Possibly—and this realization was very new, and not something I was ready to say out loud yet—possibly for forever.
Danny - 2 weeks
They came in the middle of the afternoon.
Like a storm cloud seemingly out of nowhere.
One moment, I was sitting casually on the couch in the Henchmen clubhouse looking over paint swatches for the fiftieth time.
The next, they swarmed in.
A cloud of chatter and varying personalities.
The next generation of the famous "girls club."
The daughters of the original members.
The D.O.G.C., if you will.
The guys had been feeding me stories about the "cousins" almost since I arrived at the club. It was as if some of them sensed my fear surrounding them. As a woman raised primarily by and around men, the idea of a whole cluster of women who might be interested in meeting me and possibly befriending me, yeah, I was terrified. I didn't think I would know how to act, what to say, how not to be a snarky bitch half the time.
See, the guys got it. They rolled with it. And if I overstepped, they called me on it.
My friendships with them were blunt and forward and easy to navigate because I was used to that.
The only experience I had with groups of female friends had been in my very toxic high school where some of the cliques of girls were catty and backstabby and never talked about anything I was interested in.
I knew it was a very small lens to view female friendships through, but it was all I had.
So when the door to the clubhouse opened, and in the crowd walked, I will admit, my stomach dropped.
For a moment, they all talked at once, and I was too stunned to say anything even when they asked me direct questions.
That was until a woman in combat boots and a bomber jacket, long black hair with slightly red highlights, and a soft, feminine face, sat down next to me on the couch, exhaling a deep breath.
"It's a lot," she said. "We're a lot," she went on. "Hell, I was raised with all of them, and I feel overwhelmed sometimes."
"God, Hope, you make us sound like some kind of street gang that is trying to initiate her or something," a pretty, athletic blonde declared.
"That's Gracie. And she's the sweet, bubbly sort," Hope told me. "I'm sensing you are not the sweet, bubbly sort."
"I, ah, no. I'm kind of a bitch actually."
"Well, that's perfect," another gorgeous woman declared. That one had deep purple-red hair and what could only be described as a hippie dress on—oversized and very colorful. Judging by her earrings which looked like melting candles, but if you looked closely enough were actually dicks with semen running down the sides, it had to be the infamous Billie. "Hope is a bitch too," she said, giving her cousin a big smile as she dropped down on the arm next to her.
"I really don't think you should be calling your friend a bitch," another woman said. She had a shyer demeanor. Appearance-wise, she seemed mixed-race with curly black hair that, if you looked really close, almost seemed to have little strands of blonde in it. I knew from the book peeking out of her purse that she was the daughter of one of the OG members—Cyrus—and his librarian wife, Reese. Funnily enough, crazy-ass Billie's mom was also a librarian.
"Why not? She is," Billie said, shrugging.
"Would you like it if we called you a free-love, crunchy, hippie with very loose boundaries?" Luna, the book nerd, shot back, a brow arching.
"Well, seeing as I am all those things, sure," Billie invited, a woman very comfortable in her own skin.
There was another woman that came with them who, judging by her very corporate dress, was not a daughter of the club at all. Willa, if I remembered the convoluted family history right, was the daughter of a woman named Ellie and a man named Paine. And Paine was Luna's dad, and Reese's brother.
She was just opening the door to speak when it burst open again.
And in two more women walked.
"Sorry we're late. This pain in the ass thought she saw a stray puppy in the woods," the first woman declared. "It was a fucking raccoon. And now I probably need rabies shots," she added, pulling up the sleeve of her leather jacket to reveal a couple angry-looking red marks.
The other woman with her was one I'd seen before since she hung around the club with her man, Niro. Andi. Who, by all accounts, was a huge animal lover like her mother.
"We had to check," Andi insisted.
"Says the woman who isn't possibly going to start foaming at the mouth in a few days," the other woman, who I was having a hard time placing, announced.
"Don't be silly," Andi said, rolling her eyes. "Human rabies presents itself with headaches, fever, vomiting, and hallucinations."