Hitched(55)

“Oh my god. Are you drunk? At eight in the morning?” she asks.

“Where’s the allapama?” He shakes his head, grabs the door frame to steady himself, and mutters, “Whoa.”

“If you hurt Chewpaca, whoa is the last thing you’ll ever say.” Hope waves a hand in front of her face, presumably to disperse the stench. I hold my breath, not certain any amount of hand waving will help. “I talked to the attorney yesterday,” she continues, “and he says he specifically told you two days ago that you needed to wait for the court date.”

“Not gonna happen.” He uses his forearm to wipe at his nose. “No court. No allapama jizz money. No happiness. Nothing but misery and…” He burps again. “Despair.”

Hope looks up at me. “Shit. He’s useless.”

“She’s gone. Gooooone. Gone.” He grabs a forty of malt liquor from just inside the door and tips it back, then lifts it higher and shakes, squinting one eye up into the bottle.

A single drop falls out and lands in his eye. “Pain, sweet pain,” he croaks in response. “And now I’ll never see ’er again.”

“Cara left you?” Hope asks.

“She had abraca-astigmakismata. Got new glasses yesterday. When she realized my dick was normal size, it was bye-bye Kyle Gaylord Jr.”

My forehead wrinkles as questions I can’t ask zip through my brain—couldn’t she feel what size his dick was? How blind was this woman? And how am I just learning that Kyle’s middle name is Gaylord? This is something he should have been tormented for the entire time he was growing up in Happy Cat, even if he was homeschooled.

“So you won’t win Chewy in court,” she says, voice tight with barely controlled anger. “Is that why you stole him?”

Kyle rubs his eye. “Not unless I drunk him while I was stole.” He frowns. Burps. Puckers his lips. “Stole him drunk I was while.” He waves a hand. “You mean what I know.”

“Then who has the alpaca, Kyle?” she demands.

He blinks at us with one semi-clear eye, and one disinfected-by-booze eye. “Hey, yeah. Where is he? What’s going on? You lost Gam-gam’s prize alpaca?”

“So Chewy’s really not here?” I ask, wanting to be one-hundred-percent sure before we expand our search.

He glances behind him. “I mean, we can look, but I didn’t put him here.”

“Damn it,” Hope murmurs. “I think he’s telling the truth.”

“Call Cassie,” I say. “Tell her to get everyone to the sanctuary. We can organize a search party there. I’ll sober up Mr. Heartbreak, and meet you there as soon as I can.”

“Don’t wanna be sober,” Kyle says, nose wrinkling.

“You’ll love it,” I assure him, clapping him on the back. “My brother’s a bartender. Has all the best tricks to make it painless.”

“What are you going to do?” Hope asks.

I grin. “Whatever’s easiest.”

She shoves me out of the way. “Then I’m sobering him up, because I’ve always wanted to dunk him in a bucket of water. You call the troops. I’d probably break the phone anyway.”

“Remember we might need him to talk,” I call as I trail her into Kyle’s house, which is overflowing with evidence of a frat party gone wrong. Bottles of beer and whiskey litter the floor, half-empty pizza boxes sit open on the stairs, and for some reason a roll of toilet paper has unrolled itself across the kitchen island and left a trail of white into the living room.

I get on group text with my brothers, who all reply nearly instantaneously to let me know they’re on their way to the sanctuary. Then I take a quick tour of Kyle’s house to verify no evidence of alpaca exists.

When I get back to the kitchen, Hope’s squaring off with him again, but he’s dripping wet and significantly more sober.

“I don’t know,” he says, like he’s exasperated. “Who in their right mind would steal an alpaca? You and I are the only two people who know he’s worth anything.”

“Cara knows,” I correct him.

Kyle and Hope turn as one, and Kyle mutters a curse under his breath.

Hope drives a hand through her hair. “And she was at the sanctuary with us yesterday. Not for very long, but maybe long enough to make the dogs think it was okay for her to be poking around in the barn last night? I mean, it’s a long shot, but definitely worth checking into.”

“C’mon,” I say to both of them. “We’re going alpaca hunting. Kyle, buddy, you’re riding in the back. No offense, but you still smell like pickled whiskey ass.”





Twenty-Three





Hope





* * *



I’m trying desperately not to bite my nails. I’d really love to hold Blake’s hand again—it helped keep me calm on the way to Kyle’s house—but instead, we’re separated by the drowned and drunken rat between us.

Turns out riding in the back makes him sick to his stomach, which we learned halfway to Cara’s place when he wouldn’t stop banging on the back glass and turning green.

“Quit poking me,” Kyle hisses.

“Payback’s a bitch, buddy.” I poke his leg again, because it’s in my space. “Quit manspreading. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I don’t deserve legroom. Especially since this is your fault.”