Page 49 of Guarding Glenda

“I found some boxes,” she said, threading her arm through mine. “I’m stealing her, Leigh. Bama’s at the bar.”

“I’ll be here,” he said from behind us.

When we got inside, Leigh ran ahead of us. He grabbed my face and kissed me hard, not caring that Linny was still arm in arm with me. I couldn’t help but giggle through the kiss.

Linny cleared her throat so he finally pulled away. I was practically dizzy from him.

“I’ll be in there, or the back room. Just text me or call if you need me,” he said before he finally let me go completely and entered the bar.

“And I thought Bama was intense,” Linny said as she mock-fanned herself. She looked down the hall as we got to the stairs. “So, are we going to talk about that?”

“Which part?” I asked as we headed up.

“Whatever you feel like sharing.”

As we headed up all the steps, I tried to figure out where to start. When we finally got back to my room and walked inside. “That was a workout,” I said, my hands on my hips.

Looking around, I grabbed a box from the bed and started from when I called him last night.

***

After going through the stuff I’d accumulated the last few years, I looked around. Linny was still sniffling after I recounted last night and the morning to her.

“So can I be nice to him now?” she asked.

“Were you ever not nice to him?” I asked as I pushed a box toward the door with my foot.

“I wasn’t my normal nice.”

Linny was a sweetie. She wasn’t like the lifers and didn’t have the demeanor to be a bunny. She came to us a scared, single mom running from an abusive man. But she fit in just fine.

“Are we about done? I can see if the guys will help move these for us,” she said as she folded the lid to a box she packed up.

I opened the wardrobe and stared inside. Reggie’s jeans and a few shirts were in there, along with my cut.

“Is Allie around?”

Linny pulled out her phone. “I’ll text her. Why?”

“Tell her to meet us by the pool.”

I’d already bagged his clothes a while ago, but couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. Pulling at it, I huffed. “I may need some help. It’s got some jeans in there.”

“Okay. We taking that to the pool?”

Nodding, I reached inside and pulled the leather vest off the hanger. “Yep.”

She sent the text then shoved her phone in her pocket. She and I both grabbed the large trash bag and I draped the cut over my arm. Once we got to the steps, I said, “Drop it.”

The bag dropped so I kicked it down the steps. We walked down, and I kicked it down the next two flights until we were back at the first floor. Once down there, we both picked it up again and shuffled through the back door to the pool.

It was covered since it was closed, but the lounge chairs were still scattered around and there were a few round tables with chairs around them. It got cool sometimes but it rarely got so cold in the gulf that you couldn’t sit outside.

“This way,” I told her, heading to one of the metal fire pits.

We dropped the bag and Allie came out as we did. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“You got a light?” I asked.