Page 7 of While You Were Trending

Burning.

Not marijuana smoke.

Burning-burning.

“Woo, did someone open the gates of Hell?” Pip asks. She’s still on the ground, staring up at the ceiling.

“Are you fucking serious?” Ginny shrieks.

A shimmery green formal hat with a wide brim—the hat Freida wore to the wedding as if she were British royalty—has lit up on fire beside the tractor’s front tire.

Ginny rushes the hat. “Get them out! Get my brother!”

Fuck.

I pick Freida back up and toss her over one shoulder, then rush to Pip and toss her over the other. “Get out,” I yell at Ginny as I race toward the door. “Not worth it.Get out.”

“Go get my brother,” she screeches back at me.

I burst into the open air, drop the women, and dart back into the barn, where?—

Where my heart stops entirely.

The ballerina fabric.

The ballerina fabric on Ginny’s dress is on fire, lit by the flaming hat.

This time, I don’t hesitate to rush her.

Rush her and grip the fabric and rip it off the rest of her dress, throwing it on the ground and stomping on it.

“What are you doing?” she cries as she leaps on the hat again, marching on it in her stilettos.

“Putting you out,” I snap back. “Get out. You’re gonna burn your feet.”

The hat’s still burning.

Ginny’s still jumping on it with her barely there shoes.

Need to get the hat outside. The hat and the bottom half of Ginny’s dress.

“Get my husband,” Pip yells from the doorway. “If anyone’s lighting up his ashes, it’s me!”

“What the fuck?” a guy says.

Ten.

Tennessee.

“Fuck, Ginny,get out.” Her brother shoves me out of the way, grabs her as she’s still dancing skirtless on the flaming hat, and he does what I did for his mother and for Pip—tosses her over his shoulder and disappears out of the barn with her.

I need to get out too.

Get out before this gets worse.

Ginny Rhodes isn’t just hell on my heart.

She’s hell on weddings too.