How had that happened?
I always kept my items to a single bag. It was easier to cut and run if you only had one bag to grab, but here I was now with four.
“What are you doing?”
I jumped.
Palma was inside my door, pale, streaks of dried tears on her face.
“I—”
She jerked forward into the room, her eyes pinned to my bags. “You’re leaving?”
I closed my mouth. My shoulders lowered. “You don’t want me here. I thought you wouldn’t want me to stay.”
She scoffed, bitterness mingling in there. “Maybe give us a chance to say it? Because, Blake, we’re not going to say it. I’m not. Were you going to say goodbye? How was this going to go in your mind?”
I winced, hearing the hurt in her voice. “Creighton is—”
“Your boyfriend is psychotic and scary, but guess what? He doesn’t get to keep you for himself. You’re my friend now.” She raised her chin up. “I’m from the south, darlin’. Us Beauregards don’t scare easy.”
“Marshall doesn’t want me here.”
She snorted. “If you haven’t started to figure Marshall out, what he says and does is usually the exact opposite. He acts all flirty and carefree when he’s the most cautious one of us all.” She picked up one of my bags. “Or he was until you. Pretty sure you got him beat for that award.”
“What about Heath? He didn’t say anything, but I know he doesn’t want me here.”
She took my bag back to my bed. “That might’ve been true in the beginning, but after a week of you being here, you’re one of us. Heath’s also the biggest baby of us all. You just haven’t stuck around to figure that out either.” She unzipped my bag and began pulling out my items. One at a time. “To my count, that sounds like you’ve still got some things to learn about us. That means you can’t leave. Hmmm?”
Dumbfounded, I stood there. My chest was going to cave in as she walked around my room and returned everything back to where it’d been previously. She got a few things wrong, but it didn’t matter.
She started working on the second bag.
“Palma,” I tried to protest, reaching for it.
She caught my hand and squeezed it before pushing it aside gently. “I grew up blessed. Two good parents. I love my mama something fierce, and there’s five of us girls from our household. I had one room growing up. I could fill it up with all of my things. Change the color on the walls as often as I wanted. Same house all my life, and I don’t think it’ll be going anywhere. I don’t see myself ever not being able to go home if I needed to, so I have no idea what it was like growing up how you did. Not one clue. I’m not even going to try to imagine. I figureI’d get it wrong anyways, so I’m just going to say this. Your time being scared to let other people in can come to an end with me. I get that’s a tall order. I’m aware it’ll take time. You gotta give me that time to show you I’m worth letting in.” She put down the second bag. “The minute you told me not to date anyone with fourth or fifth after their name, I began looking at you like a sister I was just meeting for the first time.”
I felt raw, so I jerked up a shoulder and looked away. “The whole name of it all. Brad Grundle? Who wants to become Mrs. Grundle? If someone wrote a poem about you, they’d rhyme that with bundle. You’re meant for more.”
Palma fell silent, staring at me.
She burst out laughing. “I have no idea what that means, but it’s funny. Mrs. Grundle. Rhymes with bundle. A bundle of what?” She picked up the third bag.
I eased beside her and began to take my things from her. She pulled them from the bag. I put them away. “Bundle of dildos.”
She snorted, taking a pile to my dresser. “Bundle of cock rings.”
“Bundle of douchebags.”
“Ew.” She wrinkled her nose. “Why’d you go there? I enjoyed thinking about our poem. Oh, what life would be like as Mrs. Grundle. To wake up each morning, ordering enough vibrators so they’d come as a bundle.”
“To become Mrs. Grundle the fifth, one would need to accept their new life as one for the bird ... s.”
She laughed. “A jaybird.”
“A game bird.”
“Password.”
