Page 28 of While You Were Trending

They’re cut from the same cloth. Both love making trouble in public but are secretly hiding the biggest, softest hearts you’ll ever find.

He grins at me. “Somebody’s gotta make sure the old ladies keep having fun.”

“Who you calling old?” Pip herself says as she steps out onto the porch.

She’s wearing short shorts that leave nothing to the imagination and very little else.

She prefers to let the girls hang out.

It’s how she lost a nipple in a chicken-frying accident several years ago, shortly before her eightieth birthday.

“That dude out there in the field’s old,” Ten says, making me twitch. It’s harder to ignore Declan when he’s in plain sight.

“Who’s a moo and why’s he selling souls?” Pip asks.

“Thatdudein thefieldisold, Pip,” I say. I don’t point out that he’s younger than I am, and I’m hardly old.

I swear her hearing’s fine and she does this on purpose.

“Oh,” she says. “That dude who’s staying to take video of us? I told him he can record me, and he told me social media has screw-me clauses, and I told him I was up for that too if he was.”

Nudity clauses.

Declan probably saidnudity clauses.

Notscrew-meclauses.

“Though I thought about screwing Santa Claus once,” she continues.

“Epic,” Ten says. “You could’ve been Mrs. Claus.”

“No, Mista Paws was my cat when I was a girl.”

If it weren’t for her twinkling eyes, I’d wonder if she was still feeling the effects of the joint she shared with my mom last night.

Despite Mabel’s insistence that Pip and pot don’t get along, our honorary matriarch here has seemed absolutely fine since she got up.

“You have big plans tonight, Pipster?” Ten asks.

She grins at him. “Gonna make you pee your pants watching my new favorite horror movie.”

“Sweet.”

They do one of their complicated handshakes, then Pip wanders down the stairs and toward the gardens that Cricket recently completely overhauled between the main house and the mother-in-law house.

Some of the early wedding pictures are in the garden. Cricket’s going to die when she sees.

She has a celebrity crush on Mike.

Not as big as Mabel’s, but Cricket’s enthusiasm makes it feel bigger.

Ten watches Pip, fidgeting with his can of sparkling water, pushing the pull tab up and down, until his gaze shifts farther out to the vineyard.

The vineyard where Declan’s wandering between rows of grapevines.

Phone up.

Recording himself.