I had no house, or laundry, and the bills could wait.
And honestly, if my sister wanted to let random people do body shots off her, what did it matter to me?
“Yeah, I’m cool with hanging and reading,” I told Lottie. “And I need to call my insurance company about my car.”
“After the police were done with it,” Mag cut in, “Auggie secured it. If they need access, let me know and I’ll text you the details on where it is.”
Before I could ask after that, any of it (the police, I knew, his friend Auggie had called them in and they’d done their thing at my apartment and with my car—the other bit, my car being “secured” and Mag giving me the details if my insurance company needed it, I did not know), Lottie spoke.
“We’ll just clean up,” she assured me. “We won’t throw anything away until you have a chance to go through it.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“Tex’ll listen, Duke too, and I’m just a phone call away, you get another one of those moments,” she went on.
So she hadn’t missed it.
“I’m okay,” I promised.
“Tex’ll listen, Duke too, and they’re both good at it,” she asserted. “But I’m just a phone call away.”
“Thanks, Lottie,” I muttered.
“He’s my boy and you’re my girl,” she stated, jerking her head in turn to Mag and me, and I stared at her, not sure why she was saying that. “I would not fix him up with anyone who didn’t deserve him, and the same with you. Are you understanding me, Evie?”
I nodded.
“You really need to understand me, Evie,” she said quietly, but there was a fierceness to her tone.
I thought I understood her, but that fierceness to her tone made me wonder.
Nevertheless, I nodded again.
She looked to Duke, who was sitting with us, throwing curds into his mouth like M&M’s. “I don’t think she does.”
“They don’t,” he said sagely. “Then they do. It’s a process that can’t be rushed. Don’t rush it, darlin’.”
Lottie heaved a sigh.
Before he left, Mag did the holding-my-hand-and-guiding-me-to-the-door thing that ended with the lip touch, but he added, “I’m not on anything intense. You need me, baby, you call.”
I wondered what “anything intense” was.
I didn’t ask because it wasn’t my business but also because “intense” seemed an alias for “scary as shit” and I wasn’t ready for more scary.
I just, again, nodded.
Mag took off.
Lottie and Ava took off.
I cleared away the detritus from Culver’s, then sat down with my book but didn’t open it because Smithie was looming over me.
“It’s always the quiet ones,” he said when I looked up at him.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Child,” he murmured gently, “the minute I looked at you, you broke my heart. That lost look in your eyes. Damn.”
Oh God.
I felt my chest rise and fall with the effort to stop myself from crying.
“Look around, Evie,” he said. “You’ve been found.”
I swallowed.
Actually, it was more like a gulp.
Smithie bent and kissed my cheek.
When he straightened, he told me, “I got a phone too. You need anything, darlin’, you call on me.”
As if he sensed I was about to lose it, he didn’t offer me any further kindnesses.
He left.
I concentrated on finding my insurance agent’s number, calling her, reporting the incident and learning that they’d have to come and look at my car.
I then texted Mag that I needed the deets.
Within a minute, he’d texted me the deets.
It was already at a body shop, waiting for the go-ahead to be fixed.
Not surprising with these good, kindhearted people.
I sat with the book.
Jet took a break and sat with me.
Indy took a break and sat with me.
Tex boomed at me.
Duke studied me like he was trying to figure me out (so I avoided looking at Duke).
Then Roxie showed with two men she introduced as Tod and Stevie, who both wore wedding bands and made it clear in sweet ways that they belonged to each other.
Roxie also had a number of bags, and after she made the introductions and Jet and Indy had wandered over, she said apropos of nothing, “Shut up. I won’t hear it.”
She then yanked out three pairs of faded jeans (two distressed, all three cool), five tees (and they were fab) and two cardigans (slouchy and overlarge, in great colors).
And after all of this littered the seating area I was in, she dumped two big Soma bags at my feet and stated, “Undies, bras and nightwear. And the other stuff is no big deal since we got it all at a vintage store, so it cost practically nothing.”
It was the “practically” part of that that bothered me.
Then Tod dumped a big Sephora bag at my feet and said, “Cleanser, toner, moisturizer and some cosmetics. And shut up, I won’t hear it either.”
“But I don’t even know you,” I noted.
“Girl, we got a communal slush fund for shit like this,” he returned.