I didn’t.
I shook my head on an exaggerated frown.
Hutch’s eyes lit with humor when they dropped to it, before he kept planning.“Anyway, Tonks and Hannibal need to get out and be doing something or at least Tonks will eat my guitar.”
I started laughing.“We can’t have that.”
And we certainly couldn’t.
“You could laze, baby,” he murmured.“I’ll be there and back in no time.”
No time would be, if he hurried, almost an hour.
“I’ll go.If your house won’t spontaneously open its own door and spit out a couple bags of Lesser Evil popcorn and a box of Milk Duds, it wouldn’t suck having those handy.”
“Noticed you always got a supply of both.”
And he noticed everything.
“I do.”
“Ready to activate?”he asked.
I smiled.“Let’s do it.”
We rolled out.We got dressed.We loaded the dogs in the car, and I did something I never thought I’d do with Hutch: went grocery shopping for nothing but junk food.
We came back.We took the dogs for a walk in the rain.We came back and toweled them down, though it was more fun when we toweled each other down.We played with the puppies.I got the laser light out and jiggled it for Moxie.We made hot chocolate.
And then we got back in bed, sipped, shared, and proved Hutch’s theory yet again that TV got in the way of important things.
It was a great Sunday.
A great weekend.
In fact, it had been great since Hutch extended the olive branch, and we became…
Us.
But one thing Hutch and I both had learned in our lives.
This kind of time never lasted for long.
And it didn’t.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Woman from Nowhere
Mabel
“God, it was epic,” Kacey said in my ear the next Saturday evening.“I wish you were there.I wanted to film it all, but I was laughing so hard, most of the video is of the grass or my boobs.”
That made me laugh.
When I quit, I noted, “I think it says good things that Tara asked you and Mona to her engagement party.She was so busted up by what Bryce had done, I didn’t think she’d bounce back so fast.”
“Stronger, smarter, faster,” Kacey said.“It’s so totally weird we all bonded through that.But we did.”
