“No!” she cried, covering her mouth. “I thought it was what happened to pigs.”
“It is,” I agreed. “But the stick goes all the way through it, from back to front—like the sex act.”
“I should probably go and save Bob Ross,” Cody muttered, pulling my attention away from his mom. “And Diana Ross’s running around, trying to get through the doggy door.”
“Please tell me the expression doggy door isn’t dirty, too,” she hissed. “Nothing’s sacred nowadays, and that just sounds so dirty now that you’ve told me what you-know-what means.”
“I don’t doubt they’ve given it a dirty meaning, but as far as I’m aware, you’re safe.”
“Ignorance really is bliss,” she huffed.
“Shi— I mean, oh, shoot, Cher stepped in Razzle’s poop.” Cody only just caught the cuss word in time and avoided looking at his mom because of it. “Hey, Weird Al isn’t out yet. Did you check on him?”
The names confused me until I realized he was talking about their chickens. “What the hell did you name the poor animals?”
“They looked like the celebrities. I went with it so I didn’t forget their names or mix them up.”
Jesus.
“Can you go and put them back in their coop—” that was what it was called, right?"—bud? I’m gonna take your mom into mine and call Mrs. Evans. I’ll leave the door open for you in case you want to cut through the backyard to see her.”
Lifting his chin at me, he slowly walked with Bob Ross in his arms, making movements like he was dodging Bob’s other foul brethren on his way.
I had no doubt this was going to blow up in my face, my good deeds always did, and this randomness attracting magnet was going to make that worse. But never let it be said that I ran from a woman.
Well, that was until Rose arrived and made a shocked noise at whatever she saw.
That’s when I should have run.
Chapter Three
Evie
One week later…
With Cody spending the night at his friend’s house, I had the place to myself. Well, me, my best friends and business partners, Jacinda and Sayla, and Tabby had the place to ourselves.
Parenting wasn’t conducive with drinking and hangovers, but single parenting definitely wasn’t conducive with it. If you drank enough even to get a buzz, your reactions could be delayed, and if there was an accident or emergency, you were screwed.
On the other hand, if you had a hangover and had to get up to parent, you’d die.
Those were the facts of alcohol and parenting in a nutshell for me. Sure, there were exceptions, and it depended on how much you drank, but I wasn’t willing to take any risks with my son, so I didn’t do it when it was just the two of us.
Which was why they’d all turned up two hours ago, laden down with takeout and booze, knowing I had the night off.
It was also why I was in the state I currently was.
Sayla had a subscription to a monthly cocktail box, Jacinda had one to a gin box, and Tabby had brought wine with her. Because we’d started with cocktails and gin, we were keeping the wine for emergencies. Mixing it with spirits was dangerous normally for us, but with how potent the cocktails were, mixing wine with them was a death wish I wanted to avoid.
What did girls' night also consist of? Everything.
As three of us worked in our hair and beauty salon, Delicious Divas, we rarely went all out and did a beauty routine on our nights in. We had a good reason for that, too—if we weren’t doing our jobs at the salon, we were doing them on our social media channel, also called Delicious Divas. On it, we tried hair products, beauty products, makeup, did hair tutorials, and enjoyed the hell out of ourselves.
We did also do some challenges and tried random things our subscribers recommended or suggested to break up the content and add some variety, though.
The nest egg I’d had after we’d moved here and had gotten set up in our house had been plowed into the business with my two partners, and so far—touch wood—it was paying off for us.
So, on our nights off, we might sometimes do things for content while we had a drink, but we usually used it to clear our minds off work.
Tonight, Tabby had suggested we watch some episodes of Snapped, and in my drunkenness, all I could think about was my neighbor.
Not that I could tell them that. A, the girls would never let me forget I’d mentioned him. B, he was Tabby’s father-in-law. That was a whole new level of boundaries I was better not crossing.
I just hoped if I got even drunker that I didn’t blurt out something inappropriate about him. He was a hawteee.
Focusing back on the episode playing, I frowned when the narrator mentioned that the missing husband had been guilty of having multiple affairs behind his wife’s back.