wish this tangent hadn’t gotten us off topic.
“Not in a long time.” I smile.
“But the last guy she saw for a little … my God! He was like something out of nineteen fifties Hollywood.”
Thinking of Clive, I smile. “He was a good guy, but …”
Penelope snickers.
“What? What’s so funny?” Presley whips her head back and forth between us.
“What our conservative friend isn’t telling you is that gorgeous Clive had no idea how to find her clit. He couldn’t locate that thing with a flashlight and a search and rescue team at his disposal.”
I have to crack up at this, because sadly, for both him and I, it was true. “Oh my God … I don’t mean to be insensitive because he was so nice, but … not even Google Maps could save that man.”
“Lily! Who are you and what have you done with the senator’s daughter?” Presley howls.
Penelope starts waving her finger around in the air. “I don’t understand what’s so difficult about it. We have a button, right at the top, full of nerves. It literally sticks out just for them to find. Some men, I swear!”
We all dissolve into a fit of snorts and a cacophony of howling laughter, and it feels so good to belly laugh that I can forget all about what almost happened last night.
Presley gets her breathing back under control after laughing so hard she’s almost gasping for breath. “Back to wedding things and off the topic of everyone’s coochy. I think we have the dress style nailed down, and I have a photographer I’m meeting with in Lancaster next week. I think Keaton and I have decided … the reception has to be in Bloomsbury Park. He’s adamant about getting married in the church but gave me free rein for the party. There is just too much history between us not to do it there. By the lake, that cute little gazebo, the summer sun …”
I brush off the gazebo comment because I can’t even let those thoughts filter in or I’ll cry.
“Wait, the summer sun?” I eye her suspiciously.
A sheepish look steals over her expression. “So … we’re thinking we want to get married the last week of August.”
“This August?” Penelope chokes on the piece of chocolate-covered caramel she just popped in her mouth.
Presley giggles. “Yes … and don’t you two look at me like I’m crazy. We just don’t want to have a long engagement. It’s not like we’re throwing some huge soiree, it’s friends and family in the park and neither of us is too hung up on the whole wedding obsession.”
“What you’re saying is, you don’t care about wedding nonsense but are doing the traditional thing for Keaton. You’re such a good wife.” Penelope squeezes her hand.
And gosh, if that wasn’t the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.
I slapped my hand down on the stack of magazines.
“Well, I guess our timeline was just moved up. Time to make some decisions, and fast.”
8
Bowen
My body shakes as I rip myself from sleep.
It’s the only way to bring reality roaring back, the only way to remove myself from the nightmare poisoning my brain.
Even years later, I can still feel the piece of glass that embedded itself in my ribcage. About three inches down from my pec, a shard as long as a pencil and wide as a book jammed itself into my skin and missed piercing several internal organs by a fraction.
I rub the spot and can feel the raised scar where the doctor stitched me up with forty pinpricks. Not that I felt it at the time, I was so high. And the piece of glass would end up being the least damaging of any of my injuries. At the time of the crash, it was just the one I could visually see … that shard of my truck sticking out of my abdomen. The amount of blood, although from a superficial wound, was nauseating. It was the memory I held most clearly from that night.
The one of myself hanging upside down from the driver’s seat, blood pouring from my stomach.
Well, that, and looking out of the place where my windshield used to be and seeing Lily’s body splashed across the pavement.
You know how they talk about adrenaline rushes and the fact that they mask any pain? I will swear to this day that’s what happened. Something in me, when I saw Lily lying there, set aside all the pain in my body and put it on hold. Later, I’d learn