When Chris finally let her come up for air she giggled and looked from one to the other and said, “This is the happiest new year ever.”
I hope so, love. “About ready to go home?”
“Yes, just let me run to the ladies’ room real quick.”
She scampered off to take care of business while he went to the bar and paid the tab. Hatch Dunlap made eye contact with him and nodded succinctly before looking away. Judith was nowhere in sight.
A few minutes later, he and Chris were waiting near the restrooms as Gwen, Grace, and Rachel came out looking like they were up to no good.
Grace’s blue eyes were round and innocent as she shook her head. “I didn’t see a thing. I don’t know what happened.”
Gwen nodded and tried for the same look. “Judith was being rude. I told her to fuck off and went in the bathroom stall. Next thing I hear is her ass hitting the floor.”
Rachel looked completely unrepentant and said, “I refuse to speak on the grounds I may incriminate myself.”
All of their men had gathered around them by that point. Ethan looked as though he was struggling to not laugh as he said, “Okay, ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,’ it’s time to get you all home.”
Eli chuckled as he put an arm around his feisty wife and kissed her head. “Fess up, angel,” he said quietly.
Rachel smiled at Julián and whispered so Chris couldn’t hear, “Judith told Gwen that she looked like she had put on a lot of weight and that she should stick with Shrek and leave you here for her to handle. I didn’t handle it in a very ladylike fashion. Gwen was nice. I wasn’t. So spank me,” she added with a shrug as she winked at her husband.
Judith chose that moment to exit the restroom, seething mad.
From behind them, Hatch Dunlap hollered, “Hey, Judith! We’re leavin’. Unless you want me to leave your ass here, get a move on!” he got up from his chair and walked toward the door without waiting for her.
Judith looked like she wanted to say something to the group but glowered hatefully instead, rubbing her left ass cheek as she tilted her nose up and skirted the group.
“What’s her problem?” Ethan asked. He’d been working that night so he hadn’t been privy to a lot of the conversations regarding Judith.
Grace patted his chest and said, “Just mean girl drama. It’s a good thing we had Rachel with us.”
Ethan winked at Rachel and she said, “Gwen’s one of us. I’ve got her back too. I’ll cut a bitch.”
“Come on, killer,” Eli said, looking like he was fighting laughter as they all headed toward the door. Both Rachel and Eli were dressed in leathers, while surrounded by people dressed in western wear, but they always were a part of the group no matter what. Julián liked that about this close-knit little family he’d found himself a part of. He’d miss it if he ever left Divine. He realized it was the closest thing to roots he’d ever known as he walked out with the group.
“You okay?” Gwen asked as he held the door for them to walk out into the chilly night air.
“Perfect, love. I’m grateful that Hatch never approached you.”
Chris said, “Me too. I'm not sure he ever left that barstool except to go pee.”
“He may not have seen me. He’s not much on dancing or mingling. I’m passing out the second my head hits the pillow. This has been an exhausting day.”
Julián kissed the top of her head as he put his arm around her shoulders and said, “We’re getting in your shower and working out all the tension that I can feel in your shoulders first.”
“Yeah,” Chris agreed. “It’s the least we can do after how you handled yourself today. My family thinks you’re a goddess, and I know how upset you were earlier but you kept it together. That had to have taken its toll on you.”
“We insist.”
Gwen looked between the two of them. “Well…who am I to turn down that kind of attention? I’ll even return the favor,” she said as she slid her other arm around Chris’s waist.
Revisiting his earlier feelings about the attachment he felt to their group of friends, Julián was suddenly broadsided by one of those proverbial defining moments. He’d always felt rootless, rolling through life like a tumbleweed. With her usual wisdom, Kate Benedict had used those very words with him in a conversation the previous summer back in Lusty. He was a tumbleweed. He’d spent his life searching for a place he fit in, where he would know to put down roots, and it had never happened. Now he knew his roots weren’t in a town. They were with the woman he loved, and his best friend, and a group of friends he could count on to watch out for them. He’d thought the realization would never come but there it was.