Page 90 of Limbo

“Not a friend,” he says. “Brooke, you need to—”

“Wait,” I interrupt and check with Benji for confirmation. “This is Brooke?”

My look saystheBrooke, and he smirks before he takes a sip of his beer.

A random girl being rude I can handle, but this one saw me with a guy on her hook-up list, sized me up in the restroom, and then crawled on top of him to stake her claim. No. Even a proper lady has her limits, and given no one in my life has ever described me as a lady, she’s pushed far past mine.

She continues to give me a smug look, so I smile back and decide to offer one more compliment. “I’ve heard wonderful things about your tongue.”

The superiority drains from her now-bulging eyes along with the color from her face.

Benji laughs so hard he chokes on his beer. “Fuck, Calico,” he says, setting the bottle on the table. He tries to hide his growing grin behind a hand, well aware of what’s about to happen.

“The problem is, the lap you’re sitting on belongs to my boyfriend.”

Jordan’s eyebrows shoot up, and he appears more shocked by what I just said than the earlier statement.

“Boyfriend?” Brooke glances down at him, but his eyes stay locked on me.

“Boyfriend,” I repeat. “And I’d really love for you to move.”

She checks again to see if Jordan will correct me, but he still stares at me, not acknowledging her in the slightest. I receive one more glare before she scampers off to the first group of guys she finds in need of validation.

I slide off Benji’s lap to my seat. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

Jordan grabs my chair and pulls it over until it bumps his. “You are fucking incredible, you know that?”

I laugh, and he leans in. Before his lips reach mine, my seat jerks back the other way until it knocks into Benji’s.

“My date.”

“My girlfriend,” Jordan says.

Benji tosses me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “Our girlfriend.”

Jordan looks ready to continue the tug-of-war but stands up, digging his phone out of his pocket. Felicia’s name shows up on the screen when he waves it at Benji. “Whatever. You and your death trap have our girlfriend home in twenty minutes.” He kisses my forehead on his way by, his lips lingering longer than normal.

The second my boyfriend walks away, Benji cocks his head to the side, not even trying to hide his grin. “Pissing on him would have been more subtle.”

I burst out laughing, unable to disagree.

When Lauren texts to inform me she and Tyler are going out of town again, I barely ask before Jordan agrees to go with me to Waymore for the weekend. This time, we bring his Jeep because he claims my car speakers ruin music.

My siblings react more to seeing him walk through the door than me. They rarely take to new people, so I can’t say it bothers me that they like him. Plus, it’s nice to have someone else to send Cate to when she decides on Saturday morning that she wants to be a golden retriever named Princess.

After her evening walk, she colors at the table, using her teeth because she can’t hold the crayons in her paws. With her distracted, Jordan sneaks off for a shower. I’m watching something mindless on TV when Connor walks into the living room.

“Would you keep track of this damn thing?” He drops onto the couch next to me and tosses my phone onto my lap. “Trey keeps texting you about tonight.”

I kick at him. “Quit reading my messages.”

“Change your password then,” he shoots back.

Even though I already know what my cousin wants, I check the messages.

School.

Tonight.

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