Chapter 23

Adam walked past Rachelle and Mary heading down the hill as he was walking up it. Mary appeared to be waddling a little bit but both were smiling brightly. They greeted him cheerfully and Rachelle gave him a firm hug and a kiss on the cheek. Mary just patted his arm and smiled.

"Thank you," Adam said. "And good morning to you, too. May I assume everyone is awake and rowdy at the plantation?"

"You may, dear sir," Rachelle said. Shelly's faux accent was Irish but Rachelle's was straight out of the old South. Adam always got a chuckle when she would act like a southern belle.

"You know, Chelle," he said, using her nickname for perhaps the first time, "you should have been Georgia Peach, not Destiny Lixxx."

"Taken," she said with a smile. She had caught the familiarity, too. "Georgia Peach, Carolina Belle, Smoky Mountains ... all taken."

"I said she should try Moldy Swamp but she passed," Mary chimed in. "Besides, Destiny Lixxx sounds alluring. It evokes an image of a tall, stately woman with bee-stung lips and sultry eyes. Shelly appears to have a gift for porn names. Who would have thought?"

The trio exchanged good-natured laughs.

"I'm surprised you can even walk this morning," Rachelle joked to Adam. "I figured you would just be a quivering shell of your former self by the time those three got done with you."

"Ah, I'm made of sterner stuff than you give me credit for," Adam replied. "We farm boys are used to hard times. We persevere."

"Uh-huh," Rachelle said. "Are they still alive or did you leave them in a tired, sweaty heap on the floor?"

"Well, I did leave them that way but the thought of shopping is apparently a restorative," he rejoined. "For men, it's football; for women, it's shopping. They are actually all showered, giggly and ready to go."

"What are you three degenerates doing today?" Mary asked.

"Man stuff," Adam said in a gruff voice while beating his chest. "Make fire, burn meat, pillage."

"Laying around like lumps on the couch and lying about your exploits?" Mary tried.

"Probably that, too," Adam said with a smile. "Pillaging takes a lot out of a guy. Call us before you head back and we'll fire up the grill."

"Got it," Rachelle said. "You boys have a good day."

Adam took a few moments to admire the view of the two behinds, each wearing shorts that accentuated their curves, heading away before he turned and finished his trek up the hill. Neither Walt nor Sean looked as chipper as their girlfriends had. But each wore a smile that threatened to crack his face.

"Morning, roomies," Adam said as he poured a glass of orange juice. "What's the good word?"

"I got a few good words for you," Sean said. "Maybe a few bad words, too."

"Did I do something?" Adam wondered.

Sean's smile widened.

"Honest to God, I would have done a lot more nice things for people if I would have known the hidden rewards for them," Sean replied. "The past couple of days, Rachelle has been really, really nice."

"She's always seemed nice enough to me," Adam said. "I thought you guys got along fine."

"Oh, we do," Sean answered. "We get along great. I don't know if she feels slightly threatened by Allie and Sarah – or maybe even by the new Shelly – or whether she is just feeling particularly affectionate toward me but she has been really happy, really great the past few days. I can't seem to do anything wrong."

"Me, either," Walt said. "I don't think it's anything to do with Sarah and Allie, though. I mean, Mary has acted that way even when they weren't around. And it's just not toward me, either. We went out to dinner last night. The waitress sucked. I mean she was terrible. Usually, that means Mary rips her a new asshole, right?"

Sean and Adam chuckled but nodded. Mary did not tolerate incompetence in any form but certainly not in the service industry.

"Well, the girl was so bad, I started to get pissed off," Walt said. "Instead of jumping right on the bandwagon with me, Mary just shrugged it off and said the girl might just be having a bad day."

"Whoa," Adam said with raised eyebrows. "She didn't like, you know, set the girl on fire or something when you weren't looking, did she? You know she gets like that just before the top of her head blows off."

"I know," Walt said. "But, no. She even gave the girl a pat on the arm and told her to relax, that she was trying too hard. I didn't think she was trying hard enough, but maybe that's just me."

"There is probably a picture of Mary in the back room of every restaurant in the greater Los Angeles area," Sean said. "The poor girl probably saw who sat down at her table and went into hysterics."

Walt laughed and shook his head.

"Probably true," he told his friends. "But I think the new additions to our group have been good for her. They are so even-keeled, you know. I think Mary realized that if anyone has a right to be pissed off at the world, it's those two. But neither of them are. Or at least they don't appear to be. So she's relaxing and taking a few minutes to enjoy life a bit."

"Plus, she's already figured out what she's going to do for her senior project in two years," Sean remarked with a smirk. "And she has a way to make some money on her own. Chelle's been the same way, though. The last couple of days, I don't know, it's like she has taken a look at what's out there and is glad she wound up with me. I don't know why she would feel that way, but I'll take it anyway."

Laughter filled the living room again.

"Well, you are both, you know, decent guys," Adam said.

"Don't be getting all weepy on us, Cinderella," Walt jibed.

"I take it back," Adam responded. "You are both pimply-faced, donkey-fuckers and I hope you get anal warts."

"That's more like it," Sean added. "So, what's on our agenda today?"

"Studying for a while," Walt remarked. "Then a whole lot of nothing. They'll be gone all day. You know that, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Sean said with a smirk. "I've got a nap planned from noon to about three, I think."

Walt and Adam nodded in appreciation.

"We could scope the pool for babes," Walt offered. "Nah, that would be like having ground chuck for dessert after a filet mignon dinner. Oh, well, I'm sure we'll find something to occupy our leisure time."

The poor, simple bastards actually believed it, too.

The five young women piled into Rachelle's SUV and headed off on their shopping excursion. Shelly planned to use a little of the money she had earned to supplement her lingerie assortment. Sarah wanted to look for a bed big enough for all four of the people she hoped would soon occupy the apartment. Allie wanted to get a new TV since they could now afford something to watch on it. Mary was looking for a decent digital camera – not only so she could take pictures for the web sites she wanted to set up for Ashley, Sahara and Derrick but so she and Walt could do some photography of their own – and Rachelle was on the lookout for kitchen and bathroom items for the apartment, now that she was officially a resident there.

A sign alongside the road made Rachelle pull to the side and stop. She got out of the SUV and walked back, smiled broadly, and returned to her perplexed friends.

"Ladies, I propose a detour," she announced. "Sarah, you were looking for a bed, right?"

"Yeah," Sarah answered. She had been a little embarrassed when she told Mary and Rachelle why she wanted it but neither of them batted an eyelash.

"I saw a sign for an estate sale," Rachelle told her. "My dad and I used to go to those all the time. If it's not set up as an auction, you can get good deals on some really nice things. It's only a couple of minutes out of our way and we'll know quickly if it is a waste of time. What do you think?"

None of the others had ever been to an estate sale but they couldn't see the harm.

"Let's do it," Allie replied.

They pulled up in front of a large house situated off the main road. They appeared to be the first vehicles there.

"Did we miss it?" Shelly wondered.

"No, it doesn't start until 1," Rachelle replied. "It's only a little before 10. We beat even the earliest early birds. The key to these things is to get here early and make a deal before the vultures arrive to drive the price up. If it is an auction, there will be minimum bids. I would say that might be the case here, too. This is a pretty nice house even if the area is somewhat lower scale."

A middle-aged woman walked out of the house as the SUV pulled up the drive. She smiled tiredly when the five women got out.