🍃‼️SHANNON
She went to the barbecue. She made a macaroni salad that she immediately became embarrassed about when she tasted the food the rest of them brought—what was a gourmet chef doing as a fire captain, anyway?—but Buck still ate half the bowl out of politeness. (Eddie took one bite and winced, and then spooned the rest of his serving onto Buck’s plate.) She got to meet Buck’s sister, a heavily pregnant woman with extremely shiny hair, and had a totally normal conversation with her about the Bachelor before Buck came over and put a cupcake into Shannon’s hands and changed the subject to the dangers of goat yoga. “It can make you go blind!” he said, with a really gross hand gesture way too close to Shannon’s eyeballs. “I don’t know what your parents told you, but that’s a myth,” Shannon said, and Buck laughed before explaining about sheep worms, which, gross. Shannon had no idea goat yoga was a thing, but she did mention that she really liked the non-goat yoga class she took at her gym, and then Buck wanted to talk about strength training vs flexibility, and before she realized it, twenty minutes had passed, Buck had ordered a five class pass for himself online, just to try it out, she and Buck had agreed to meet for an intermediate class the next weekend, and Maddie the sister was just sitting back and watching them with a private little smile on her face that Shannon didn’t know what to do with. Eddie called Buck over to the other side of the yard, and Shannon turned her attention back to Maddie, a little embarrassed by how neither of them had remembered to include her in the conversation. “He likes you,” Maddie said easily, and Shannon gave an awkward laugh. “It’s really not like that,” she said, and it was even true. The Superbowl thing felt like it had happened to totally different people, at this point. “That’s not what I mean,” Maddie said. “It’s just—good to see that you guys worked it out.” “Oh,” Shannon said, somehow even more embarrassed than before. “Thanks.”
