“I can see the logic in that,” I agreed.
“There’s only one problem,” she said, suddenly looking grave.
“What’s that?”
“We are going to have three OG Henchmen as neighbors,” she told me. “We will be the riff-raff moving in,” she added.
“Oh, it will be good for them to have something to bitch about,” I said, shrugging.
“I kind of want to walk across their front lawns just to see if they yell at me,” she told me.
“Damn youths,” I agreed. “I think it’s a great fucking idea, baby,” I told her, leaning over to press a kiss to her cheek. “Neither of us are the tip-toe into shit kind of people. Might as well jump in with both feet.”
“My thoughts exactly,” she said.
“So, what do you think Andi is going to bring us?”
“What?”
“Apparently, she gifts everyone with their new home pet.”
“Is there any way to subtly drop a hint that I’m allergic to cats and guinea pigs?” she asked.
“I’ll let Niro know,” I assured her. “What’s the matter?” I asked when her gaze seemed far away, untouchable.
“It’s so much,” she said, exhaling hard. “I feel like when you’re a kid and you throw your arms out wide and spin until you drop. And the earth is still moving even after you stop.”
“Psh. You’re an adrenaline junkie. You love it.”
“I do,” she agreed. “And you. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I told her, wrapping an arm around her even through it hurt. “I never stopped. Not for a fucking minute.”
“I didn’t stop either. Even when I wanted more than anything to hate you, I still loved you.”
Fuck.
I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until she said it.
“I better hurry up and heal. We have a lot of happily-ever-aftering to do.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Epilogue - 1 month
“It’s really…” Vi started, looking over at Gracie. “Is there a nice way to say it’s a dump?” she asked, getting a horrified look out of Gracie who knew I could hear them.
“I know it’s rough,” I agreed, waving a hand out toward the house that I’d gotten on a song. Because of all the fixing up it needed. “But that’s kind of the point of having friends, right? To help you DIY your new house.”
“Um… I don’t know what friends you think you have, but we are not the DIYing sort. Unless it counts that I put these rips in my jeans myself. By, you know, falling on them on the asphalt while chasing a skip.”
“They’re nice rips,” Layna said, nodding at her. “The asymmetry gives them charm.”
Her face and body had healed over the past few weeks, but Layna was still crashing couches between Hope, Gracie, and Willa’s places. Trying to get her mental health back in check after the card game that went so south that she had barely been able to walk away from it.
“Unlike the asymmetry of the roof,” Violet said.
“They said the roof was new,” I grumbled.
“New in the Nixon era, maybe,” Vi said, getting an elbow to the side from Gracie.
“I can totally see the potential,” Gracie said, giving me an encouraging smile.
Gracie was the spoonful of sugar in the sour lemonade that could be our friendship group. What can I say? Vi, Layna, Hope, and I were all kind of rough-around-the-edges sorts. No filter. And since Willa was out crushing it with her career and Billie was enjoying her bliss with Rowe, it left pretty blonde-haired, big-eyed, soft-hearted Gracie all alone in trying to keep us all civil.
“You are a horrible liar,” I told her, smiling.
“No! Really! It has a certain charm to it. Don’t listen to Vi and Layna. They aren’t good at looking past what is in front of them. I can see below the, ah, tough years, and the future it has.”
“By ‘tough years,’” Vi said, “she means decay and disrepair.”
“Shush, would you?” Gracie hissed at her. “Listen, my dad said it has good bones and foundations. That’s what matters. Everything else is just cosmetic.”
Gracie’s father, Duke, wasn’t exactly in construction. But his whacked childhood in a, well, cult, meant he knew a thing or two about building stuff.
And he hadn’t been the only one of the dads who had come over to stare and making grumbling noises at the house when they’d realized I was buying it.
It was actually kind of funny to see them all walking around it, kicking at the foundations, checking the basement for water damage, deciding what trees needed to be taken down, and estimating how long it was going to take to get all the work done.
My own father made comments about running a separate septic line in the basement connected to a raised metal tub that a fire could be placed under “just in case” I needed to do any melting of enemies.
It was sweet, really, the way everyone had come together. Even people who I hadn’t been closely connected to in the past.