Annette: I made him some muffins this morning to thank him for…everything. And he came to the shop tonight. I didn't go looking for him.
Brooke: Bullshit.
Annette: What?
Brooke: Pardon me, ma'am, but your crockery is full of bullshit. Those muffins were like a trail of breadcrumbs. You basically hiked up your skirt and said "come and get me."
Annette: Even if I did, he said he wants to be friends.
Brooke: Question. Did he say this with a straight face and/or a soft dick?
Brooke: Don't answer that yet. More important question: why did you get drunk at The Galley without notifying me first?
Annette: It's late. We'll talk about it another time.
Brooke: Now you have to tell me. I won't be able to sleep until you do.
Annette: Owen came by the shop yesterday.
Annette: With his boyfriend.
Brooke: Ah. I see. I'm going to extrapolate for a moment.
Brooke: Owen comes into your shop with his boyfriend and you go on a bender therefore you must've been hanging on to your Owen+Annette4Ever dreams despite compelling evidence that he doesn't prefer XX chromosomes. With that bubble burst, you got naked and handsy with the sheriff, and unloaded some part of this ridiculousness on him. Given that knowledge, he won't touch you with his ten-inch pole because first, he's a decent guy who knows better and second, he's afraid of catching your crazy.
Annette: Is there a question?
Brooke: Were you seriously holding out for Owen Bartlett?
Annette: I thought it was within the realm of possibility, yeah. Realms can be big places.
Brooke: And you failed to mention that to me at any point since I've been back in town? Perhaps because you knew I'd whip that insanity right out of you?
Annette: It never came up.
Brooke: Serenity now.
Brooke: You're not asking for my advice but I'm giving it anyway. Buckle up, buttercup.
Brooke: Go on with your bad self. Stop shaming yourself over naked shenanigans with the sheriff. I'm violently jealous over those shenanigans and I expect detailed reports on his dick. Stop trying to follow a plan. Plans are fucking useless because life will always jack that shit up. I speak from experience. Stop trying to force guys to fit your plans. Men are square pegs, and while they're all about the round hole, they're never going to stop being square. Either embrace the square or find a new one.
Annette: You want me to fuck Jackson?
Brooke: One of my favorite things about you is that you do your thing and you don't apologize. You're nice about your thing but you still do it like a badass. So, I hate that you're losing your mind over this right now. I want you to do what you want and not worry about it being wrong. And someone should be getting laid around here.
Annette: I just don't know what I want.
Brooke: Then fake it until you figure it out.
Sometimes,my ideas were bigger than my lady balls.
Everything sounded fantastic in my head but I couldn't quite execute those ideas. When I was in high school, I had this big idea to read one hundred books over the summer. Not any one hundred books, but the ones a fancy newspaper said everyone should read before they die. To make matters even more special, I decided I'd also analyze those books much like the newspaper's in-house reviewer did. I'd be witty, eloquent, and excessively referential, and traffic would overwhelm my clunky little WordPress blog.
I didn't make it through ten books. They were boring or pedantic or far removed from any point of relatability, and I gave up. The only person reading my reviews was my grandmother, and that only reminded me that I wasn't finding the reach I'd expected. On top of that, I was stuck inside, racking my head for pithy comments and wrangling code while I wanted to be kicked back on the beach with books I didn't hate reading.
Looking at the pies I'd baked for Jackson, I couldn't help thinking about that summer. No one knew I'd spent the night weaving strips of dough into a textbook basket weave pattern and coaxing blueberries into glossy perfection.
I could just as easily deliver these pies to Brooke's house or drop them off at the barbershop around the corner. Those boys never refused free food.
