Nothing Feels Better (Better Love 3)

A few hours later,I’ve come down off my beer pong victory high and am sitting in a lawn chair in the smallish back yard with Kelley, Ivy, and Zay. I mean X-avier. With an X.

What the hell?

He doesn’t even look like an X-avier. Why did I think his name was Zack? Zay isn’t a typical nickname for Zack. Isaiah, maybe. X-avier. With an X. What the actual hell?

Riggs and B disappeared a while ago, and I doubt we’ll see them for the rest of the night. It’s chilly out here, but the fire pit in the middle of our lawn chair circle emits just enough heat to make it comfortable.

My weekends have changed drastically since my friends got all loved up. V used to be my wing woman. We’d troll bars and help each other land company for the night, but we haven’t done that in months.

I went from wild hookups every weekend to fifth-wheeling at movie nights and Pictionary parties. Weird how that shit happens. I feel like maybe I should be upset about it. Maybe I should miss the partying and the sex and the carelessness of it all. Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. I can’t really tell.

When Zay gets up to head inside, I glance across the fire toward Kell and V. Their eyes are closed, and she’s perched on his lap with a blanket draped over their legs. He’s running his fingers through her hair, and they’re probably nice and toasty and comfortable and content. In more ways than one.

I fight off a pang of something like jealousy. Not because I’ve got feelings for either of them—nothing but the strongest platonic love—but because of that thing that they have.

That B and Riggs have too.

That I don’t have. Didn’t. That I was so fucking wrong about.

My gentle foot shaking switches to quick leg bouncing, but I resist the urge to slip my hand into my coat pocket and grab on to the object inside. If Ivy or Kelley knew I was still carrying it, well... That’s a conversation I’d rather avoid.

I love Ivy, I do, but I don’t feel like being on the receiving end of one of her interrogations. Again. I’m still recovering from last summer’s shit storm. I wince at the onslaught of memories, at the replay reel of fuck-ups that tries to invade my head. Since going to the gym isn’t an option right now, and neither is losing myself in a knitting project, I attempt a mental redirect.

Instead of a small, outdated kitchen or a metal desk or potted ferns, I picture a knitting pattern. The stuffed elephant I’m making for my mom. She’s obsessed with elephants. I only have three of the four legs done right now, so I picture the steps for finishing the fourth. I move my fingers, like I’m casting yarn on a knitting needle, and I can almost feel the soft navy-blue cotton worsted on my fingertips. I’m about 20 imaginary stiches in when something stabs me in the arm, and my whole body jerks with alarm.

“Ahhh,” I shout, and swing my head in the direction of the fucker who jabbed me. I’m expecting Dylan or another of the drunk goons from inside, but instead, I see a tiny human dressed as a pirate.

The kid’s just a smidge over three feet, so he’s probably around four years old. He’s wearing a black plastic vest and Spider-Man underwear. On his head is a plastic pirate hat, on his feet are a pair of Spider-Man rain boots, and in his hand is a fucking sword.

It’s made of cardboard, but it’s still a fucking sword.

And the kid is scowling at me. What the hell did I do? He’s the one who stabbed me. With a fucking cardboard sword.

“Ahoy there, Dread Pirate Roberts,” I say in my best pirate voice, but the kid doesn’t say anything. I don’t even know if he’s blinked yet, but his eyes are kind of big. Even with the way they’re narrowed in my direction, his eyes are easily the biggest thing on his tiny kid face.

“How fair the seas?” I try again. “Cap’n Blackbeard says he saw some merpeople off the coast...somewhere...”

He blinks!

“Seriously, though, kid, aren’t you cold?”

Nothing.

“Where’s your, like, parents? Or grandparents? The people in charge of you, where are they?”

He still doesn’t speak, so I stand and start to shrug out of my coat.

“Here, kid, take my jacket and we’ll find your, uh, crew? First mate?” I move to drape my coat over his shoulders when a woman comes rushing up behind him.

“Jude,” the woman yells, her voice equal parts angry and relieved. Then she drops down on her knees in front of the kid and throws a blanket over him. “Jesus, Jude, you’re gonna freeze your toes off.” She stands then picks him up. “What did I tell you about leaving the house?”

“Not. Jude,” the kid growls out, and I watch as the woman closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, the creases between her eyebrows prominent in the glow of the fire.

“Captain Meatball,” she says tightly, and I have to hold back my laugh. “What did I tell you about leaving the house?”

“Don’t do it without you or Doonie.”

“Correct. So why are you out here? It’s eleven at night and forty degrees. You’re supposed to be in bed.”

Captain Meatball shrugs and points to the fire pit behind me. “I wanted ‘mores.”

The woman looks up to see what he’s pointing at, but her eyes run straight into mine, because I’m staring. Hard. Her eyebrows shoot up, as if she didn’t even realize I was standing here until just now. I give her my most reassuring bedside-manner smile, the one I use on patients when I’m volunteering at the hospital. She visibly relaxes, and my smile grows.

The orange flames from the fire pit create just enough light that I can make out her features. I can’t tell what color her eyes are, but they’re big, just like the kid’s. Her face is shaped like a heart, and her upper lip looks like it’s got a perfect Cupid’s bow. Her nose is tiny and slightly upturned. When she blinks, her eyelashes add to the shadows on her cheeks, and her dark hair is thrown up on top of her head in one of those crazy bun-things that Bailey and Ivy like. I quickly let my eyes scan the rest of her. She’s wearing a huge purple hoodie, grey sweats, and flip flops. Basically, she’s dressed like most of the students on campus during finals week.

“Sorry,” I say smoothly, “Meatball didn’t ask for s’mores. I could have found him some.”

“No,” she stutters, then squeezes her eyes shut and gives her head a little shake. “It’s fine. I’m sorry if he bothered you.”

“I didn’t!”

“He didn’t.” The kid and I protest at the same time.

“Still,” she says, “he shouldn’t be out here.”