Page 82 of The Run Home
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Shae
“You knowthere’s a ring box on your front door, right?” Lydia said as she breezed by me to the kitchen, pastries in hand.
I spun too fast, getting a little lightheaded. The woman had a sixth sense that scared me sometimes. She whirled around and caught me steadying myself on the wall.
“When did you eat last?”
I shrugged, not really concerned with eating when my heart was breaking into a million little pieces. It was even worse when you knew it was probably your own bullshit that was breaking your heart. Pointing the finger at Boon was so much easier than dealing with my own baggage, yet my friends had made me confront a lot of things last night that made me wonder what the hell I was doing.
“Don’t know.”
Lydia harrumphed like an old lady, grabbed my elbow, and escorted me to the massage chair I’d been avoiding out of spite. “Sit. Eat.” She thrust the bag of pastries at me, taking out my favorite chocolate croissant and shoving it in my mouth.
I chewed while grabbing the pastry out of her hands. She was liable to choke me if she kept this up. She put her hands on her hips and glared at me.
“Think of the baby, not the jackweasel.”
I swallowed, already feeling better with a bit of food in my stomach, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “So, you agree with me, then?”
Lydia snorted. “No, not at all, but Boon’s a man. Of course he’s a jackweasel.” She lifted her nose in the air. “Just not in this specific case.”
I slumped back in the chair and took another huge bite. I’d spent most of the night lying wide awake in bed, wrestling with my decision. In the light of dawn, I was still wrestling. Might as well drown myself in pastries. Lydia plopped onto the couch, shaking her head at me.
“Why are you so damn stubborn, bestie?” she mused.
I swallowed the last bit of pastry and even licked my fingers before answering her. If she was annoying me, I was going to annoy her. Based on the twitching eyebrow, it was working. Finally, fingers perfectly clean, I addressed the elephant in the room.
“I think I fucked up.”
Lydia’s eyes went wide at the f-bomb. Then she positively cackled. “It’s about damn time!” She could barely get the words out she was laughing so hard. I grabbed the bag of leftover pastries off the armrest and chucked it at her head. I hated to waste a bag of decadent sugar, but someone needed to shut her up.
She didn’t even care that she just got sideswiped by a donut bag. She just took a donut out of the bag and munched on it, all the while smiling at me like she was highly amused by my misery.
“I’m glad to see you’ve come to your senses.”
“I’m glad to see you’ve given up all form of manners and now talk with your mouth full,” I snapped.
Like an absolute child, she opened her mouth wide, showing me her half-masticated food. I grimaced and looked away. She kept laughing and stood up.
“Let’s go,” she said around the food.
“Go where?”
She threw her donut hand out wide, powdered sugar falling in an arch on my floors. “To get your man, dummy!”
I tried to get out of the chair, but apparently the baby belly was baby-bellying quite a bit these days. I looked up at Lydia with panic in my eyes. She held out a hand covered in white powder but I took it, needing the help up. She opened her mouth to make a snarky comment, but a sound from the front door had us both looking over. A creamy-white envelope slid under the door.
We looked at each other, my face probably displaying my confusion. Hers just held a smug, knowing smile.
“What’s that?” I tipped my head toward the door.
“Why don’t you go look? And then we need to get you in the shower.”
I waddled over to the door and bent down with a groan, snatching up the envelope. My hands shook, thinking this was from Boon. I mean, the man left an engagement ring with duct tape on my front door. An envelope was actually tame.
Except when I opened it, it was a handwritten invitation to my baby shower. This afternoon!
