“She’s right.” Glenn gave me this sad little smile. “But you’re afraid that he’s going to miss all those things I’ve been living through since I was seventeen.”
I nodded and raised my gaze to the beams running across the ceiling. “Yeah. I know he’s not your typical high school kid, he never had the chance to be that I don’t think. But…what if I go back and what if he’s stuck with me?”
Glenn laughed. “Okay, there’s a fault in your logic which tells me you’re only thinking about yourself with that statement.”
I bristled. “What?”
“You just said you want him to have those experiences, right? So what if you end up being one of the experiences? What then? He’ll go on to have more. But if you end up being a sickly sweet happily ever after type of situation, isn’t that just a good thing?”
I sat there, staring at him dumbly. I felt something sliding in place inside me, then. I would still wait until March just to be safe—whatever that meant to my weird fucking psyche—but I couldn’t go into this with failure in mind.
“Self-fulfilling prophecy,” I murmured.
Glenn crunched on a tortilla chip and gave me the finger guns. “Bingo!”
“Don’t chew with your mouth open,” I said automatically, just like I’d said every time I worked for him, and he did it.
Chortling, Glenn grabbed the remote and turned the TV on. “White Lotusokay?”
“Sure.”
* * * *
I didn’t message Rey and wouldn’t have heard anything about him unless Theo and Ben hadn’t sent me updates. Hell, even Lake and River would sometimes comment on something, and Sierra did a couple of times, too.
I felt this connection to them I hadn’t felt before, which was nicer than I would’ve imagined.
Their updates were mostly funny, but sometimes sad, too.
Theo let me know that they almost lost Sophia mid-January, when something she’d eaten got stuck inside her, and she had to have surgery. Sophia was ten already, the matriarch of the pack, and she’d been Ruth’s dog more than any of the others in the same way Bucky was Theo’s.
I hoped the old girl would pull through well, because it would be devastating to lose her before it was her time.
Ben sent me photos of Rey mucking the stalls and one where he’d gone to the grocery store with Ben, Lake, Madden, and Mona.
The fact that he’d continued to process despite me not being there both made me glad and oddly jealous. It wasn’t a real emotion, the jealousy. I didn’t actually feel bad about it. I was just missing out and it made me feel grumpy.
That day, I went to Glenn with a pair of scissors and my shaving kit.
“What’s this?” he asked, raising a brow.
“You know how people who are in crisis after a breakup often chop off their hair?”
He blinked at me, then grinned. “Yes?”
“Well, since you’re not going to do it, can you help me do it?” I nodded toward the bathroom. “I just want the sides buzzed and some length off if we’re brave enough. Not much though. I’m not that stressed.” I smirked.
“Sure. We can even bother Caryn for the length if you want. She’s probably better at it since she cuts her own hair most of the time.”
“Awesome. Let’s do this.”
* * * *
Since I wasn’t going anywhere, Glenn made me travel with him when he went back to his main home in San Jose. I worked for him there for a couple of weeks in February and had no plans to go home until March.
Then on February 15th, Rey messaged me for the first time.
I used my bank card in town two days ago, and again yesterday.
