Page 21 of Driftwood Daffodil

Ah, Tucker Gerald. We had our wedding on the playground next to the swings. It was a beautiful ceremony with a toilet paper veil and my mom’s nightgown. He dumped me the next day because Cindy gave him her Fruit Roll Up. But he was still my husband for almost twenty-four hours.

“You know what I think?”

We shared a crib every weekend, of course I knew what he was thinking. “That chokers are an underrated accessory.”

Memphis huffed out a breath and slid his unimpressed gaze my way. “I think you should get revenge and make-out with someone in front of Simon. Show him what he’s missing.”

What he was missing? Really. I cocked a brow down at the Elmo shorts hugging my thighs. To which Memphis rolled his eyes.

“As much as you like to pretend you’re nothing special, I know different.” He crossed his arms. “And so does Simon. It wouldn’t take much to make him jealous.”

He did have a point. I wasn’t really into girls, but… “Cindy is kind of easy.”

Memphis huffed, “Nova…”

To which I huffed back, “Memphis.”

“You could do so much better than Simon.”

“I don’t know if Cindy is better than…”

“Oh my god, not Cindy!”

I shrugged, “it was your suggestion.”

“That was not…” Memphis took a long deep breath, after which he calmly added, “St Agatha’s is different.”

Memphis’s parents weren’t rich by any means, but they made enough to send him to private school. At least I wouldn’t be alone, that was one good thing. Plus I was kind of curious how the Memphis and Chuck thing worked? Did they hold hands, or make out in the cafeteria? I couldn’t see that going over too well in a catholic environment.

“There’s an entirely new breed of men in that school.”

I didn’t think about that. “Okay… but isn’t the janitor a little too old for me?”

“Oh my God,” Memphis threw his arms up, “you’re impossible to talk to when you’re like this.”

“But, I’m always like this.”

“Exactly my point.” He rose from the chair and sliced his hands through the air in an I’m done motion. “Don’t call me.”

I waited for him to storm off the deck and up to the gate before calling out, “Can I text you instead?”

Memphis’s honey eyes rolled over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he nodded.

I nodded back, “Cool.”

My best friend always managed to make me feel better. For a minute I forgot what Cindy sounded like slurping on my boyfriend’s dick. Sorry ex-boyfriend. I should probably let Simon in on that little piece of information. He tried calling me like twenty times today.

At least I wouldn’t have to see him at school, or Cindy. So there was that. I just had to walk around with a bunch of rich pompous assholes. One thing was for sure, I was taking all the Fruit Roll Ups with me tomorrow.

“Come on Knoxy.” I skipped down the steps and scooped Knox off the ground. “Time for bed. Tomorrow I’ll teach you the importance of having bribery material.”

GIOVANNI

Everyone had something they did to unwind. Like a crutch of sorts. If you watched someone long enough, you’d see what their crutch was. My father liked to read, Darry took a drive down a place we called rollercoaster road – though considering his luck with vehicles I didn’t see how that was relaxing – and Atlee lost himself in a sea of pussy. It didn’t matter who it was or how powerful or rich they were, everyone had that crutch.

I had two, one of which I was staring at right now.

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