Ah, so he was talking to Caleb. I was an amazing sleuth or Aidan was just that transparent. And there was no way Annie was coming up here. If I hated nature, Annie hated it even more. No way would she come up here.
The conversation ended, and I heard Aidan sigh. I wanted to wait a few minutes, let him move away from the tent before pretending I had just woken up. But my stomach chose that moment to let out a noise resembling the Sarlacc, the creature that looked like a pit of teeth from Return of the Jedi.
“Sibby?” he called.
“Yeah?”
Aidan sighed. “How much of that did you hear?”
“I heard nothing.”
“Liar.”
“I heard all of it,” I admitted. “Can I come out now? I really have to pee.”
“Yeah, come out.”
I poked my head out of the tent. Aidan stood below the ladder, looking up at me. I could see his face because the lantern had been lit and so had a campfire.
“What time is it?” I asked, turning around and wiggling my body down the ladder.
“You didn’t check your phone?”
“It died before I fell asleep.”
“You should have said something. I would’ve charged it for you.”
“Aidan, stop.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Stop? Stop what?”
“Stop walking on eggshells around me.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” I insisted. “I heard that conversation with Caleb. Stop feeling bad for telling me what you needed.”
“But we don’t want the same things, and I’m worried that—”
I jumped into his arms and hugged him close, my gauze-covered face hitting his chest. “I don’t think I’m cut out for camping. That’s a given. As far as the kid thing, I just need time. Okay?”
His arms crushed me to him. “I’m not driving you away? You still love me?”
I leaned back, so I could look at him. I sniffed. “Are you drunk?”
“No! Well, maybe a little.”
“Oh, Aidan,” I said with a smile and hugging him again. “I missed you today.”
“I missed you.”
“Sorry I passed out.”
“Sorry I dragged you to the woods and you got a rash. How do you feel?”
“You know that guy from Braveheart—Robert the Bruce’s father?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I look like that guy?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“Good. Can I make you dinner?”
“You’re going to make me dinner?” he asked in amusement as we walked toward the campfire.
“I was gonna open a can of soup and call it a day. How do you feel about that?”
He reached up to touch my face and then chuckled when he realized I was still covered in gauze. “I think that would be very, very nice.”
The next day the gauze came off, and I had my face again. It was a little redder than normal, and it was definitely itchy, but anything was better than looking like an extra from a Grey’s Anatomy episode.
After breakfast, I heard the sound of a motor approaching. I looked at Aidan who was grinning. He was back to his affable self and hadn’t even suffered a hangover.
“Let me guess… Caleb?”
“Yep. Texted me this morning.”
“You have to show me your hotspot,” I said.
“What will you give me for it?” he teased.
“Half my PayDay bar.”
“Gimme.”
Caleb rolled into the clearing, and before he’d even parked the blue Subaru, Annie was jumping out of the front seat.
“Savior!” I yelled, hopping up from my chair and running toward her.
“You have seen nothing yet,” Annie said. She released me and then went to the front seat of the car and pulled out a bottle of vodka. She raised an eyebrow. “Got any orange juice?”
I waved her toward the trailer. “This way.” Shaking my head, I looked at her. “How the hell did Caleb get you to leave the city?”
Though Annie wasn’t a born and raised New Yorker (because those were rare, like sunken treasure or a unicorn), she acted like one. She rarely felt inclined to leave the island, and she got oddly nutso when she couldn’t order Chinese food at any hour.
“You were in a dire situation,” she remarked. “You needed me. What kind of friend could I call myself if I didn’t relieve you of your suffering—nice rash, by the way.”
“You’re a jerk.” I stuck my head into the refrigerator and pulled out the plastic jug of OJ. “What’s the real reason you came?”
“You were the real reason,” she assured me.
I looked at her over my shoulder and waited.
She sighed and gave in. “Fine, I got a promise from Caleb.”
“What kind of promise?”
“He will not ask me to marry him again for at least another six months.”
“Ah.” I set the OJ on the counter and reached for the vodka.
“How’s the uterus embargo?”
I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just drink.”
Chapter 7
#burnbabyburn #discoinferno #allhailthepyrogods
“Come on,” I said. “Setting up your tent shouldn’t be that hard. We can do it. We’re strong women. We’re wilderness women. We got this.”
“You’re drunk,” Annie said, looking at me with glassy eyes. “Or you’ve had a lobotomy. We can’t set up this tent ourselves!”
“Look, the boys went on a hike, no doubt to talk about us—and what we’re not giving them. Wouldn’t it be nice if when they came back, the tent was set up, and we cooked a nice dinner?”
“No, actually, it wouldn’t.” Annie crossed her arms over her chest.
I placed my hands on my hips. “You’re a selfish bitch.”
She scoffed. “You’re one to talk.”
“Caleb wants to marry you—why won’t you say ‘yes’? You’ve been in a relationship for two years. Pull the trigger already.”
She bent over at the waist and laughed. “Me pull the trigger? Get knocked up already! Afraid you can’t juggle career and motherhood? Newsflash, something has to give. No one can do it all, and you know who suffers? The woman. It’s always the woman.”
