“I didn’t pick this crew, and I’m not joining it either. I just don’t know where else to go right now. Is Creed here?”
“Creed and the boys are all up on the landing working. It’s week one of logging season. I can’t remember, does the sight of blood freak you out?” Willa turned on the porch stairs, waiting on her answer. She looked different without the big, thick-rimmed glasses she’d always worn. She must’ve gotten contacts.
“Blood? I don’t think so,” Gia drawled out.
“Good. This week’s been hard on the boys.”
“And they’re bleeding?”
“They do that a lot. No one bleeds more than a Gray Back.”
“Fantastic.” She toted Peanut Butter up the stairs after Willa and onto a screened-in porch. The screen door had a big splinter of wood jutting off the edge, so she used her pink manicured nail to hold it open as she passed through. Removing her oversize sunglasses, she blew a strand of dark hair out of her face and looked around. This place wasn’t what she’d expected from a trailer park. “Are all the…homes…like this one?”
“Yep.” Willa led her past a pair of rocking chairs, across the cedar planked porch, and through a door.
The master bedroom led to a kitchen and living room combo. The walls were a light gray color, and the kitchen cabinets were antique white with gray-veined granite countertops. Someone had a bit of taste in this place.
“Oh, except Easton’s home. His trailer is definitely not nice and updated because he dragged it off into the woods with his bare hands when he got pissed off at Matt a couple of years back. At some point, he stripped all the fancy shingles off the sides. I haven’t actually been inside, but I imagine it’s full of leaves and spruce tree limbs like an actual bear den. He’s a little…feral.”
“Easton sounds lovely.” If Willa heard her sarcasm, she gave no sign. Instead, she poured two glasses of what looked like homemade lemonade into a pair of glasses, then led Gia back to the porch.
“You can let PB out here if you want,” Willa offered. “Let him stretch his little legs after the trip. Did you drive straight here?”
Thankful for the small talk, Gia took the offered glass and sank down into a rocking chair beside Willa. “I stayed the night in a couple of cheap hotels. It was awful. I got a tick in my armpit in one of them.”
Willa almost spit her drink out mid-slurp and tried to cover her laugh, bless her. “Well, did you pick it off?”
Gia nodded miserably. “With tweezers. It was traumatizing.”
Willa frowned as if she was working something out. “Wait. Why didn’t you stay in a ritzy hotel? Cheap has never been your thing.”
Gia offered her an empty smile. “Because my parents emptied the rest of my savings when I told them I was pregnant with a bear cub.”
“Gia,” Willa whispered. “Why did your parents still have access to your accounts? You’re twenty-four.”
“Yeah, well I wasn’t raised like you were.” Gia gritted her teeth and dragged her gaze to the carrier by her feet as she unzipped the top and released the hound—hound meaning ten pound show-quality Shih Tzu.
“Well, girl,” Willa said, eyebrows arched high and serious, “time to pop your momma’s titty out of your mouth and cut that cord.”
“No shit.”
“Now,” Willa said grandly with a twirl of her wrist, “you may apologize to me at your leisure.”
“What do you want me to say?”
Willa loudly slurped the pink straw she’d shoved in her lemonade, and then sank into her chair until her legs were spread out like the bottom half of a starfish. Leaning her head back on the rocking chair, she murmured, “I don’t know. Dig deep. I want to like you again.”
Deep, sharp pain slashed through Gia’s chest. Willa didn’t like her anymore? Gia opened her mouth, but only a tiny shocked sound came out.
Willa sucked at her straw until her glass was completely empty. She gulped and said, “I’ll help get the ball rolling. Why did you and the bombshells invite me on that road trip? Was it to make fun of me? Was it to ditch me and remind me how unimportant I am?”
“No! God, no. We invited you because I told Brittney I wasn’t going unless they let you come, too. That was the pact. We were supposed to road trip together.”
Willa frowned and sat up straight. “Oh. You wanted me to come?”
“Of course.”
“Then why was Brittney such a bossy trollop the whole time? She was trying to get rid of me.”
Bossy trollop was actually the perfect word combo for Queen Bee Brittney. “I don’t know, Willa. Brittney’s always been like that, and it wasn’t just you she was being mean to. I had to stay away from her and Kara for a week after we got back just so my self-esteem could recover. That wasn’t an awesome road trip for any of us.”