I didn’t know about that, but so far, her judgment led to me living in a dream house with a dream woman just a few houses away, so if she was excited, I figured it was a good idea.
The evening before the Fourth — or the morning of, if you want to get technical — writing kept me up until two in the morning and I wasn’t expecting Eva and her friends until the next evening, so I was sprawled out in bed and snoring the morning away when I got a call. My phone was right beside me. I picked it up and slapped it against my face.
“Ullo?” I muttered.
“I expected a sexy morning voice. You sound like a bear, old man.”
“I commit murders this early in the morning.”
“Yeah, fair enough, me too. Sorry. But we found out late last night there’s a parade and a bunch of fun stuff in Overlark this morning so we drove back early. Interested in being a girl’s date?”
“A parade? Here?”
“I know, right? It has to be the world’s smallest parade.”
I sat upright. “The writer part of me has to see this. What time?”
She said half an hour, so I hurried through a shower, shaved, and threw on a pair of khaki shorts and a camp shirt over a tight black When Rivers Meet shirt. While I was tying up my sneakers, there came a soft knock at my lakeside door. Eva and Cheyenne stood there, Eva with a paper coffee cup in hand.
“I figured you probably didn’t have time,” she said, holding the coffee out.
“Oh, you are amazing,” I said, and took the cup in hand. The other I brought to her cheek, then the back of her head. I leaned in to kiss her gently, her eyes closing, me unable to stop staring like some creeper. When I pulled back, I murmured, “I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“What about me?” Cheyenne pouted. “Am I not missed too?”
I laughed. “Oh, of course.”
“Do I get a kiss too, then?”
“One woman man, unfortunately, but you’re going to break someone’s heart.”
Eva looked pleased at that. I finished my coffee, grabbed my keys and wallet, and we were off to visit the great and fabled Overlark, population five-hundred fifty-three. I wouldn’t normally bring up a town’s population in a story like this, except you have to understand how small that town was to get a grasp on how silly and fun their tiny parade was.
We joined up with their roommates and their assorted boyfriends and girlfriends at the biggest diner, which also served as the general parking lot for most the town’s functions. Kids were selling lemonade, bottled water, and homemade granola bars at a table across the street, so me being the big spender I am, I bought us an assortment of drinks and granola bars while the two boys told us all about the super cool cars that would be in the parade.
The roommates were an eclectic mix. I knew they were all beautiful from the pictures online, but there’s a difference between meeting them in person and seeing pictures, and in their case, reality was far tastier. For example, Lucia was the fullest-bodied of the girls, and the youngest though only by months. She carried her extra weight with a joyous bounce to her step and an easy smile on her face. You could see a hint of that in the short videos she posted online, but you couldn’t grasp what a free spirit she was or how infectious that smile could be.
Then there was Becky, gorgeous, bouncing-out-of-her-tops-every-five-seconds Becky, she of the blonde silky hair, big artificial lips, and a body a plastic surgeon must have been paid a fortune to create. She was the one most guys that summer hounded after, especially given her love of denim cutoffs that showed off plenty of her ass cheeks. A stunner online in her posts on Bottlegenie, to be sure, and with a following that would mean she would never hurt for money. But what I came to remember most about Becky was her sitting down on the dock or on a patio chair, nose buried in a book, or consoling another roommate in the aftermath of finding out a beloved aunt had cancer.
All of them cared deeply about each other like that. I assumed before that summer the camgirl and model lifestyle involved a lot of cattiness and backhanded compliments, but those young women were like sisters. They learned about their business together, came up through their earliest years supporting each other, and genuinely loved when one of them made huge gains with a post or a video. Were there little fights? Of course there were. Anyone that close would have them. But they always came back together, usually with Cheyenne, who really was their mother hen, pulling their metaphorical noses and making them sit down together to work things out.
I started the process of getting to know them that day, and in turn, they grilled me. Though Eva was the oldest, they acted like the protective older siblings. I understood. Eva was often the quietest, save maybe Becky on a few occasions, and sometimes seemed younger than the others in her sweetness and compassion. Not necessarily naivete, but a softness of character I loved, and so did her friends.
