I try to speak, but there aren’t any words to express the level of overshare or my gratitude.
Violet waves a hand around. “Alex hasn’t always done the right thing when it comes to Sunny, and he knows that, even if he won’t ever admit it to you. He also knows how miserable she is right now, and he’s worried. At the end of the day, he wants her to be happy.”
He can’t be all bad if Vi’s willing to spend the rest of her life with him.
“I’ll talk to him when I see him.” I don’t want to get into another discussion about calling Sunny, so I change the topic. “How’re the wedding plans coming?”
Every time I bring this up, Vi has a mini freak-out. It’s fun to watch.
Her eye twitches, and she rubs her palms on her legs. “Ugh. Seriously. We haven’t been engaged that long. And with all this bullshit going on . . . you’d think we were in a state of emergency or something. Daisy and my mom are psycho about it. They have a running list of, like, two hundred people, and that’s just for the engagement party. I keep telling Alex we need to elope. I can’t deal with a five-hundred-person wedding. We’re not even Italian. It’s craziness.
“I don’t get the whole need to be a princess for a day. I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be Violet Waters so I have a princessy, romantic name. The rest of it is total crap meant to propagate false expectations for marriage.”
“Wow. Way to sell it, Vi.”
“Screw you, Buck. You just wait. Your day will come, and when it does I’ll laugh it up like you are. Talking about this is giving me hives.”
At first I think she’s being dramatic, but then I see irregular red dots appear on her arms.
“Does Waters know you’re this stressed out?”
“Say one word and I’ll—”
“Shave my balls. I know.”
“I was gonna say armpits, but you had to go for the genitalia, didn’t you?”
“Shouldn’t you be excited and not stressed? Don’t girls love this shit.”
Violet scratches the angry red welts expanding on her arm and ignores my questions.
The sound of the patio door opening in the condo next door puts me on alert. A new chick moved in while I was away. I haven’t officially met her, but we’ve chatted, and I’ve met her yappy dog’s nose through the tennis-ball-sized drainage hole where my privacy wall meets hers. The patter of nails on the tile follows, and his little brown nose appears in the hole, then it disappears and his paw shows up. He whines, aware he can’t get to me.
“Doodle! Stop being a pest!” The woman next door snaps her fingers and calls out, “Hi, neighbor!”
“Morning.” I call back.
Vi whispers, “Doodle? She named her dog after a penis?”
I shake my head and motion for us to go inside. This lady can be chatty for someone I’ve never seen, and for some reason her voice is familiar. We sneak back inside and finish planning the next phase of Project Sunshine. In two days I fly to Toronto to see Michael. We have a promo video to make—it’s been scheduled so it’s before his chemo treatment. Then I’m hanging around for that to keep him company.
Vi leaves before lunch, and I head to the gym. I staunchly avoid the coed section and the smattering of bunnies hanging around looking to chat. I also note that Randy avoids the bunnies, which is atypical for him. After two hours of hardcore training, I hit the showers.
Waters is already in there with his back to me. This is the first time I’ve seen him since he broke my nose. Here’s hoping he’s going to be civil about it. I leave a shower between us and turn on the spray, adjusting it until it’s hot enough to relax my tight muscles.
“Waters.”
“Butterson.” He glances my way briefly and motions to my face. “Looks like you’re healing up good.”
“Yup.” Most of the bruising has faded to that ugly yellow-green, and I’m done with the bandage. The stitches came out a couple of days ago.
“That’s good.”
“Yup.” I love awkward, naked conversations.