“Hello?” He waited for a few seconds. “Hey, Ryder. How are you?” My heart started pounding, knowing that Lucah was getting to talk to him. Rory reached out and held my hand. Lucah was quiet for a while, but he was smiling.
“Okay, I’ll tell her. Right now? Fine.”
He took the phone away from his ear.
“Ryder wants you to know that he loves you and he saw another deer.”
I smiled. “Tell him I love his letters,” I said.
“She says that she loves your letters,” he told Ryder.
He listened some more, and then said things like “Yeah . . . okay . . . uh-huh . . . good.” All conversational things.
Rory grabbed my arm.
“Maybe we should give him some privacy,” she said and we went into her bedroom.
“God, I miss that redhead so much,” I said, sitting down on her bed.
“I bet. I can’t imagine being away from Lucah for that long. Marisol did it with Fin, but it nearly killed her.” I didn’t know a lot of the details of Marisol’s long-distance relationship with Fin. There were definitely a lot of things about Fin she didn’t tell me about, but that was her prerogative. As long as she was happy, that was what mattered.
“It’s only a month. Actually, it’s only twenty-two days now. Not that I’m counting or anything.”
“As long as you don’t give me an update of how many hours, minutes, and seconds are left until he gets home, we’re good.” I could actually do the math on that, if I wanted to.
“Speaking of him coming home, is he going to be here with you guys?”
Rory nodded. “Yeah, at least for a little while. There’s an aftercare program that he can go to that will help him find housing if he needs it, but I’m hoping this job at the art gallery will open some doors for him. He shouldn’t end up in another shitty apartment in a bad part of the city.”
Definitely not. He needed to get as far away from that as possible.
“Anyway, I was thinking we could do another girls’ night on Friday if you wanted to. I’m afraid we’re going to lose touch with Chloe and Marisol. We still haven’t managed to get our girls’ weekend together up at the cabin.” We’d been trying for months to find time when none of us had something going on, and it hadn’t happened yet.
“I am not going to Maine in the winter,” I said. Rory’s parents had a cabin up in Maine on a lake and we’d been planning to go this summer, but it hadn’t worked out.
“Why not? It isn’t that different from being here.”
It was different. I couldn’t say why, but it was.
“You are such a city girl,” she said, shaking her head. “You get twitchy anytime you even get near the bridge.”
That wasn’t true. I went out of the city plenty of times. I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head, but I definitely had.
“Whatever. I just don’t want to freeze my ass off in Maine with you, Chlo, and Mari. That is not my idea of a good time.” That was a recipe for friendship disaster right there.
“Fine. We’ll think of something else.”
“Why can’t we go on a cruise or something?” I asked. I couldn’t count how many times I’d made this suggestion, but it always got shot down.
“I don’t know,” Rory said. “I’ll think about it. The benefit of the cabin is that it’s free.”
I was about to argue with her about going on a cruise when Lucah opened the door. He was smiling, which was a good sign.
“He wanted me to tell you also that he loves you.” I liked hearing it again.
“Thanks, Lucah. That means a lot.”
He smiled.