I’ve never loved my adopted hometown more.
But I let Tillie Jean and Annika drag me away from it on Saturday.
“Girls’ night,” Tillie Jean said very sternly to Davis when he asked yesterday if he could come too.
He rolled his eyes.
She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue back. “We’re beingnormal,” she told him. “Normal is girls’ nights for amazing concerts in the city every once in a while.”
And now the three of us are sitting inside Mink Arena, waiting for Aspen to take the stage, a full week after I was supposed to fake-marry Davis after the craziest week of my life before that.
“Why can’t concerts start earlier?” I mutter to Annika while Tillie Jean’s taking pictures of the stage after the opening act.
“Oh my god, right?” she says on a yawn.
Tillie Jean taps my leg. “You guys. Wake up. Waverly says this is the best show on the planet, and she didn’t get us front-row seats for us to yawn through it.”
“Couldn’t Waverly have gotten the time moved up?” Annika says. “Seriously, some of us are pregnant and have toddlers.”
“Yeah, and you don’t seemeyawning about it, do you?”
We both stare at her.
And then no one’s tired.
We’re all shrieking and hugging and hugging and shrieking while Tillie Jean grins so broadly that my cheeks hurt for her.
More babies.
More babies in Shipwreck.
More honorary nieces or nephews or niblings.
Someone behind us asks if we want a picture.
We don’t tell them we hang out with tonight’s performers on the regular because one, I’ve only hung out with Aspen for barely an hour total, and two, enough people in Copper Valley already recognize Tillie Jean because of Cooper nearly single-handedly taking the Fireballs from the worst team in baseball to the very best.
And no one sent extra security for us tonight.
It’s unsettling, which I’m trying to ignore.
I don’t need security.
Yes, I’m datingthe missing Bro Code guy, but no one harasses him in Shipwreck.
Or Copper Valley, apparently.
He just does his thing with that straight face he’s perfected, and people leave him alone.
But he’s not straight-faced with me anymore.
Or secretive.
I even know how he knew the codes to the museum every day, and no, I’m not telling.
That’s his secret.
As is, apparently, where he lives in Copper Valley. He told me he’d be in the city and that I could stay at his place if I didn’t want to go all the way back to Shipwreck after the show tonight, but he very specifically did not extend that invitation to Tillie Jean and Annika.
