She’s a freakingbeast.
It shouldn’t be a surprise—she runs all the time, and her socials all feature videos of her doing resistance training between gorgeous artistic shots of her all over the world—but watching her take on Chester and actually win, all while begging the goat to please not have hurt himself by eating something that his system can’t handle, is making certain parts of me sit up and take notice in ways that they haven’t sat up and noticed at all since Hannah started dating Andrew.
“Bean paste?” Teague repeats in my ear.
“Dude, my head hurts. Just come get your goat.” I hang up on him and pull Pebbles out of the purse while Tavi wrenches the goat across the room.
“No chocolate for you.” She’s grunting as she drags him while he tries to get back to the treat on the floor. “You’ll die. You’ll die, and then everyone who loves you will be so sad, and that’s not kind, Chester. It’s really not.”
“Chocolate, huh?”
“Oh my gooooood.Stop talking. Stop listening. Everything you’re hearing is a figment of your imagination. You should go lie down in the choir loft. There are some dusty chairs up there. Super comfortable. I’ll bring you some food in a few. Pebbles loves to snuggle. You should go snuggle her.”
My head does ache. The Tylenol the doc gave me probably won’t cut it.
But distractions are good. “You eat meatandchocolate.”
“Please, please don’t go there.” Her eyes are getting shiny again like they did when she was talking about having kids, which hit me in a raw spot that I don’t like to talk about.
My mom’s good people.
She is.
But she comes with her own issues, and no matter how much it makes me feel like I’m not being loyal, I’d be lying if I said my issues as a kid didn’t start with her issues.
Not all her fault.
She didn’t ask to be left with three small kids.
But I’d have to know my father to blame him, too, which was a good part of the other half of the reason I had issues.
Tavi plops to the floor, arms looped around the goat’s chest. “If people knew—and you have no idea what’s at stake here, you really don’t—my life would be over. And so would the lives of a bunch of people who are counting on me to not fuck this up like I’ve fucked up basically everything else in my life other than smiling for a camera and fooling people into thinking I’m pretty.”
“Youarepretty.”
She rolls her eyes and grabs the goat harder when he tries to sneak back to the mess on the floor. “Can we just pretend this isn’t happening?”
I snap off a corner of the chocolate bar and pop it into my mouth.
Andholy hell. “Where’d you get this?”
“Phoebe. It’s Phoebe’s.”
She’s a terrible liar. “What’s Phoebe doing with chocolate?”
“No idea. She doesn’t tell me everything.Stop eating the chocolate, you damn goat!It’ll kill you! And I don’t kill animals!” She sounds neartears. “Dylan. For real. Go lie down in the choir loft. I’ve got this, and it’s not important, and if you canpleasejust forget you saw anything—”
“Reminds me of this fancy box of truffles my mom got when she did some costume work for somePink Goldsuperfan. There was one with ancho chilis in it that was just—man, that truffle changed my life.”
I don’t know what that look is that she’s giving me as she clings to the goat, but it’s eithersmall-town people eat good chocolate?oryou pronouncedanchowrong.
Probably.
“You really need to go lie down,” she finally says. “All this excitement isn’t good for your head.”
“Hasn’t stopped him before,” Teague says behind me.
“Phoebe!” Tavi loses her grip on the goat, dives for him, and catches him again before he can get to more chocolate. “I saved the goat fromyourchocolate! And he should see a vet.Right now.Goats can’t eat chocolate. They’ll die. For real. I read it in a book.”
