Page 109 of A Real Goode Time
She had a large purse made from quilt patchwork stitched together with pieces of leather, canvas, flannel, and a dozen other materials, with a drawstring opening and handles repurposed from what looked like an old timey medical bag or carpet bag.
She fiddled with the handles. “I can handle myself. And I like to think the world isn’t as horrible and scary as the news makes it out to be.” A bright grin. “There are good people out there. Kind, wonderful people.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a beautiful antique camera. “And I’ve taken photographs of quite a lot of them, on the way up here from Manhattan.” She replaced the camera. “I’ll take my chances out in the world. How else am I supposed to find all the art I’m meant to make?”
My little sister Poppy had grown up in more ways than one.
LA waseverything I expected it to be, and more. There were thousand-dollar bottles of champagne on the flight from Ketchikan to LA, and a pair of limousines waiting for us on the tarmac. The glam squad—who saw us in a salon on Rodeo Drive, included a whole team of people. They trimmed my hair back several inches, tutting over the dead ends, did some sort of treatment to it, and I don’t even know what else. Then it was off to the resort where we got massages and manicures and pedicures, all the while sipping drinks and talking nonstop.
I got to know all the other women, and they were all, as Mom said, warm and welcoming and funny and inappropriate. And the wonder of it all was that Mom was just as hysterically inappropriate.
It was amazing, andalmosttook my mind off of Rhys.
Poppy got hell from Mom over the nipple piercings, and when it threatened to boil over into a real fight, Poppy yanked off her shirt in the hotel room in front of all of the gathered girls and removed both piercings.
“There. If you care that much, I’ll take them out, just for you. But I’ll put them back in the moment this trip is over. It’s my body and I like them.” Poppy stood topless in front of Mom, bold, unapologetic. “I don’t see the big deal, but I don’t want to fight with you, so there, they’re out.”
Mom stared her down. “I’ve never been a fan of body piercings, you know that. My friend in college got a belly button ring and it got super infected and she was very sick. But, if you feel that strongly about it, I won’t say another word. Itisyour body, and itisyour choice. I just don’t agree with it.”
Poppy put her shirt back on. “You just don’t like it because it means I’m an adult and you’re just now really realizing it.”
Mom laughed. “Actually, if you want the truth, it’s more because I’m of a certain age and I have hold-over ideas about body piercings.”
“Fair enough.” Poppy grinned. “Youareold.”
Mom laughed. “Oh shut up, I’m notthatold.”
Mara, once the silence threatened to go on too long, raised her hand. “Does anyone else share a sense of extreme inferiority, after seeing Poppy’s ridiculously amazing eighteen-year-old titties?”
“Ooh, ooh,” Claire said. “Me, me! But I feel inferior to all of you in that department, so it’s not new. It’s just not fair that she has melons the size of my goddamn head that arethatfucking perkyandthat highandthat tight.”
Poppy shook her head, snorting. “God, would you all stop about my boobs? I didn’tdoanything, they just grew like that and I had nothing to do with it.”
“And grew, and grew, and grew, and now it’s a wonder you don’t fall over like a Weeble-Wobble,” Dru said, laughing.
“You realize women pay tens of thousands of dollars to get what you have naturally,” Eva said. “My mother, for example.”
Poppy shrugged. “I’ve thought about a reduction, actually. I had a friend who was a senior last year, and she got one and said it made her life a lot easier. But then, she had, like, double E’s or something.”
Dru winced. “Yikes.”
“Yeah, shereducedto a triple D.”
Claire snorted. “That’s bullshit.” She cupped herself. “I barely have an A-cup.”
Once upon a time, Mom wouldn’t have let that go so easily. Liberated and open minded, indeed.
A lot of the conversation revolved around men, and sex, and babies, and love…and that made it impossible not to think about Rhys.
And then, once we were back in Ketchikan, three days later, Lexie and Myles got married.
The wedding tookplace on the roof of Badd Kitty, and the officiant was a monster of a man with the body of an Olympian god who was, apparently, Myles’s drummer, and who had gotten his license online just so he could perform this ceremony.
The wedding march was played acoustically by Canaan, Corin, Aerie, Tate, and Crow, a quintet of two guitars, a ukulele, a cello, and a mandolin.
There were white twinkling lights strung by the thousands overhead in a brilliant lacework of golden light. The space was decorated with white orchids and lilies and daisies and roses—hundreds of flowers.
There were children all over the place, laughing, playing, making noise, and if anyone tried to shush them Lexie just told them to let the kids play, it was not a formal event but a celebration so they should have all the fun in the world.
Lexie read a poem she’d written for her vows, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place when she was done.