Page 96 of Moonshine Lullabies

“I can smell it!” he complained. “And drugs are bad, mmkay?”

Col laughed a little and hung up his jacket and cut beside mine.

“Damn right, for you!” I called.

“I know, I know,” he said. “Twenty-one for alcohol and twenty-five for weed.”

“That’s right,” I said in a singsong voice.

“Wait, why twenty-five for the gange?” Col asked.

“Because your brain doesn’t finish developing until twenty-five and it’s bad for you until then.”

“Oh, shit, well I fucked up,” Col said and I started giggling like a lunatic again.

“Oh, God,” Tate said and he let his head fall back. “You’re so annoying when you’re high.”

I went and sat down next to him and stuck my tongue out at him and said, “Well you’re annoying when I’m not,” and he laughed at me and held out his fist for a fist bump.

“Sick burn.”

“What do you want to watch?” I asked.

“Duh, moreWalking Dead,” he said.

I said, “Fuck yeah. Daryl dies, we riot.”

“That’s right,” Col said, flopping down on the other side of me. He’d taken off his boots and propped his feet onto the ottoman.

J.P. returned with the pizzas and salad without incident and said, “Whoa, hey, you started without me?”

“Sorry,” Tate said, but his grin said otherwise.

I got up to dish up our food onto paper plates and took a minute to look over so much of my love gathered in one room.

I was grateful, but things had been ramping up again. Lines cut, gators lost, all season long, our new fence tagged out front, and now this… I was wondering what and when something would give.

Col looked over at me, winked and blew me a kiss and I smiled.

I had every bit of trust we would all pull through this and things would get better. Hell, since Col everything alreadywasbetter. Tate was happier, and things were better than they’d ever been with John-Paul.

Sometimes, the universe just had its way of hoofin’ me in the front butt, was all. It just felt like the stakes were higher ‘n ever now.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO

Collier…

J.P. let me know that with Tate out of commission for hunting on Saturday, that we were moving the timeline up. Said his daddy was over the moon to put the rabid hog that was his former best friend down.

I was over the moon that Tate wouldn’t ever have to be around the disgusting fat fuck ever again. We’d done a big cookout at Jess’s folks for her birthday in August. There was a point when Jess and Tate and I had gotten into a water fight with some of the other kids hangin’ around from the neighborhood and he’d come ‘round the corner from wherever and had snatched her right on up and spun her, holding onto her, and hollerin’ for the kids to get her.

She hadn’t had a fun time after that, and I’d had her in hand the rest of the time. She’d cried something awful when we’d got home and had some really bad nightmares that night.

It wasn’t something I ever planned on repeating with her, ever again. She just wasn’t gonna go through it if I could help it.

I’d learned to hunt for gators that summer. Cy an’ his dad had been falling behind when it came to fillin’ their tags. So, I’d gone out with Cy in his boat while Renaud, Cy’s daddy, had gone out with Ham Bone.

Truth be told, I was kind of amazed that ol’ Ham Bone hadn’t fallen in and been eaten by a gator – of course, ol’ Renaud was smarter ‘n that.

---