by Amie Knight
I patted her hands that were clasped around my waist and said the only thing that came to mind, “Always, Hazel. Always.”
“No, no, no,” I whispered to my car and slapped the steering wheel a few times. This couldn’t be happening. My baby always got me where I needed to be. Except today, apparently. I was broken down outside of the grocery store and I wasn’t happy about it at all. First of all, I hated grocery shopping. It bored me to tears and second of all, my Eldorado had finally bitten the dust.
I tried cranking it a few more times and looked in the rearview mirror and just happened to see my milk and eggs back there in the back seat. Damn it, if I didn’t get home soon, my groceries that were a pain in the ass to buy were going to go bad.
I checked the time on my phone, deciding on who to call. Pops was probably with Amor right now, but how the hell would I know because the man never ever carried a damn cell phone. Even though I’d gotten him one. He left the damn thing at home everywhere he went.
Still, I called it, willing him to answer so he could come and get me and check out the car. While he didn’t know a ton about cars I was sure he had a guy who could help me. The man had a guy for everything.
The phone rang and rang and rang. The man didn’t even have a voice mail set up. I decided Scarlett was probably my best bet, so I dialed her up.
She answered after about two rings. “Hello.”
“Oh my God, girl. I need a favor. I’m broken down at the grocery store downtown. Do you think you could come give me a ride?” I would have walked the four miles home, but I couldn’t with all the damn groceries.
“Shit, I can’t. I’m at a dress fitting with Ella for the wedding. It’s so close now we have to get this done today.” Scarlett was getting married in less than a week. She hadn’t gone full-on bridezilla yet, but I had a feeling we weren’t that far off. She was being a little crazy lazy, but I believed that had more to do with the hormones from the baby than the actual wedding.
“It’s okay. I’ll call an Uber or something.”
“What? No! I’ll just call Oliver. He can pick you up.”
“No, Scar. It’s fine—” I heard a beep that told me she’d hung the hell up. God, I didn’t need for Oliver to come and get me. That was a terrible idea. I hadn’t seen him since the outing on the bikes and he hadn’t contacted me at all. I hadn’t contacted him either. God, I didn’t want to deal with awkward tonight.
My phone pinged with a text.
Scarlett: Ollie is on his way.
Fucking superb. Oliver was coming to save the day again. But I wasn’t his responsibility. It wasn’t right to bother him with all my problems. He wasn’t my keeper. Guilt set in while I waited for him to show up. The man had to be sick of me and my fucking problems. I knew I was sick of me.
Oliver drove up and parked next to me. My window was down, so he came over and rested his arms along the edge and leaned in. “I’m here to rescue a damsel in distress.” He was being cute, but the comment made me prickly. I didn’t need saving.
I looked around the car and turned to look in the back seat before turning back to Oliver. “I don’t see any damsels.”
He laughed. “Well, have you seen any Hazels? Because on the way over here I was really looking forward to seeing her.”
Damn him with his smooth talking. Honestly, I’d been ready to get my groceries and pile them on my back like a pack mule and walk the four miles home.
“I’m glad to see you, too, Winnie,” I said honestly, but begrudgingly.
“Well, your face doesn’t show it at all,” he said, opening the back seat door and collecting my groceries and placing them in the back of his car.
“Sorry,” I said, getting out of the car and grabbing the gallon of milk out of the back. “I just feel bad that you’re always coming to save me and I don’t do a damn thing for you.”
The milk was snatched from my hand and thrown in the back seat and I was pressed up against the side of his car and it all happened in about one point five seconds.
He looked down at me with blazing hot eyes. “Don’t do that, Hazel. Don’t put yourself down and put me on some pedestal. If I was broken down you’d be there in a second. It’s what we do for our friends.”
I looked up at him because how could I not? He was invading all of my space and I could smell him. And damn, it made me hot when he was all bossy and smelled good. I tried to hold my breath so I wouldn’t inhale the intoxicating scent that was innately Winnie. And then I got my shit together and asked the question I’d been wanting the answer to for months. “Is that what we are, Oliver? Friends?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and I wanted to lean over and lick it. Fuck me.
