so a thing!” Lydia shouted.
I blinked in the face of her excitement. “I need you to swear to keep this just between us. Okay?”
She glared at me, huffed out a long breath, and then held out her pinkie finger. I wrapped mine around it and that was that. She’d go to her grave with the details of my night.
“Now that we have that settled. Is it time to head to Rosemary’s for HAGS?”
Lydia’s frown lifted the tiniest of bits. “Yeah. Did you get a gift?”
I snorted. “Of course I did. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t show up with a gift? Although, Boon saw that jigsaw puzzle Hattie gave me last time. It was humiliating.”
Lydia was grinning now. “I bet he loved it. Oh, and we’re driving separately.”
“Why? It’s not that far out of your way to drop me off afterward.”
Lydia was now the one wagging her eyebrows up and down. “Because I have a feeling your next-door neighbor is going to be waiting for you when you get home. I don’t want to spook your booty call.”
I shook my head and grabbed my stuff, ignoring my racing heart. “You’re out of your mind.”
The HAGS meeting was subdued this week. I felt like I couldn’t share the most exciting thing that had happened to me in forever and Lydia kept glaring at me for making her keep her silence. None of the girls had gone on a date from the app we’d all joined. The mood was low and not even the gifting of vibrators could lift it. Probably because the necessity of vibrators in a group of vibrant women not getting sexed up from real men was a depressing thought. We ended the night early and all went our separate ways.
Contrary to Lydia’s hopes, Boon was not waiting for me when I arrived him. Gigi was. She sat on my front porch with a potted plant on her lap. I climbed out of my car and hollered up a hello while I jammed the vibrator box into my tote bag and hoped she couldn’t see the bright pink picture of it on the outside of the packaging.
“Hi, Gigi. Everything okay?”
She stood from the rocker and swiped at the back of her pants. “Oh, sure, sure.” She kept swiping and I tried to smile around the awkwardness of her probably having a painful splinter in her backside right now because of my stupid chairs.
I unlocked my door and invited her in. I put my bag down carefully, removed my shoes, and headed for the living room. We sat down and she put the plant on my coffee table.
“That’s for you. An apology for the goats getting into your flowers last week.” She smiled, putting me at ease instantly.
She had this way about her. She could see right through you, but she also cared for you despite all the terrible things she saw in you. She’d been like a second mother to me for so long, I was used to her ways. I’d just never had anything I was trying to hide from her before.
“Oh, you didn’t have to do that. Boon already replanted them and I don’t go in the back much anyway.”
