Page 6 of What About Us
A giggle escapes Wren. Hank shakes his head before planting another kiss to the top of her head and striding from the room. I’m pretty sure I saw the hint of a smile, though.
“He’s so paranoid,” Wren says once we hear the click of the front door closing behind Hank.
I glance over at her as I jostle a pillow into a pillowcase. I swipe the other pillow off the bed and grab another pillowcase, then toss them to her.
“He’s sweet,” I say, and then screw up my face with a little laugh. “Never thought I would say that about Hank Hayes.”
Wren laughs, too, working the pillow into the case. It wasn’t that long ago that Hank was on the short list to win grouch of the year. His brothers even nicknamed him a ‘grumpy motherfucker.’ But now that Wren is back in his life, he’s seldom grumpy.
“He’s protective. I get it. But sometimes, he drives me crazy.” She laughs. “Yesterday, I was in the bathroom, and I had my earbuds in. So, when he came into the cabin, I didn’t hear him calling out to me. I swear he almost had a heart attack when he couldn’t find me.”
“He didn’t think to check the bathroom? Your cabin is literally the size of a shoebox.”
“Hey!” She chucks the pillow at my head with another laugh. “I guess he didn’t think to, since we have an actual bathroom door now. Just assumed I was missing. I swear he was about to send out a search party.”
“You love how much he dotes on you, though.” I fluff the pillows and shoot my friend a wry smile.
A grin breaks out across Wren’s face. “I totally do.” She looks around and pushes to her feet. “What else can I do?”
“Want to iron the curtains?” I ask. With a nod, she leaves the room to grab the iron and small ironing board from the laundry area in the hall.
I look around the room I’ve painstakingly put together for Paige. I want everything to be perfect.
Hudson’s parents have plenty of room for them, but Hudson was dead set against moving back in with his parents, Duke and Emily. I can’t blamehim. He said seeing his dad in his boxers every morning at six a.m. wasn’t something he thought he’d ever recover from.
To have him coming home after all these years is amazing, and truth be told, I wouldn’t mind if they stayed with me forever. We’ve been friends a long time, and I miss him. Sure, living alone has its perks, but I’ve been lonely with a capital ‘L’ since my divorce almost three years ago, and my dating life is pretty much a disaster. Having Hudson around all the time will be a major plus. We just get one another, and my life is better with him in it.
We all grew up together, but after Wren left for college, Hudson and I started hanging out more and have been best friends ever since. In the summers, we’d take one of Duke’s old ranch trucks and just drive, music cranked all the way up. It didn’t matter where we were going or what we were doing, so long as there was music and the wind in our hair, we were content.
Hudson took a gap year after high school, and we were inseparable until he went off to NYU just after his nineteenth birthday. Having him leave all those years ago had been a big change. We’d gone from spending almost every waking moment together to only talking on the phone whenever we could find time. He’d come back home every summer and at Christmas. It was always so nice having him back for a couple of months or even weeks, and it was like no time had passed between us.
After Wren finishes up ironing the curtains, she settles into the couch with a piece of cold pizza, while I vacuum Paige’s new room. When I’m satisfied with how everything looks, I grab myself a slice and sit next to her on the couch. She has her feet propped on a pillow on the coffee table. Her ankles are swollen from being on her feet at the ranch all morning and helping me the last few hours.
“Those are some sweet cankles you got there, babe.” I laugh when she smacks me on the arm.
I take a pull of my beer and a big bite of my pizza. Wren’s eye’s track the movement.
“God, I’d kill for a beer right now.” She sighs and uncaps her water bottle, taking a drink with a grimace.
“Soon, sister,” I tell her. “Finish cooking those babies, and the second they’re out, Hank can get you blitzed, and you guys can have drunken sex on the porch.”
She scrunches her nose up. “The porch?” she asks around a mouthful of pizza.
I swallow a swig of beer and nod. “Yeah, you can’t have sex in front of babies. That’s gotta scar a kid.”
She laughs. “There will be no drunken sex on porches, or otherwise, for at least six weeks.”
I screw up my face. “Oh, that’s right.” I turn and look at her. “Well, that sucks for you.”
“It’s ok. I’m sure I’ll be too tired, anyway,” she says with a shrug.
“Well, you’ve got four more months to fuck like rabbits, then.”
She huffs a laugh through her nose and shakes her head, nearly spitting out her water.
“What? You have more sex than anyone I know.”
“My baby daddy’s hot.” She shrugs again and then grins. “Sooo…are you excited for Hudson to be back?”
