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For everyone who got to chapter three of Done and Dusted and immediately wanted Gus and Teddy.
YEAHHH BABY LETS GO
We’ve been leaning on each other ever since.
It was a beautiful thing to watch your best friend be loved in the way you know she deserves.
Clothes were like armor, and armor would be needed if a certain older brother of Emmy’s was going to show up today.
Gus was Emmy’s oldest brother, Brooks’s best friend, and, most important, my archnemesis.
But sometimes, when the topic of the wedding came up, I got sad. Not inconsolable or anything, but it felt like my happiness for my best friend and my sadness for myself were both staking claim in my chest, punching each other as hard as they could to see who would get knocked out first.
It was a reminder that we were in different phases of our lives, and it scared me.
At that moment, the back door to the bar opened and Gus Ryder sauntered in. I could feel my blood pressure rising.
The mustache was still going strong, and even though I thought it looked good on him, the first thing out of my mouth was “Hey, pornstache. Nice of you to join us.”
No one else stomped around like they owned the place—not even Brooks, and he did own the place.
One of the most annoying things about Teddy? She was familiar, even though I didn’t want her to be. Don’t think about it.
So yeah. Teddy was beautiful or whatever.
Teddy was a hell of a lot less infuriating—probably because she couldn’t talk yet.
I didn’t like the way holding it made me feel.
“It won’t win you any points with Emmy if we kill each other,” I said. “And I swear to god, Brooks, I will haunt the shit out of you.”
There was one other time Teddy and I had agreed on something, but that agreement meant keeping our fucking mouths shut.
Oh?
Damn it. I fell for that every fucking time.
“I thought you were supposed to be running from the demons,” Emmy had said with a laugh when I told her what happened in the basement. “Not straight into their arms.”
Emmy’s my best friend, so I was thrilled for her, but it’s been weird to watch the way our friendship has changed—for me, not for her, I don’t think—in the two years since she came back from Denver. I’m still reckoning with that—a life where it’s not just her and me against the world.
Damn do I get this
It just feels like everyone is moving on…without me.
whether they should break up with their boyfriend (almost always yes),
The other day, at Emmy’s house, I’d noticed she’d put a bunch of pictures in frames—nearly all of them of her and Brooks—hiking, on vacation, at Rebel Blue. I realized that the pictures I had framed in my room were of Emmy and me.
It was items like this that made me cling to the hope that I could bring my possessions with me to the afterlife.
“I understand.” (I didn’t.)
Teddy is so real
“How’d that taste coming out of your mouth?” he asked. “Not great, honestly,” I said with a sigh.
Never in my life had I heard August Ryder sound so…dejected. I didn’t like the way it gnawed at my heart.
I hoped the Home Alone reference would lighten the mood a little. Growing up, it was Gus’s perennial request for the yearly Ryder holiday movie marathon.
I gave him half my lunch and brought him home after school. He’s been around ever since.
For some reason, I didn’t think I liked it, which was a weird feeling for a man who spent half of our interactions begging her to shut the fuck up.
I was going to pay her non-Monopoly money,
“Has anyone ever told you to shut up?” “You, usually,” she said with an eye roll. “Shut up.”
Something about Teddy taking her from me felt so…natural, it made my chest feel weird.
“Lucky you’re mom’s a lawyer.”
Oof
I looked at the last door on the right—Gus’s room. A little too close for comfort, but whatever.
The thought of Gus having to make this bed for me and not being constitutionally capable of half-assing it made me smile.
It would never not be the most annoying thing in the world that he was so fucking handsome.
Huh. I didn’t know he knew that.
“Plus, I haven’t gotten to the sex yet. The hero and heroine are too busy fumbling around each other to realize that the reason it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room every time they touch is because they’re in love.” She sighed.
He had a forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth, which was open, and he was frozen as he stared at me. His eyes tracked up and down my form.
It reminded me of something I tried to forget—something Gus had obviously forgotten. I wished I could forget it, too—since it obviously hadn’t meant anything.
He’d come back home to work for Gus at Rebel Blue and hadn’t shown any signs of leaving yet. But I had a feeling he would later this fall, after Cam’s wedding, when the girl he’d been in love with since he was sixteen was officially married to another man.
There was a tattoo there—an Old English A. He’d never actually confirmed to me that it was for Cam’s last name, but I knew.
Because at that moment, Teddy was sitting in a booth in the Meadowlark Diner and flashing a smile that she’s never given me at another man.
But that white strap was like a light in the dark—just like it was a few years ago.
She talked a lot, but not in a way that made me want to listen. I always listened to Teddy—mostly so I could think of a comeback for whatever bullshit she was spewing.
“We don’t think any foods are good or bad,” I jumped in. This was something Cam was passionate about, and I was happy to support her in it. “It’s all just food.”
Love them as parents
“Auntie and Uncle are kissing!” Of course they were. Lucky that’s all they were doing.
I felt a warm glow that momentarily made me forget how much pain I was in. It felt like home.
He sounded so soft when he talked about his daughter. I wanted more.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Teddy.” “I hope you do too.” And I really did.
