“Let us in before we freeze our asses off,” Lina yelled through the front door.
“We brought hugs and tequila,” Naomi called.
“Naomi brought hugs. I brought tequila,” Lina corrected.
“Shit,” I murmured under my breath before sticking my head under the faucet in the kitchen and washing away all signs of my crying jags.
They entered the house like two beautiful, energetic whirlwinds toting grocery bags and pitying looks. Lina looked glamorous in a royal-blue parka and fur-trimmed boots. Naomi was pretty in a pink puffy jacket and earmuffs.
“Why are you here?” I asked as they shed their winter layers.
“Lucian tattled and said you were spending the evening alone instead of at your sister’s,” Naomi announced cheerfully, her perky ponytail bouncing.
“That interfering son of a bitch.”
“Don’t worry. Naomi retaliated by unleashing the Morgan boys on him to ruin his solitude,” Lina assured me.
“I didn’t ruin his solitude. I made sure that he had the emotional support he might need,” Naomi corrected.
“You have to have emotions to require emotional support,” I pointed out.
“Lucian is pretty upset about your dad’s death. They were close,” Naomi said.
I wanted to argue, to question her. But I didn’t have the energy. I changed the subject instead. “Where’s Waylay?”
“My little tech genius is sleeping over at Liza J’s to fix her smart TV again,” Naomi announced.
Double shit. If overnight child care arrangements had been made, I wasn’t getting rid of them that easily.
Naomi slid her arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the staircase. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a shower? We’ll get dinner started.”
Forcibly shooed upstairs, I slunk down the wood-paneled hallway on the second floor to my bedroom where I proceeded to take the longest shower in the history of indoor plumbing. I spent the first half of the shower passive-aggressively taking my time in hopes my friends would get bored and leave. When it became clear from the scents of garlic that wafted into the bathroom that this was not going to be the case, I spent the second half crying quietly until I felt as if I’d washed enough emotion down the drain to appear normal for a few hours.
I combed my wet hair and entered my bedroom, crawling onto the window seat. Outside, the snow continued to fall. Knox’s pickup was parked in Lucian’s driveway. I hoped he was having a miserable time with his retaliatory forced socialization.
My stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t eaten since Lucian’s burrito delivery that morning. Except for the French fries I’d stolen off his plate…and out of the bag in the car.
I returned to the bathroom, slapped on some moisturizer, then reluctantly headed downstairs to the kitchen.
My friends had topped store-bought pizzas with hot sauce and banana peppers—my favorite. There were two packs of cookie dough on the counter as well as three bags of chips with an assortment of dips. It looked as though Naomi had brought all the fixings for Honky Tonk margaritas, which she was pouring into five bucket-sized glasses.
“Nothing says mourning like post-funeral margaritas,” I observed.
“Mourning looks like whatever you want it to look like,” Naomi insisted. She had changed out of her clothes and was wearing red thermal pajama shorts with a matching long-sleeve shirt and fuzzy, knee-high socks.
“It can be getting drunk and going sledding at 1:00 a.m. Or it can be pizza, cookies, and a binge watch of Cougar Town,” Lina said. She too had changed into pajamas, but hers were silky and black. Her fuzzy flip-flops had delicate puffs of fake fur that Meow Meow was glaring at from the center of the breakfast nook table. I wandered over and stroked a hand down the cat’s back. She flipped over onto her side with a grumpy grunt and grudgingly accepted my affection.
“You’re not seriously abandoning snowstorm sex with your men just to spend the night with me, are you?” I asked my friends.
“You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” Naomi insisted, nudging a margarita in my direction.
“I like being alone,” I argued. Being alone meant not having to pretend to be okay. Being alone meant not having to be messy and emotional in front of any witnesses.
“You’re welcome to be alone with us,” Lina announced.
“I thought you’d be on my side.”
Her smile was sharp and her eyes sparkled. “You have no one to blame but yourself. You and Naomi forced me to give up my lone she-wolf ways.”