Page 67 of Revelry
She was joking, but I dropped her hand and ran out in front of her, hands around my mouth so the sound would carry. “Make way, take cover! Wren Ballard is en route to the horseshoe pit! I repeat—Wren is about to throw large, heavy metal! This is not a drill!”
Zeek and Julie were the first to hear me and they played into it, acting like townspeople running through yards and spreading the word. Momma Von dropped her hands into prayer and Yvette pretended to shield Benjamin as we passed. Even Ron joined in, holding his beer can in front of his face like a shield. When I turned back to Wren, she was bent at the waist, face red, hands on her knees—laughing.
My favorite sound.
My brain was mush.
Last night had drained me—emotionally, physically—and yet I’d somehow managed to wake up and throw on a smile for the pig roast.
The morning was the hardest, but once I let go of everything I’d shed alone in my cabin the night before, I started having fun. It wasn’t hard to do, considering the company and the events. I’d laughed so much my stomach was sore like I’d done a hundred crunches. In such a short amount of time, these people had become my family.
I was going to miss them.
And even more apparent after today, I was going to miss Anderson.
If I was being honest, the consistency of my brain matter was mostly due to me beating it with a blender trying to figure out everything with Anderson. My mom had opened my eyes in a bad way, Momma Von had smoothed me out to reality, and last night I’d come to a lot of truths on my own.
I cared about Anderson—maybe more than I should. And though I knew he had come into my life at exactly the right moment, I still couldn’t deny the fact that I’d let my happiness with him distract me from trying to find the very thing I’d been searching for when I booked the cabin two months ago.
Clarity.
I needed to spend time with myself, to face what I’d been running from, and I couldn’t do that if I was spending all my time with Anderson. Still, after he’d opened up to me about how I inspired him, it was like adding a new ingredient to the bowl that I needed to blend and mull over.
I wanted it all.
I wanted to spend time finding myself and also spend time getting lost in him. It didn’t seem impossible to balance, it didn’t feel like it had to be one or the other, and yet the uneasiness I felt told me the opposite.
Still, I was too tired to even try to process it all tonight, so I’d decided to let it go for now and just enjoy myself.
We were all stuffed full, plates empty and beers refilled as we sat around Davie and Yvette’s bonfire. The night was winding down, midnight approaching now, and my exhaustion was slowly creeping into every inch of my body. My limbs were heavy—eyelids, too. Still, I couldn’t leave in the middle of old man Ron’s story.
I learned that apparently when Ron got really, really drunk off whiskey, he liked to talk. Alot.And since I’d only heard him grunt before tonight, there was no way I was moving until he stopped talking.
“After that,An Okie from Muskogeetook on a whole new meaning for me,” he slurred, finishing a long string of sentences that I wasn’t even sure made any sense at all. “And I could officially markpig shoppingoff my bucket list.” He hiccuped. “‘Course, I had to add it, first.”
A few people chuckled and Momma Von rubbed her hand along his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “Time for bed, Ron.”
He nodded, hiccuping again with a wide grin as he handed his half-full cup of beer to Yvette. He stood with shaky legs, balancing his weight on Momma Von, and she winked at all of us before tossing his arm over her shoulder and guiding him toward the road. We all called out our goodnights to them both, and I succumbed to my own yawn just as I noticed Anderson wasn’t back from refilling our cups yet.
I looked over my shoulder, spotting him still at the kegs, but he wasn’t alone. Tucker was there, manning the tap with a smug smile.
He was saying something just loud enough for the two of them to hear, and by the way Anderson was crushing both of our cups in his fists, I knew he didn’t like whatever it was that was being said.
I frowned, bracing my hands on the arms of my chair to go see what was going on, but I didn’t make it before I had company of my own.
“Looks like you survived your first pig roast,” Sarah said, taking the seat next to me that had been Anderson’s. Her eyes were low and red, and though she wore a smile, I didn’t feel at all like her friend.
“Barely,” I answered with a soft laugh.
She smiled wider, but her eyes narrowed like I’d taken her bait. She kicked back, facing the fire as she took a sip from her cup.
“Yeah, I love the pig roast. It does remind me just how incredibly single I am though,” she added. There was a lightness in her voice, like she was telling a joke, but I felt like I was being set up. “Seeing everyone all coupled up and all the kids running around.”
I didn’t have a response, and she knew it, because she turned her attention back to me with a raised brow.
“But you wouldn’t really know how that feels, I guess. You were married like, what, two months ago? And now here you are with Anderson.”
There it is.