Eva watched my interactions with her friends with amusement. When the parade started, I went to her, gave her cheek a long, lingering kiss, and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Tell me if it’s too much,” I murmured.
“No. I mean, yes, I will. But this… I like this.”
The parade was led by a deputy in an SUV and a fire truck merrily blasting everyone away with their sirens. Back in Pike Bridge and really most the small towns around the state, it was common for the vehicles in a parade to throw out candy or cheap toys to onlookers, and Overlark was no different. Cheyenne, Eva, and the rest were showered with candy and attention, from whistles to cheers and everything in between. I laughed to see it, and Eva did too. She bounded out there with the rest of them, collecting it and giving most her shares to the kids from the lemonade stand and a few families around us.
Besides the police, the horse ranch where Cheyenne worked entered three braying mules decked out in red, white, and blue. Cheyenne went wild for them and the horse team that followed from another ranch. The cars the lemonade boys were looking forward to traveled in a pack. I watched an old 1970 Camaro with nearly as much attention as I was giving Eva. Floats were pretty non-existent, save for a group of kids and teens advertising a bunch of different sports programs and extracurriculars on the back of a semi truck’s trailer.
When the parade was near its end, I slipped behind Eva and wrapped my arms around her waist. She smiled and leaned back against me. We rocked together to the sound of someone playing Lizzo from their car stereo. She was so warm against me, so soft, so goddamn beautiful, and I couldn’t help but explore her neck with my lips.
I wanted to tell Eva so many things, that I couldn’t let her go after the few weeks she would be there. Less than that now, just a little over two left. I wanted to tell her I thought I was falling in love with her, even if that was insane just after a few days of getting to know her as an adult. But her words about wanting to go slow soothed me, and I let myself live in the moment for a change, not jumping ahead but loving the feel of her, the smell of her, the way she moved with me.
We headed inside the diner along with a wash of other people. Space was tight but none of us minded. Over platters, eggs, bacon, sausage and mountains of hashbrowns, the herd of us must have come close to cleaning the place out. Eva snatched the last half of a piece of bacon from my plate, drawing my mock ire and my hand to rove under the table, making her yelp when I pinched her thigh. She ate the bacon and stuck her tongue out at me.
To her boyfriend, Lucia said, “They’re still in that phase where he doesn’t realize his food is her food now.”
“Damn straight,” Eva said, and a piece of my toast disappeared too.
There were more communal activities throughout the day, and since Eva and I didn’t have anything else planned until that evening, we made a day of it. I was something of a curiosity in Overlark, not quite famous, but close enough that I was introduced by locals to others as the “writer I was telling you about.” A lot of people gave me grief about buying their dream home, most of which was good-natured, some of which was very much not.
But it was Eva, Cheyenne, and the others who got the bulk of the attention. They were propositioned at every turn, got dirty looks from plenty of wives and girlfriends, and in general were the sort of summertime treat I slowly forgot existed after I graduated college, easy on the eyes and carefree.
It was a good day. Cheyenne and one of the boyfriends took second in a horseshoe tournament and I won a new cooler as a door prize at a bake sale. We decided that was a sign, and bought some ice, beer, and everything we’d need to make a bevy of cocktails before heading back to Cheyenne’s. We planned to barbeque at my place that evening, but her house was more set up for a party, so that’s what we did, dancing and drinking and laughing the afternoon away.
Never too far from me was my Eva. We danced and danced and danced. I felt like a fool compared to how she and her friends swayed, but all of us men were, at best, accessories to the gorgeous women we were with. A thunderstorm rolled through along with a fresh deluge of rain, but we barely noticed, lost in one of the best parties I’d ever been to.
Eventually I had to sit, and Eva dropped with me, knees on either side of my lap, kissing me with eager hunger. She had a couple drinks by then, but they were spaced out and she was a long distance from being drunk. If I thought she was, I would have put a gentle stop to her explorations, but she wasn’t faltering or slurring her speech or any of it. So I let her play, tugging my camp shirt off my undershirt and exploring my muscles as my own hands went to her ass and her lower back.
All around us the party surged, but Cheyenne dropped onto the couch with us, one knee drawn up under her. She watched us with cool intensity as Eva pushed back far enough to unbutton my shorts.
“Eva,” I moaned.
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