“Three!” Mary catches on. “She’s three someones’ sister!”
“And my oldest brother could kick your ass without breaking a sweat.” Then she folds her arms, pacing like she’s giving a closing argument. “So, Mr. Shaw, it would seem we are at an impasse. You can let your sister go to her room without further pressure to produce a name. Or . . . the womenfolk and I will go into the other room and take photographs of my hickeys—and send them to my brother. To see if he agrees with your allegation that it’s a man thing.”
For a minute, I forget that Sofia and I are not the only ones in the room. “I love it when you get all defense counsel on me.”
She just smiles back.
I sigh. And roll my eyes. “Go to bed, Mary.”
“Yes!” She gives Sofia a high five as she passes. “You go, girl!”
Marshall announces that he’s going to bed too, and follows Mary up the stairs.
Carter yawns. “I’m beat. The couch is calling my name.” He crosses the kitchen, peeling off his clothes as he goes. By the time he exits the room, the last view I have of him is his lily-white ass.
I rub my eyes, to erase the image and because I’m exhausted myself.
“Hey, Stanton?” JD asks. “Since we all have to get up in”— he checks his watch—“two hours to reseed the field, would it be all right if Jenny and I crash here?”
Without thinking, I shrug. “Sure.”
And the four of us head out to the barn. After Jenny and JD are settled in Carter’s old room and Sofia and I are under the covers in my bed, she whispers to me.
“Is this weird? This is weird, right? Does it bother you that they’re . . . there?” She points to the open door to the bathroom that connects the two rooms.
Again—it probably should. I should want to rip Sausage Link’s head off. Smother him with a pillow. Throw him out the window and watch him fall the two stories, praying he’ll land on his head.
But I just pull Sofia closer. “I’m too tired to give a shit.”
18
Stanton
Marshall gets out of seeding the field because he has school. The rest of us—Sofia, me, Carter, Jenny, and JD—aren’t so lucky. We have breakfast together and spend the morning raking seed and fertilizer into the dirt so my father isn’t tempted to come out and break our asses. But later, after a long shower, the pressure starts to build. And by the evening it feels like a renewed weight is pushing on me—the little time that’s left before Saturday.
So I take matters into my own hands.
“Ow!” A branch rakes across my forearm as I climb, drawing blood.
“Shit!” A thin, leaf-covered limb boomerangs into my face.
“Fuckin’ hell almighty!” I smack my head on the underside of a particularly solid bough.
Why was this easier when I was seventeen? Maybe the horniness made me immune to pain. Eventually, I make it to the top—to my golden, glowing goal.
Jenny’s bedroom window.
It’s unlocked, like I knew it would be. I open it and brace my hands on the ledge to pull myself through.
“Christ on a fuckin’ cracker!” Jenny screeches from her vanity chair—where she sits, clad only in a tiny pink nightgown with thin straps. “Just scare the everlovin’ shit out of me, why don’t you?”
“Kiss your nana with that mouth?” I grunt. “Explains a lot.” When she just continues to sit, arms folded, I frown. “You’re not even gonna give me a hand? That’s pretty cold, Jenn.”
She rolls her eyes and exhales loudly—but then she gets up and helps pull me in.
I stumble forward, gripping onto her hips to keep us from falling—and we both freeze when we realize our faces are just millimeters apart—sharing the same breaths.
Then Jenny blinks and backs away. “You can’t be here, Stanton.”
I ignore her and glance at the bed. “Where’s Presley?”
“She fell asleep on the couch downstairs. I’ll carry her up in a bit.”
And then my gaze falls behind Jenny—to the flowing white dress hanging on the wall. And every bone in my body turns to Jell-O, held together by loose, shredded straps of tendon.
“Is that it?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Jenny says—so softly. “That’s my weddin’ dress. Isn’t it pretty?”
I see her wearing it in my mind. Delicate lace, embroidered flowers wrapped around the body I know so well. Pretty doesn’t even come close.
“It’s beautiful.”
Then I remember she’ll be wearing it for someone else—and my heart squeezes so hard, it feels like it’ll evaporate in my chest.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Stanton.”
I turn to her—desperate now. “Then don’t do this. Talk to me—listen to me.”
“I have talked to you! It’s you who hasn’t been listening!” she claims, wearing a fallen face. “You’re so stubborn—you’re so stuck on what you think is supposed to be, that you’re missin’ what’s right in front of you.”
I sit down on the edge of her bed, pushing a frustrated hand through my hair. “You sound like Carter.”
I notice a pile of boxes near my feet, opened with ribbons hanging off. “What’s this?”