“We will always be friends, Hazel. No matter what happens between us. I’ll always be there for you.”
I nodded. That was the safe answer. The Oliver answer. He was good at those. If we were still friends then why hadn’t he come around more? Why did I feel like he was still avoiding me? But I couldn’t accuse him of anything because I’d been just as bad and not contacted him either.
I squirmed my way out from between the car and Oliver and grabbed my purse from my own car and locked it up, thinking I’d have it towed in the morning to a mechanic.
I climbed into the front passenger seat and slammed the door. Oliver got into the driver’s seat slowly, but he didn’t crank the car or buckle his belt. He turned toward me.
“Why are you mad at me?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not mad at you.”
Pushing his lips out, he said, “Bullshit. What’s going on?”
Shrugging, I mumbled, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong, Oliver? You’ve been avoiding me for months.”
He turned in his seat so he was staring at me, but I decided I wasn’t looking at him. I stared out the front window.
He had no problem talking to the side of my head. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve been giving you time. You asked me to leave, Hazel. And I’ve been respecting that.”
He was speaking the truth. I wasn’t really mad at him. I was mad at myself. I didn’t know how to go back to the way we were, but I also didn’t know how to move forward either. This situation was majorly messed up.
I didn’t say anything back to him because there wasn’t anything I could say. He was right.
“Hey”—he pulled my sweatshirt, so I turned and looked at him—“just because things are harder between us right now doesn’t mean I don’t still care about you. This is just a storm, Hazel. It will pass.”
I nodded. I sure hoped he was right. He buckled his belt, cranked the car, and pulled into traffic. The drive home was quiet and awkward just like I thought.
When we pulled up to the house, I was surprised to see both Amor’s and Pops’s cars there. They hadn’t answered the damn phone.
Oliver helped me with the groceries and I unlocked the front door with one hand, yelling, “Pops” as I opened it. No one answered. Maybe they were out back.
We walked to the kitchen and set the groceries down, noticing the back door was open, but the screen door on it was closed. I started putting groceries away and Oliver helped.
“Something smell funny to you?” he asked, making a weird face while he put the milk in the fridge.
I sniffed the air, noticing a slight smell, too. And then I realized what the scent was. I’d smelled it plenty of times when I was at high school parties.
Abandoning the groceries on the counter, I went toward the smell and opened the screen door and stepped out onto the back porch, Oliver on my heels.
I couldn’t believe what I saw. My jaw fell open and went slack, my words somewhere stuck in my mouth. Because what in the ever-loving hell?
Pops and Amor sat on the back porch at the little wood table smoking what appeared to be joints from the look and smell. In the middle of the table was a half-eaten apple pie with two forks sitting in the empty part of the dish, crumbs everywhere, even dow
n the front of Pops’s shirt.
“Hazel, you’re home!” Pops said like he was surprised. He’d sent me to the damn store.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked, waving some smoke out of my face. Yep, that was definitely pot.
I heard a snicker behind me and turned to glare at Oliver, who was covering his mouth and trying not to laugh.
“Do not, Winnie. This shit is not funny!” Glaring at Pops, I asked, “Are you seriously sitting here on the back porch smoking pot?”
Amor jumped in. “Oh, Hazel. Marijuana is an herb and has so many medicinal purposes.”
I rolled my eyes so hard. “Okay, so what doctor gave you two pot and what, pray tell, did he prescribe it for?”
Amor took another big toke of her joint and broke out into a fit of coughs and Pops started giggling uncontrollably.
I was going to kill them both. I pointed to the pie dish. “And you ate pie, Pops! What about your diabetes? Have you checked your sugar?”
Fuck, it was probably through the roof. I wondered if he had even taken his insulin. And then I pictured my sweet pops buying weed in some less than savory neighborhood and felt like my brain was going to explode.
