It’s—actually, I can’t tell you what it is.
Or how I get into it.
All you need to know is that I’m camped out at a bar that Grey won’t be able to find, and I’m surrounded by friends.
I need help.
It’s a hard thing to ask for, but I do. I need help.
“Can you get the scoop from Chandler onanythingwith Greyson Cartwright?” I ask Jack, one of my triplet cousins. We’re sitting on curved suede benches beneath a painting of Snaggletooth Creek’s original gold mine. It’s hung on a brick wall with red velvet curtains on either side of it that follow the curve of the benches around to give our seating area a modicum of privacy.
Wedoget a little swanky in certain places in the Tooth.
But they still let me bring my dog inside—again, provided he shakes it all out before coming in—which is why Jitter is panting happily on my feet and against my leg, gazing at my cousins with absolute adoration while they both work on their laptop computers, doing research on my new boss their way.
Jack winces and rubs his chest right over the dice printed on his black T-shirt. “You know how Chandler didn’t tell Emma that the Ol’ Snaggletooth statue was his fault and not Theo’s?”
My eyelid twitches. “Gosh, no, doesn’t ring a bell.”
Decker delivers me thedon’t be an asslook to end alldon’t be an asslooks. “We’re starting to realize our dear cousin is fucking batshit. Or at least an egomaniac. Even if he’d tell us anything about how he set up this sale so quietly with a dude he supposedly knows from somewhere, I wouldn’t trust it.That guy and I were best friends?Doubt it.He owed me a favor? Don’t believe it.He reached out to me and wanted to buy a shop in the mountains and the timing was good? Nope, nope, and nope.”
“Cosigned,” Jack says.
He, Lucky, and Decker are genetically identical. All white-skinned, brown-haired, and blue-eyed, though their styles are so different that it’s easy to tell them apart. Jack, the engineer, has short-cropped hair and is always in jeans and geeky gamer T-shirts. Decker’s a novelist who wouldn’t be caught dead in jeansorshort hair. He’s totally the scruffy mountain dude perpetually in hiking pants, performance fabric T-shirts—long- or short-sleeved depending on the weather—and puffer vests. Lucky’s not with us tonight. He’s a nurse and has less flexibility than his brothers, who both work from home.
Or from Bean & Nugget, as Decker did today so he could spy on the new boss too.
Not that Grey seemed to realize who Decker was, even though the triplets had an appearance in that viral video too. And the fact that Willa and Cedar, my weekday morning crew, didn’t tell Grey who Decker was either speaks volumes to how much they’re leery of the new ownership too, no matter the smiles and gratitude they expressed.
The triplets also might be Laney’s half-brothers, which I didn’t tell you, because I’m onlybackon gossip for a very specific reason and this is not it. However, they’re obsessed and it’ll come up eventually.
Probably within moments, considering the door just opened and Theo’s carrying Laney inside.
Not something any of us would’ve seen coming three weeks ago, let me tell you.
Theo’s been in hiding most of the past week after getting exposed in Emma’s viral wedding video as being the biggest solo creator on a very popular adult entertainment website. Yes,thatkind of adult entertainment website. He never showed his face in his videos, so it was a big deal when people figured out who he was, what he looked like from the neck up and with clothes on, and where he was from.
Since Emma left for her solo honeymoon and the rest of us got home, he’s retired from his profession largely because of Laney. She broke her leg skiing last week, and when he found out she was hurt, he finally got over himself, apologized for being an ass to her in Hawaii, and begged her to be his girlfriend.
She didn’t ask him to quit his naked side hustle.
He insisted on doing it himself.
And if Emma were here, she’d be absolutely loving everything about this. At least, pre-Hawaii Emma would’ve been.
I don’t know how she’ll feel now.
Laney and Theo making up and falling in love after years of animosity is the only thing I currently believe in wholeheartedly. And yes, I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t believe in relationships.
Laney does.
I won’t take that from her, because if anyone can find a way to be happy and work through the problems, these two can.
I know they still have secrets from each other, but not malicious secrets. More likeI forgot to tell you I was the one who started the rumor that you didn’t wear underwear in high school, which will not come as a surprise to Laney at all when Theo confesses.
Nor will it bother her.
She knows who Theo was and how much he’s made right since high school. And I know all the dirt there is to know about Theo, even if I don’t want to remember it anymore, and I have no concerns for them.
