Page 37 of Yours, Always
Devlin snorted into her glass, quickly covering her mouth with her hand. “He broke up with you in the car?”
Annabelle let out a guffaw. “Oh dang, you didn’t even make it to bowling?”
“Nope. It was so terrible. He took me to that little Americana place by my house. It was so close I walked home after.” Prudence thought about going light on the details of what happened leading to the break-up—Chuck was a decent guy, and she didn’t really want anyone to know what happened—but this was ladies’ night, after all...
“I thought—” Prudence tried to think of how to describe the pre-break-up make-out session so it was less embarrassing to Chuck. “Okay, this doesn’t go anywhere but between us, right?”
Both Devlin and Annabelle raised their hands in a promise.
“Well, I thought I’d try to see if we still had a spark, anything that would make sense for me to stay with Chuck.” She felt oddly reluctant to talk about it, though she and Annabelle had shared many details of their private lives with each other. Maybe it was because Devlin was there. She was such a new addition to their friend group, she hadn’t really felt her out for how comfortable she was with…sensitive topics, but now was as good a time as any.
“So, we’re in the parking lot of the restaurant, and I decide to start fooling around. I’m fully prepared to give some car head—”
“Prudence!” Annabelle mock gasped.
“Oh please. I’d have gone through with it, I guess I’ve been going through with it for the past year, but it just wasn’t right. And, of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened with Greyson…” She thought back to the parking lot yesterday, her thoughts broken into by Devlin.
“Wait, what? What happened with Greyson?”
Prudence turned pink, her thoughts moving from the parking lot to Greyson’s house. Well, if there was such a thing as oversharing it was about to happen now.
“Oh, Devlin,” Prudence said. Annabelle was sitting and shaking with laughter. “I just don’t know. Greyson and I have been friends for our whole lives, then suddenly this trip seems different. The morning of the commercial I caught him, uh, shall we say pleasuring himself in the shower.”
Devlin’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Prudence sighed. She knewthatimage would pop into Devlin’s mind at the absolute worst moment.
“And…and…um”—Devlin stuttered—“you just happened to be in his bathroom? Seems coincidental.”
Prudence giggled, downing her glass of wine, not even having to hold her hand out as Annabelle refilled it. “It’s not like I just came in from the street and walked into his bathroom, Devlin! Gabe was in the kitchen, and he said Greyson was upstairs, so I went up there.” She paused to think, putting her hand to her chin in the exaggerated fashion of someone who was quickly getting tipsy. “I guess I didn’t have to gointothe bathroom.” She giggled again. “I don’t know why I did.”
“You know exactly why you did it.” Annabelle finished off the first bottle of wine and stood. “I’m going to grab another bottle.”
“There’s more?” asked Devlin. “These don’t seem like coincidences to me, Prudence.”
Prudence pondered Devlin’s words. What was a coincidence anyway? Seemingly unconnected things happening at the same time to make it appear to be connected. But the incidents that happened weren’t as unconnected as she may have previously thought. She knew that she and Greyson had danced around each other for quite a while, distance making it easier to put off any discussion or any acknowledgment of what they felt. Perhaps she was pushing the issue on this trip. He’d been away for so long, and she didn’t know when he’d be coming back. Her subconscious was making the decision for her.
“I don’t know, Devlin. I heard the water running. Maybe he was brushing his teeth. Maybe I was curious?”
“Damn right you were,” Annabelle hollered from the kitchen. “Tell her what happened after his concussion.”
“Can I finish my story, please?” Prudence yelled back, getting the sound of a cork popping as her only reply. “Anyway, after his concussion I was there to wake him up when it was needed, to make sure that everything went okay, being a good friend, but he woke up in the middle of the night and, well, we made out.”
To Devlin’s credit, she seemed unphased by Prudence’s words. “So let me get this straight. In the course of twenty-four hours, less than twenty-four hours really, you caught Greyson masturbating, he gets a head injury while starring in a commercial for your boyfriend’s business, you proceed to make out with him after this head injury, only to then break up with your boyfriend.”
“I don’t think his concussion had anything—”
“Oh yes it did,” Annabelle called in a sing-song voice from the kitchen.
“How long does it take to get a bottle of wine?” Prudence said, her sentence going from a bellow to an even tone as Annabelle appeared back in the room.
“Snacks,” Annabelle stated, as if that should’ve been completely obvious. “We’re going to need snacks.”
“Oh, thank you.” Devlin reached for a slice of cheese and cracker. “So how does his concussion tie into the two of you fooling around?”
“He doesn’t remember it,” Prudence mumbled, pretending to be engrossed in the science of choosing the right cheese-to-cracker ratio.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Prudence let out a whoosh of air. “He doesn’t remember it, has no recollection. He doesn’t remember the speech or the kissing or the—” She stopped, wanting to hold a few details back for herself.