“Don’t worry, Hazy, I took some insulin. Have a seat. Hang out a while.” He motioned to one of the empty seats at the table. He turned to Oliver. “Come on over, Ollie?” He held out his joint. “Wanna try some? This shit is good.”
I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head. I did not just hear my pops say this shit is good. I was going to kill whoever had sold my pops this shit. I didn’t care if I had to drive through the worst parts of town to get them.
I snatched the joint out of Pops’s hand and put it out right in their stupid pie dish.
“You just ruined my blunt and my pie!” Pops cried out.
I pointed at him. “That was not a blunt. That was a joint. If you’re gonna be a pothead you should probably know the difference and you don’t need anymore damn pie. You’re a diabetic, for fuck’s sake.”
He threw his finger up at me. “Don’t you dare use fuck at me, Hazel Indigo Jones.”
Meanwhile, Amor took another long pull off her joint and blew it right my way. Waving my hand frantically in front of my face, I started coughing.
I heard Oliver’s deep laugh through the haze of smoke and realized he wasn’t on my side at all.
I grabbed the pie plate and held it up to Amor. “Put it out now, ma’am.”
It seemed like she was contemplating arguing with me, but thank goodness she finally acquiesced and stubbed out her joint in the pie plate next to Pops’s joint.
Looking at Pops, Amor rolled her eyes and then said, “It’s okay, honey. There’s plenty more where that came from.”
There was? Like how the fuck much more? I stared down at the two of them, absolutely flabbergasted. Never in my life had I seen my pops do anything more than have a couple of drinks. And now all of a sudden there was plenty more where that came from.
Oliver came up behind me and rested his arm around my shoulders. “It’s okay, Hazel. It’s not the end of the world. Don’t let them give you a stroke at such a young age.”
I gave him a death glare before asking Pops, “Where the hell did you get the weed, old man?”
He threw his hands out in front of him innocently. “What do you mean?”
I talked slowly this time so he could understand me through his marijuana induced haze. “Who sold you the pot?”
“Oh,” he said, grinning like a kid in a candy store. “We didn’t buy it. We grew it.”
I stared at him dumbly, not comprehending at all. “What?”
He pointed out in the yard. “We grew it. It’s all ours. We’re never going to run out. Amor was right. There’s plenty where that came from.” He was crazy giddy and stoned out of his mind.
I turned to where he was pointing out in the yard. There our greenhouse sat that I hadn’t been in since we put it together.
I stared at it, not believing what he was telling me. He didn’t. He couldn’t have. I started walking down the steps of the deck to the backyard. When I was almost to the greenhouse, Oliver fell in step beside me.
I turned to look at him, feeling like this couldn’t be real. He raised his eyebrows at me like well, let’s go. And we walked into a greenhouse that was in my backyard that was, in fact, jam-packed with pot. So much of it, I thought I was going to pass out from the surprise of it all.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, spinning in a circle, taking it all in, and that took a minute because there was a hell of a lot to take in. “It can’t all be marijuana,” I whispered. “There’s so much of it.”
I was desperately searching for any plant that wasn’t a marijuana plant but was coming up disappointingly short.
“Christ almighty.” I heard Oliver say.
I slowly sank down onto the floor in shock until I was sitting on my behind, Indian style. Holy shit. We were going to jail. What in the hell was my pops thinking and what did he think he was going to do with this much pot?
Then I started to think that possibly I had a contact high and this was all made up in my mind. There was no possible way the man had grown this much pot and I didn’t know about it. Yes, this was just a figment of my drug induced mind. Amor had gotten me high with that smoke in my face and now I was seeing crazy shit.
Oliver sat down in front of me in the row in the middle of the greenhouse. We were practically knee to knee. “I cannot believe he grew this much pot. Your pops is fucking crazy, but I love it.”
He was on the verge of laughter and I was on the verge of a panic attack. “So you see it, too?”
