Layla

Both women shuddered and cringed.

“Yeah, except the girls holding her in the air looked up and saw her naked twat, screamed, and forgot to catch her after she made this jumping jack type move. She fell, but on her way down, gravity took over, and she flashed everyone.

“Mark was standing roughly seven feet away from it when it happened. Instead of thinking it was hot or reacting in a way that could be deemed positive—like, at all—he gagged and moved away, shaking his head.”

“Were y’all together by that point?” Evie asked, just as Jacinda said, “Did she break her vagina? Her ass? Did any of the guys think it was hot?”

Looking at Evie, I mumbled, “Kind of. We’d made out a couple of times and texted as often as we could.”

Then, addressing Jacinda, I snickered, “I don’t think she broke them, but she walked awkwardly with a limp for a few weeks. I don’t doubt some of them thought it was hot, but I don’t think she was up for much action while she recovered, so it likely didn’t do what she thought it would.”

Evie’s face softened. “He’s gone up in my estimation. Mark liked you so much that he walked away and gave zero reaction to a vagina whooshing through the air right in front of him.”

Jacinda shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt that he reacted like that, to be honest. As Evie said, he had a naked girl wonderland right there—” she held her hand up in front of her face—“but he didn’t react. I’m also kind of stuck on the fact she got her karma. The poor cheerleaders under her must have had some sort of post vaginal trauma thing going on.” She shuddered. “Do I know Bryony?”

I had no clue. I hadn’t kept up with what everyone was up to. With how Piersville had changed in the relatively short amount of time I’d been away and the number of new inhabitants and property owners, it was hard to know who still lived here and where.

“The name isn’t familiar,” Evie shrugged. “That story makes me wonder what Mark’s been up to since you left—female wise. A guy who would wait for one girl to be ready during the biggest peer pressure sex-wise time of his life, who’d ignore the head cheerleader wafting her fandango right in front of him, and one who’s looked as happy as Mark has since you moved back? I don’t think he’d fuck that up for all of the vagina in the world.”

I expected Jacinda to disagree, but instead, she nodded her head rapidly. “Agreed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go out on a date or heard of him being with anyone.”

She put her finger on her chin as she thought about something. “Nope, not even once. I could always ask Canon or Reid. Canon’s friends with him, and Reid works with him. If anyone knows the juicy details, it’d be one of them.”

“I could also ask Alex,” Evie offered. “That place is like gossip central. They’re worse than a ladies’ tea group when it comes to spreading secrets and information. Well, unless it’s about work,” she muttered, her eyes moving to the side. “Trying to get him to tell me work-related secrets is like trying to get Bob Ross to stop being an asshole.”

I blinked. “Didn’t Bob Ross die?”

Jacinda looked at me like I was nuts. “Um, don’t you think we’d all be celebrating if he had?”

That was harsh. The guy had been one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid, and I’d have killed to be able to paint like he had.

“I was sure I’d heard he had years ago.”

“No, if that cock had a happy little accident, I’d be planning the town’s biggest party,” Jacinda said firmly. “Three days ago, I had to go and drop off some paperwork for Evie. You left to go and take Cody to his doctor’s appointment,” she reminded Evie, who was looking a bit perturbed by the conversation.

“Anyway, I went around the back like she said to do, and that little mother clucker had gotten out of that big cage thing again.”

The pieces all fell into place about which Bob Ross we were talking about.

“So, I’m at the back door and sliding the file through the gap when I feel this pain in my ankle and then in my foot. I thought a snake had bitten me, so I jumped up and screamed.

“That bastard with his funky feathered head opened his wings and charged at me, and the damned bouffant got even bigger. I had to run for my life around the side of the house—almost trapping him in the gate to the backyard—and get into my car before he could get me again. Look!”

She held her foot out for us to see, and sure enough, there were two nasty looking cuts.

“Just to make my day worse, when I got home, that fucking cat of Canon’s started doing his Jackie Chan shit, and now my foot looks like morse code.” She lifted her pants leg for us to see, and sure as hell, she had scratches and puncture marks all down it.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with that chicken,” Evie sighed. “I’ve tried love, I’ve tried tough love, I’ve tried yelling… He’s just evil, and that’s just wrong when he’s named after Bob Ross.”

“I don’t know much about the man apart from his art,” I admitted. “He always seemed nice on television, but they always do, right?”

“Right,” Jacinda agreed. “Maybe we should look up Bob Ross and see if you’ve given that little shit a name that jinxed him?”

Evie waved her hand through the air. “Y’all can do that, but I can’t rename him now. He’s grown up being called Bob or Bob Ross, it’ll just confuse him. Anyway, we need to think about Layla’s situation.”

I’d really prefer we didn’t.

“True. So, where does this leave you? Do you want to know if he’s dated? How would it make you feel if you found out he’d made up for lost time and had screwed his way through the town?” Jacinda asked. “If it were me, I’m not sure I’d want to know.”