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Gray’s dad grunts when he lands on one of Caroline’s properties. “I think they’re cheating somehow. No one should be this lucky in Monopoly.”
“David,” she admonishes. “Don’t be a sore loser.”
“She says as she takes more of my money,” he grouses. It only makes Caroline giggle the way London did.
“These women are going to be the death of us,” Gray says to his dad.
David winks at me. “And we wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Gray lifts his beer in agreement before taking a drink. We keep going around the board, swapping money and buying properties that some of us can’t actually afford.
“Uh, Daddy?” Luddy starts. “You’re almost out of money.”
He wiggles his eyebrows. “And you’re about to land on my biggest payout.”
She scrunches her face. “’Cept we haven’t landed on it this whole game.”
“But you will. I’m manifesting, baby.”
“Okayyy.” Her skepticism is rife in the drawn-out word.
She grabs the dice to roll for us. I have to bite my lips to keep from bursting out in laughter as Gray stares, slack-jawed. Luddy rolled high enough for us to pass the entire section Gray bought.
She doubles over with giggles as she counts the spaces out loud, laughing harder as she skips over each of Gray’s properties.
“That’s it.” Gray throws his hands in the air. “You two aren’t allowed to play together ever again.”
The declaration has Luddy cackling with delight. In all fairness, she’s done most of the work in this game. She loves counting the money and making purchases for us. I’ve just helped her with the math and reading some of the cards.
Most of my night has been spent thinking about how lucky I am to have such an incredible support system.
After we met with Holt this morning, I felt better having a plan moving forward. I sent Bev home so I could take my mind off the things I can’t control, and then I got a surprise visit at lunch from Gia and Willa. They took me to the Grind so we could hang out with Gwen too. We didn’t talk about my divorce or my crappy ex, focusing instead on grilling Willa over her interaction with Nix yesterday. After Gray dished that bit of information, I was dying to ask her about it.
She says there wasn’t anything more to it than what Gray saw, but not a single one of us believed her. We didn’t push, just made sure she knew she could trust our circle of friends if or when she was ready to talk about it.
Then this afternoon, I got a delivery from Holt’s youngest brother, Gage. He owns the bakery in town and makes the best brownies I’ve ever had. He brought me two with a note from Gray saying I wasn’t allowed to eat them until he got there.
It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. But so worth the smooch I got for waiting for him.
Holt practically shoved me out the door an hour earlier than I usually leave, so I headed straight to Gray’s parents’ house for dinner. David and Caroline asked for a high-level rundown of what we discussed in the meeting, but since then, we haven’t brought it up again.
I was more than prepared to spend my day stressing about what will happen next. I’d even packed some of Willa’s anxiety-reducing essential oils in my bag. But because I have the best friends, I was able to push the majority of my worries aside today.
I did use Willa’s concoction a few times. It smells amazing, and I want to remove as much stress as possible for Peanut’s sake.
It’s given me the ability to focus on what’s important to me. Like the way London is taunting her dad because he’s losing spectacularly at Monopoly.
“All right. That’s enough outta you, little missy.” Gray lunges at Luddy, who squeals as she’s thrown over his shoulder. “It’s time for this sack of potatoes to go to bed. Maybe she’ll be nicer to her daddy tomorrow.”
Luddy giggles. Her sounds are a little muffled from being upside down. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“Huh. Did you guys hear that? It sort of sounded like my sack of potatoes started talking.”
“What?” David gasps. “Your potatoes can talk?”
“I’m not potatoes, Gramps!”
“It did it again!” I call out.
