Page 46 of Badd Love
"She was clearly so upset about whatever the fuck that it wasn't as difficult to deal with as you'd think. When a woman is that fucking upset, I'm not exactly thinking about smashing."
"I guess that's valid," he said. "So…then she, what? Vanished? Which is when you called me in?"
"Pretty much, yes. I woke up, and she was gone. Number still blocked. Fine, whatever. But then Raquel called me, saying she couldn't find her, and she wasn't answering her calls or messages either. And when a girl won't answer her bestie, we have a problem, especially if said girl is clearly going through some kind of crisis."
"Understood. So you showed up in LA, and she was, what, just chillin' at home like, why the big deal?"
"No. I mean, yes, she was at home. But she wouldn’t let us in. Wouldn't let Raquel in. If Rune had been there, she'd have let her in, maybe. Raquel and Hamish took the hint and left."
"But you're a stubborn-ass bitch, so you badgered her into letting you in."
"Pretty much." I sighed.
"Did she take a lot of convincing for her to tell you what the deal was?"
"I told you; shedidn'ttell me what the deal is. She hinted at it, vaguely. I just…once she let me in, I realized the last thing she needed was to have me demanding she bare her soul to me. She'd ghosted not just me but Raquel. Rune is on her honeymoon, obviously, and none of us are about to tell her about this because she'd come home early, and Linz doesn't want that."
"So she wasn't, like, at risk of self-harm?"
"No, or I wouldn't have left."
"So what happened? How'd you go from 'little pig, little pig let me in' to 'Lindsey, I love you?'"
“She put her finger up my butt."
Jax had been mid-toke when I said this, and he lost it, cackling and coughing. "The fuck?"
I laughed. “We just watched TV and talked about nothing important, and then crashed together on the couch. Woke up horny, and she was in nothing but my T-shirt, and…" I shrugged. "We fooled around."
"You'd already fucked, right? So why only fool around?"
"She…I dunno where to start, man. It's personal, what happened. It wasn't just messing around. It wasn't just sex, either. That first time, I mean. She…I think she feels things, but it scares her. She doesn't want to feel things for me—for anyone. Whatever happened to her left some serious trauma behind. She's a mess. She's trying to deal with it, but some shit isn't easy to heal, y'know?"
"In theory, yes. I understand the idea." He handed me the roach. "We've lived pretty charmed lives, you know. We have a lot of blessings—most significantly, two parents who love each other and us, and no significant traumas."
"Right, exactly. We…it escalated. I know I normally have no problem sharing details, but this is different."
"Dane, bro, you can’t lead with 'she put her finger up my ass' and then not spill the tea."
"Let's just say that I saw Jesus."
"Should I give you a dildo for your next birthday?"
"Fuck you, no. And this stays between us. Everything. You got me?"
"It's in the cousin box."
I rolled my eyes, snorting out smoke. "Flashback to tenth grade."
"Lotta shit in that cousin box."
"Like when you broke your dad's framed photo of his SEAL unit while we were playing bop-sock in your basement?"
He cackled. "Oh…my…god! Bop-sock! I haven't thought about that game inyears."
Bop-sock was a game we rambunctious, half-feral boy-cousins used to play all the time as kids. You take a pair of socks, stuff one in a ball into the toe of the other, and swing them around like weapons, whacking each other with them mercilessly, either using a pillow for a shield or dual-wielding. Itwas a fun, mostly harmless game, but sometimes it'd get out of hand, and someone would end up with a black eye, or we'd break something and get sent outside.
"We claimed Doo-Dee broke it, as I recall," I said.
