Natalie, now with auburn highlights in her hair, pulls me into a hug. “It’s your official welcome-home party.” She smirks at me and glances at Andrew. “Why do you think I’ve been acting so who-the-hell-cares-she’s-back the past few days?”
“You haven’t been acting like that,” I say.
“OK, maybe not that noticeably,” she says, “but come on, Cam, couldn’t you tell I was holding something in?”
I guess she does have a point, now that I think about it. She has seemed happy that I’m home, but she hasn’t been overjoyed like she would normally be. I guess I’ve been assuming that maybe Blake had finally tamed her some.
I turn to Andrew again. “But we don’t even have any furniture.”
“Oh yes you do!” Natalie says, grabbing my wrist.
She drags me into the living room, where eight beanbag chairs are placed randomly on the floor. In the center of the room are four red milk crates pressed together with a flat piece of lumber on top, which I’m assuming is the coffee table. The electricity isn’t even on yet, but the “coffee table” holds three unlit candles sitting inside the lids from cookie tins, ready and waiting for when night falls several hours from now.
I just laugh. “I love this!” I say to Andrew. “I say we forget about the furniture altogether and stick with the retro beanbag theme!” I’m totally kidding, and Andrew knows it.
He plops down on the nearest beanbag and splays his legs out onto the floor, leaning back into the cushioning vinyl. “I can manage with these, but we’ll definitely need our bed.” I sit down in the one next to him and get comfortable. Everybody else follows suit as Natalie and Blake head into the kitchen area.
Andrew and I found this small house five days after we got here. Wanting out of my mom’s house as soon as humanly possible, he spent hours on the Internet and looked at real estate magazines even while I was slacking off and just relaxing after the long drive from Galveston. I pretty much just let Andrew take the house-hunting thing and run with it. He’d show me pictures, and I’d give my opinion. But this house was perfect. It was the third one we looked at physically (and I really don’t think his love for it had anything to do with accidently seeing my mom half-naked when she thought we’d left for the day). It was priced great because the sellers, who already moved out four months ago, wanted to sell it and get it over with. We ended up buying it for twenty thousand less than what it’s worth, and we agreed that the sellers didn’t need to make any repairs before closing. Since we were cash buyers, everything happened really fast.
Today is officially our first day as its new owners.
We brought a lot of things with us from Galveston, rented a small U-Haul trailer to tow behind us, which we stuffed full of whatever we could fit. But we’ll have to go back soon for the furniture. Unfortunately, Andrew is still adamant about keeping his dad’s old, smelly chair, but he promised to get it cleaned. And he’d better!
Natalie and Blake walk back into the room, each holding three beer bottles, which they start to pass out.
“Thanks, but none for me,” I say.
Natalie looks heartbroken, sticking out her bottom lip as she stares down at me. She’s wearing a tight white shirt that makes her boobs stand out.
“I’m played out on beer for at least a week, Nat,” I say.
She wrinkles her nose but then shrugs and says, “More for me!”
After Blake hands Andrew his beer, he goes to sit down on the only beanbag left, but Natalie races and beats him to it. So, he sits on top of her. While they’re playing around, Natalie lets out this weird peal of laughter, and I glance over to see the look on Andrew’s face.
“Shenzi,” he whispers and shakes his head with the beer bottle at his lips.
I laugh under my breath, knowing now what Andrew meant the first time he called her that. I googled the name shortly after and found out it refers to the mouthy hyena in The Lion King.
“Now, you promised to tell me about your road trip,” Natalie says, now sitting between Blake’s legs on the beanbag.
Everybody looks over at me and Andrew.
“I’ve told you stuff already, Nat.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t told us anything,” says Lea, my friend who works at Starbucks.
Alicia, who works with her, adds, “I went on a road trip with my mom and my brother once, but I’m sure it wasn’t anything like yours.”
“And you still haven’t filled me in on what happened in Florida,” Natalie says. She takes a drink of her beer and then sets it down beside her on the floor, afterward resting her arms over Blake’s legs. Blake kisses the side of her neck.
I cringe inside, just thinking about Florida, but I realize it’s because Andrew would really be the one of us who might be embarrassed about what happened. For a second, I can’t even make eye contact with him because I feel guilty for bringing it up to Natalie at all. I didn’t give her any details, just mentioned that something really messed up happened while we were there.
When I do meet Andrew’s eyes, I can tell he’s not mad at me. He winks and sets his beer on the floor beside him, too.
“Florida,” he says, to my surprise. “That was probably the worst part of our trip, if not also the strangest—and yet, somehow parts of it I didn’t mind so much.”
I have no idea where he’s going with this.
Everyone is looking right at Andrew now, especially Natalie, whose eyes are bugged out with anticipation.