“I’d say her size is quite right,” Dex said.
“The hose,” I warned.
“I am already wet,” Dex yelled. “You can’t make me more wet. Unless you’re going to whip me with it, the hose isn’t going to do you any damn good. Sit your ass down and listen to me.”
I glanced over at Agent Price. He tipped his chin up in salute. Because I needed witnesses for all of this. “Sure. Fine. Whatever you want.” I sank down again, grimacing at the seep of wet through my trousers and feeling every stray scrape and bruise from the war of the gnomes. “What do you need to say, Decker? I’m all ears.”
He stared at me intently for a long, irritating moment. Then, “Use that big brain of yours and figure this shit out.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s the wisdom I had to sit down to receive?”
Dex threw the bottom half of a gnome at me. It pinged off my forehead. “Figure it out,” he repeated, “because you don’t want to end up like me, miserable and alone and obsessing over the biggest mistake of your life. You don’t want to wake up some morning and realize you allowed your wife to walk out because you let your career become more important to you than that woman. And maybe your career won’t grind you up and beat you into the ground, but mine did and now I’m cold and wet, and cruising to one hell of a hangover.” He cast a glance over the yard. “And surrounded by creepy gnome body parts.”
We were quiet for a minute and that was great because I needed that time to swallow down the solid mass of emotion lodged in my throat.
“Do you know where she is?” Parker asked. “Your wife? Maybe you could give her a call or go visit her.”
“I always know where Jenn is,” he said. “And I know she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“How can you be sure?” Parker asked.
“She’s good,” Dex said fondly. “Things are good for her. She’s happy. She doesn’t need”—he motioned to his grass-stained shirt and split trousers—“any of my shit.”
“You never know,” Parker said.
“I know Jenn,” he replied. “And I know she doesn’t need me anymore.”
“Okay.” Parker shrugged. “If Mom ever comes home, she’s going to be pissed about her gnomes.”
“If.” I scoffed. “She does seem to be happy with her babysitting gig.”
“She wants to get back here,” Dex said. “And don’t worry about the gnomes, kid. Now we know exactly what to get her for every birthday and holiday until the end of time.” He glanced over at me. “Do you think I could find someone to make a gnome couple? Like, a big, ugly, snarly one and a pretty little child bride one? She’d love that.”
I pushed to my feet, yelling, “I’m getting the hose.”
chapterthirty-two
Sunny
Today’s Special:
Hand-Tossed Truths Drizzled with Oven-Roasted Omissions
“The fascinating thingabout leaving a super niche boutique marketing firm to run publicity for a brand-new baby café in Nowheresville, Rhode Island is that there is—inexplicably—more drama on a minute-to-minute basis than anything I saw in Los Angeles.”
I swung a salty glance toward Meara but she was busy edging into the intersection, waiting for an opening in the traffic to make a left turn. With a sigh, I stared down at my lap. The headlights were a lot tonight. “It’s only called drama when it primarily involves women,” I said. “The rest of the time it’s just a messy issue with multiple viewpoints and lots of strong feelings.”
“I don’t know what qualifies as drama in your book but the nearly weekly upheaval of fire hydrant explosions and raccoon attacks and all the drunken Loew boys requiring your aid, and I’d say we are in the company of dramatic people and living in dramatic times.” She shot me a silly pursed-lip expression that said she didn’t need me to confirm that she was right because she already knew. “Anytime a professional athlete motorboats a bucket of oysters and makes a real effort at blowing up his brother’s relationship, it escalates beyond a messyissuefor me.”
“He didn’t try to blow up our relationship. He was just being a dick.” Except that didn’t feel right. With a sigh, I added, “He’s obviously going through a lot of things right now and he lashed out at everyone who crossed his path. It’s not about me or even Beck.”
“You know, you’re allowed to be pissed off,” Meara said.
“And yet I am not.”
“I’d really prefer it if you’d cut the Sunny sunshine bullshit and admit you hated hearing all of that from your future brother-in-law.”
I was quiet while Meara drove toward my neighborhood. I’d thought this over during the yoga event and I came to the conclusion that no, I didn’t love getting all that info dropped on me in that particular way. But aside from the sting, none of it really mattered.
