Then I decided not to wonder. Best to leave it alone and book my flight to Nicaragua first thing in the morning.
I got ready for bed making certain I did it in the bathroom where Vance told me there were no cameras (and I hoped he wasn’t lying).
Then I climbed in bed and waited for Vance to break in. Wyoming wasn’t that far away, just a few hours. He could make it back in time, from what I heard he was a good tracker.
I tried to stay awake so I could hear him when he came in and be ready to give him a piece of my mind before I jumped his bones.
Then when I dozed, I tried to do it lightly.
Then I fell dead asleep.
* * * * *
I woke to the phone ringing.
I didn’t open my eyes and did a body scan, feeling for extra heat, the weight of an arm on me.
Nothing.
I opened my eyes and saw Boo staring at me. “Meow,” Boo said.
I slept on my side in the middle of the bed. Even though it was a big bed it wouldn’t give Vance much room to sleep and not touch me if I was in the middle.
Still, I turned to my back and twisted my head to look.
No one there.
Boo walked on my chest, sat down and stared at me. “Me… ow,” he repeated.
My answering machine clicked on.
“In a second, Boo,” I whispered, waiting for a voice to give a message and hating myself because I was holding my breath.
The voice came.
It wasn’t Vance. It was Ally.
“Girl, wake up. We’re all doing mimosas and eggs benedict. Dozens. Meeting in an hour. Be prepared, Tod’s bringing the Wedding Planner Book. It might get hairy.” She paused. “By the way, ‘in an hour’ means nine thirty.”
I listened to her disconnect.
I laid there, stared at the ceiling and stroked Boo. Boo liked breakfast but he liked stroking better so he settled in and waited.
I wondered if I could do mimosas and eggs benedict with a gaggle of Vance’s friends. I wondered how, if I did do mimosas and eggs benedict, I would go back to a normal life. I wondered what the Wedding Planner Book was.
I curled my arm around Boo, threw back the covers and Boo and I slid off the bed.
I got Boo breakfast.
Then I got ready for Dozens.
* * * * *
After another boring, useless, action-free night of patrol, Luke and I walked up to my house.
I told him he could just take off but he insisted on walking me up to the door.
I’d had another shit day, no calls, no space invasions, no nothing from Vance.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I did break up with him and I wasn’t playing games.
Still, I didn’t expect him to give up so easily.
* * * * *
I found out at breakfast that Tod had declared himself Indy and Lee’s official wedding planner and thus had created The Wedding Planner Book. Indy hadn’t actually made this officially official but was letting Tod live the dream.
For some reason though, throughout breakfast, Tod argued with Roxie (not Indy) about all things wedding. This argument took the form of Tod saying what was going to happen and Roxie saying whatever Tod said was going to happen wasn’t going to happen with a lot of, “We’ve been here before, Tod.”
Indy ignored them and gabbed with the rest of us about her and Lee’s plans to go to Lee’s cabin in Grand Lake for Thanksgiving; whether something big was going to happen between Tex and Jet’s mom (apparently, Tex was Roxie’s uncle and that would make Jet and Roxie related by marriage, I was learning this was an incestuous group); and a lengthy discussion about Luke and my conversation last night.
Indy confirmed that all the guys on the team knew about my cherry popping.
At this news I ordered another mimosa.
“Men think virginity is hot,” Ally assured me after I’d given the waitress my order.
“Maybe for eighteen year olds, not for twenty-six, nearly twenty-seven year olds,” I told her.
“No… um, they just think it’s hot,” Indy put in, “even Lee thought it was hot.”
I stared at her.
“Yeah, Eddie thought it was hot too,” Jet shared.
I turned my head and my eyes bugged out at Jet. “How does Eddie know? He’s not even a member of the team.”
She just looked at Indy and kept her mouth shut. Lee had told Eddie.
These guys.
“Hank knows too,” Roxie decided to stop arguing with Tod and enter our conversation. I actually felt the blood drain from my face when I looked at her. “For the record, he also thinks it’s hot.”
That was it. “I’m moving to Nicaragua,” I announced.
“Oh Sugar, it ain’t that bad,” Daisy threw in. “Vance thought it was hot.”
That was true, Vance thought it was hot – for about a day (okay, maybe two).
I caught the waitress and doubled my mimosa order.
“You should know pretty much everyone is pissed at Vance for leaving you,” Indy said after I finished my bid for a drunken stupor.
“He didn’t leave me. I broke up with him,” I reminded her.
“They don’t look at it that way. They figure if he wanted you, he could have, you know, talked you out of it,” Indy went on.
I was thinking, deep down inside where I didn’t want to go, they were right. Any thinking about Vance made my heart hurt so I pushed it aside.
“It’s better this way,” I told them all.
They just stared at me and I knew they didn’t believe me.
Whatever.
Time to talk about something else.
I turned to Tod. “I like tangerine and chocolate for wedding colors,” I lied.
Tod’s eyes got wide and happy.
“Oh shit,” Ally muttered.
“Do not even go there,” Roxie warned, eyes narrowing on Tod.
The discussion soon got heated.
I was off the hook.
* * * * *
I went to training with Luke and nearly at the end of our hour’s session I dropped him to his back with me on top.
“Yee ha!” I shouted in his face, sitting astride him, chest pressed to his.
“What do you do now?” Luke asked, hands at my hips, mini-half-grin on his lips.
“I don’t know,” I sat up, “maybe this?” Then I swung my arms out in front of me in a continuous loop and chanted, “Go Jules, go Jules, go Jules.”
The door opened, my head swung to it in an oh-my-God-not-Vance panic and I saw Mace walking in wearing a white tee with some surfer design on the front and black track pants with white stripes up the side. He looked at us on the floor, face blank like every day he walked into the down room and saw a woman astride Luke.