He cocked a brow. “See what?”
I looked around. “All of the reefer.”
Oliver looked around. “Oh, yeah. I see it. It’s kinda hard to miss.”
“Fuck,” I said, putting my hands over my face. “I was hoping I had a contact high and had imagined this whole thing.”
Oliver’s head flew back and a big guffaw left him that made me smile, too, and before I knew it I was dying with laughter. Laughing so hard and long that my belly hurt and my cheeks ached. I thought of Pops and Amor growing all of this for months and hiding it from me. I fell back into the grass and lay there and laughed some more.
Oliver joined me, lying in the grass at my side. My eyes were watering and my cheeks burned. “Oh my God, Winnie. My eighty-something-year-old grandfather and his girlfriend got stoned on the back porch and baked a fucking pie because they got the munchies.” I laughed out hysterically, wiping the tears from my eyes.
He was laughing just as hard. “Your pops always seems to surprise me even when I think he can’t anymore.”
“Right!” I agreed, my laughter finally subsiding.
We quieted, the silence nice. Turns out pot plants are loud and rowdy like you would think they would be. I closed my eyes and I felt Oliver’s hand inch toward mine, so I grabbed it and brought it up, holding it to my stomach.
He let out a long, contented sigh. “Did you open your birthday present?”
Eyes still closed, I gave a small smile. “I sure did.”
“And?”
“And I love it. I added it to my bracelet.” I squeezed his hand.
He was quiet for a minute before he asked, “How come you never wear it?”
I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at him. I shouldn’t have done that because he looked good enough to eat. He was sporting a delicious stubble all over his jaw that made me want to rub my face all over it. His eyes were extra green today and dancing with emotion. His lips were full and pink and I wanted more than anything to kiss him.
My entire body ached with wanting him. I brought our hands to my mouth and kissed the back of his before placing them right back on my stomach. I just had to.
“I don’t want to lose it. It means too much to me.” I might as well have been talking about him. A beat passed and I could tell he could see it, the realization of the comparison crossing
over his features.
“But if you don’t wear it, how can you enjoy it?” It felt like we were talking about him more than the bracelet.
“I can admire it. And still love it without wearing it all the time,” I defended.
He looked sad. “Then what’s the point of even keeping it?”
I rolled onto my side, our tangled hands between us, and rubbed my other hand along the side of his sweet, boyish face. “Because I adore it. Because it’s one of my favorite things in the world. Because it makes me feel loved.”
And the bracelet did. So did Oliver.
He gave me a small smile and then tilted his head and looked around the greenhouse above us. “How the hell are we going to get rid of all the weed? And what the hell are we going to do when your pops tries to kill us for it?”
Burying my face in the side of his arm, I giggled and he laughed. And that laugh, I was pretty sure my panties were soaking wet. Being around Oliver after that night in Level Up was proving to be the worst kind of torture.
I’d always thought he was sexy, but now that I’d had a nibble I was ready for the whole damn meal. I needed to slow my damn roll.
“I can’t believe there is this much pot in here. Are you sure we aren’t high?” I asked into his shoulder.
He chuckled low. “Nope. Not high at all. But that can be arranged if you like.”
We both laughed, lying underneath at least fifty pot plants growing in a greenhouse I’d built with my own hands and it had been the best time I’d had with Oliver in a long time. I guess I probably had Pops to thank for that.
I was walking down the aisle toward Luk and while he looked like a beautiful groom and I was beyond happy for my best friend in the world, I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off Oliver. He was walking next to me and I was having such a hard time not looking at him, I was afraid I was going to trip over my long dress in these forsaken heels Scarlett had wanted me to wear. He looked devastatingly handsome. Not that he wasn’t on a regular day, but today he looked like a dream.
I thought I looked pretty good myself in a floor-length, sleeveless, pink gown that had a high front, but the back was completely exposed almost down to my ass. I’d opted for a matching scarf to drape over my lower arms.