I didn’t like how Annie was spewing my deepest, darkest fears, letting them out in the open to breathe. “Are my fears really your fears?” I asked. “Because this whole time, I thought you were commitment shy. If that’s the case, then break up with Caleb now and don’t string him along anymore.”
“I tried!” she yelled.
“Uhm, what?” I blinked. “What do you mean you tried? And when?”
Annie looked down at the ground. “Few weeks ago. It didn’t stick.”
“You didn’t tell me,” I said softly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were on a book deadline.”
“Still—Annie, this is something you share. You shouldn’t have kept it to yourself.”
She shrugged, looking like a morose teen. “Like I said, it didn’t stick. Caleb wouldn’t let it.”
“What happened, Annie? What brought this on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, we’re going to talk about it!”
“Let’s talk about you,” she shot back. “Why don’t you want a baby?”
“People can not want babies.”
She shrugged. “People can not want to get married.”
I put my hands to my head. “I think we drank too much.”
“Sibby—”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, I’m sorry I don’t understand why you’re having issues committing to Caleb, I’m sorry I’m so drunk, and I doubt I’ll remember every detail of this conversation—”
“SIBBY!”
“WHAT?”
“The camp chair is on fire!”
I turned and sure enough, the fro
nt of the camp chair had fallen into the fire. Annie and I looked at each other, both stunned stupid.
“What do we do?” she yelled.
“We put it out, you dink!” I shouted back, running toward the fire.
“Okay! But with what?”
As Annie had her flight moment, I was having a fight moment. The fire gods would only get half my chair if I had anything to say about it. I lugged over a water container and called to Annie. “Drag the chair off the fire!”
“But—”
“Do it!”
She snapped into action, yanked the chair out of the fire, and then I doused the flaming sucker. Because it was me, I somehow got soaked.
“Sibby’s fucking Law,” I muttered. “Every damn time.” I tossed the empty water container aside.
Annie giggled.
Then I giggled.
And then the guys walked back into camp. They exchanged a look.
“What happened?” Caleb asked, taking in the burnt chair, my wet clothes, the sizzling firewood.
Annie and I both pointed at one another and said at the exact same time, “She did it.”
“Did you guys have fun on your hike?” I asked Aidan that night while we were lying in our tent. Caleb and Annie were in their own ground tent that Aidan and Caleb had set up. We’d had dinner together, and that had gone a long way into sobering me up.
“Yeah,” Aidan said and then stopped talking.
“You know something,” I accused.
“I know nothing.”
“What do you know?” I demanded.
“What do you know?” he asked back.
“Uhmmmm.”
“Ah ha! I knew you knew something.”
“But you know something, too,” I said. “I wonder if you know what I know or if you just think you know what I know.”
“What?” he asked.
I leaned up on my elbows and looked down on him. “Spill. And then I’ll spill.”
“Bro-code.”
“Wife-code.”
“Damn it. That trumps all the codes.” He grinned and then steadied. “Okay. So apparently Annie tried to break up with Caleb a few weeks ago.” Aidan paused, gauging my reaction.
“That’s all? That’s all you got?”
“What have you got?” he demanded.
“Same as you.”
“Caleb wasn’t very forthcoming. I don’t think he knew what set her off.”
“Annie’s always been…commitment shy? I don’t know. It was weird. In college, she did this thing where she dated guys—serial monogamy, right? Almost like she thought she was supposed to. When she didn’t graduate engaged, it was kind of hard on her.”
“I can’t imagine being engaged at twenty-two.”
“Yeah. But she comes from one of those families, ya know? Southern. Expects things of her. Moving to New York and going to culinary school was against everything her parents wanted for her.”
“And yet they paid for her school.”
I shrugged. “She went crazy for a bit.”
“I’ve never see Caleb so happy—and so confused.”
“Annie’s confused,” I said quietly. “Getting what you think you want and then realizing it’s all good, that there’s nothing to worry about. Some people snap.”
“Hmmm. Come here.”
I lay down and snuggled into his side. “Thanks for calling them.”
“Is it better now?”
His fingers wove their way through my hair, making me drowsy and comfortable. “Yeah. I didn’t realize how much I missed people.”
“It’s been five days, Sibby.”
I laughed. “Yeah and my life is tied to the Internet and a computer screen. It’s a lot to adjust to.”
“Yeah… it’s been nice though, right?”
Lifting up so that I could look him in the eyes, I smiled. “Yeah. It’s been pretty great.”
“Camping isn’t that hard,” Annie said the next morning as she bit into a homemade breakfast burrito.
“How many camp showers have you taken?” I demanded. I pointed to a tree and a tent. “See that? That’s our privacy tent. We have to heat water, put it in a bag with a glorified hose, spray ourselves down, soap up, and then rinse. I can’t get a brush through my hair.”
Annie leaned closer so she could touch my locks, which were currently in braids. “Hmmm. When was the last time you conditioned?”
I smacked her hand away. “Eat your burrito.”
