The car shut off, and Jules got out. She was wearing an adorable pair of oversized jeans, a Judy Garland T-shirt, and black Chucks. “Hendrix!” She jogged over and gave me a big hug.
Jules and I hadn’t spent much time together, but her sister was a huge contributor to Lupe, and I’d agreed to match her donations. Jules had roped me in on a few other things that she was working on, and now I guessed I was a part of the Martinez family’s charitable organization? I figured I should probably look into that.
“It’s nice to see you in person rather than on a Zoom call,” I said, returning her hug.
“It’s even nicer to hear your voice recovering,” she said, hip-checking me. “Hold up. Is that color in your cheeks? Will your fans even recognize you? Where’s your eyeliner?”
I looked into the truck’s passenger-side window and pushed my hair around until I liked the direction of the spikes. Huh. She was right. My cheeks were pink. Though, to be fair, I’d just gotten a roadside blowie from my… boyfriend?
Sawyer joined us and pulled something from his jeans pocket. It was one of my travel-sized kohls.
“You’re the best,” I said, taking it from him and leaning into the side mirror to work it into my upper and lower waterlines.
He kissed my cheek, and Jules’s eyes widened. “Called it,” she said under her breath.
“Of course you did.” I pocketed the kohl. “You and I both have good taste.”
“And I have extremely questionable taste,” Sawyer said, winking at me.
My mouth fell open, ready to protest, but he cut me off by grabbing my shirt and pulling me in for a mind-erasing kiss. He only stopped when Jules let out a low whistle.
Yeah. I could get used to this.
Jules gave us a cheer, even going so far as to mimic a set of pom-poms. Sawyer’s laugh loosened up the last bit of anxiety in my chest, and the three of us helped bring in the remaining pieces of the beds. Sawyer took charge of the logistics, determining that we should split up and assemble the beds in the rooms.
I’d said it before and I’d say it again: bossy was a good look on Agnes. A damn good look.
Sawyer went back outside to grab a few more things, and Leo and the others finalized their assigned setups. Jules and I went to the den to sort out the fasteners.
I knew she had questions, but I had a few of my own, so I shouldered her as we knelt by the coffee table where we’d staged the fasteners. “Was it me, or did Ginger see you and beat a hasty retreat?”
“Yeah.” Jules rubbed her forehead. “I thought we’d gotten past this.”
“Gotten past what? I know y’all had a bit of a dustup at the old Meeting House, but I thought that had been cleared up.”
She took a deep breath and blew out raspberries. “We actually worked through that pretty quickly. The real problem is that she and I have been crushing on each other for a while now, and… I guess she thought she was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
Jules raised a brow.
“Really?” I asked, excited for my friend. Except her expression and Ginger’s quick departure told me things had not panned out. “Oh. She wasn’t.”
“No,” Jules said on a sigh, hopping up to grab a stack of red Solo cups from the pass-through between the den and the big industrial kitchen before returning to the coffee table. “She was not.”
I’d worked with Lupe’s volunteer therapists long enough to know that you didn’t try to force things with a person who’d experienced the kind of trauma Ginger had. Their guidance was to go as slow as the slowest part of a person’s recovery, which was often frustrating for the person, who thought they could move on more quickly.
“What happened?”
“We kissed,” she said, pulling her T-shirt away from her chest and fanning herself, even though the day wasn’t that warm.
“That good, huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “It was one of the best kisses of my life.”
“It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming,” I said as we separated everything into piles.
She nodded. “You know we’ve been moving slowly because we both have… considerations.” Tapping her temple, she said, “Would’ve been real smart of me to remember that.”