She grinned and took another huge bite of the sausage and egg burrito.
“Were you guys warm last night?” Aidan asked, sipping on his cup of coffee. He was sitting on a milk crate—considering we were one chair down. Caleb had brought two, one for him, one for Annie.
“I was warm,” Annie announced.
“Because you stole all the covers,” Caleb stated.
She shrugged and then offered him her burrito. He grabbed it and sent her a steamy look.
I didn’t understand their dynamic. They got along, they had fun, they were adventurous, both loved food and wine… What was Annie’s deal? She wasn’t telling me something important. But that girl kept stuff on lockdown. She didn’t like dealing with emotions, and she wasn’t really good at it.
Then again who was?
“How are you guys doing on supplies?” Caleb asked.
Aidan scratched his jaw. He was sporting a beard, and it looked good on him. “We should probably go into town and get more stuff.”
“Yeah, you’re almost out of beer.” Caleb grinned. “And you will be by the time we leave.”
I perked up. “There’s a town nearby?”
Aidan nodded.
“With cell service?”
“Maybe.” Aidan reached for a fallen piece of sausage on his plate.
I hopped up. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
“Sibby’s been without legit email,” Aidan explained.
“You sound like I’m insane for needing technology.”
“No, not insane,” he assured me. “A little kooky at times, but not insane.”
I grasped his hand and tried to haul him off the milk crate, but he was tall and steadfastly planted. “Come on, come on, come on. If you take me to town where there’s cell service, and I can check my email, I’ll be your best friend.”
“I already have a best friend,” Aidan quipped, pointing to Caleb.
“I slither on top of you naked. Does he do that?”
“Slither?” Caleb repeated. “What do you mean you slither?”
I made a face. “Oops, I forgot we weren’t alone.”
“Seriously, what’s this slithering thing?” Caleb demanded. He looked at Annie. “Can we try it?”
Ignoring the direction of their conversation, I dropped Aidan’s hand and removed the plate from his lap so I could plop down. “Please, please, please. Can we go?”
“Yeah, Sibby, we can go.”
“Yippee!” I jumped off him and ran to the truck. I scrambled into the front seat and waited.
Civilization, here I come!
This wasn’t civilization. It looked like a ghost town. Old buildings with peeling paint and a dirt road down the strip called Main Street. And about four stores.
“Was this what you were expecting?” Annie asked.
“You think upstate, and you think quaint little towns with funky art and jewelry. Organic farm-to-table restaurants. Not”—I glanced around—“this.”
“Oh, good. You’re totally confused too.” Annie nodded, frowning. “I haven’t seen one human being since we drove in.”
“Clearly there are humans here,” I muttered. “The guys went into the general store to fill up the propane tank, so…”
“I don’t even see a Starbucks. And they exist everywhere!” Annie announced. “Literally everywhere.”
“What do you think would happen if Amazon, Starbucks, and Google had a ménage romance going on?”
“Then all my dreams would come true.”
&nbs
p; She walked up the street, and I followed her. “What do you see?” I asked.
Annie peered around like she was scoping out the place. She lifted her nose to the sky and sniffed. “That way.” She pointed ahead. “About twenty feet. A bar.”
“You smelled out a bar?”
“I’m a Monahan,” she explained. “It’s what we do. And also—I read the sign.” She grinned.
“I’ll text Aidan and tell him where we are.”
Though it was late afternoon, you couldn’t tell when you walked in. It was dark and divey. Just the kind of place Annie and I liked in our college years. There was something comforting about the scarred pool table and the half-lit-up jukebox. A few locals wearing baseball hats sat at the bar, nursing their beers. They all looked at us like we were specimens in a museum. Curious, but they didn’t say anything.
A middle-aged guy wearing an army green button-down kept his gaze on us as we bellied up to the bar.
“Do you have any cider on draft?” I asked.
The bartender’s expression didn’t change as he looked me up and down. “Beer.”
“How about a Pinot Gris?”
“I got one white,” he all but growled.
“I’ll take it.” I looked at Annie. “You’re up.”
“IPA on draft,” she said. “And can you turn up the sound on the TV. I want to catch that replay.”
The bartender grinned and lifted the remote to the TV, increasing the sound. He poured her an IPA. “Five bucks.” He looked at me. “Eight for yours.”
“Do you take cards?” I asked.
“Are you trying to get us thrown out?” Annie asked me. She fished around in her back pocket and set a twenty on the bar. “For the drinks—and maybe a few rounds of pool?”
The bartender filched the money and smiled. “You got it, sweetheart.”
We took our drinks and headed to the single pool table. “How do you do that?” I demanded.
“Do what?” She picked up the rack and immediately gathered the balls. “Not get in knife fights? That bartender looked like he wanted to shank you.”
“You walk in, totally one of the guys. You drink beer, ask to turn up the sports station—you really hate the woods? Or is that just a lie.”
She laughed. “The woods are kinda fun. I’ll be ready to go home tomorrow, though.”
Tales of a Sibby Slicker (The Sibby Chronicles Book 2) Page 5
