Page 22 of The Sun
His eyes went wide as he reached for his phone and untangled the cord. “Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise?”
I ran my hand over the back of my neck and gave him a shrug.
“Women can get to be real hassles,” he said.
“More like fathers.” I took the phone and punched in Daisy’s number.
“Oh.” He pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit it while the phone rang in my ear. “Let me guess. Not good enough?”
“Nope.”
“Rich girl?”
The phone rang for the third time. “Not exactly, but sure as shit not poor. Sheriff’s daughter.”
Benny cocked one of his crazy, white brows. “Damn, boy. You lookin’ to get yerself killed, ain’t ya?”
The line clicked and, thankfully, Daisy picked up.
“Sunny there?”
“Oh boy,” she sighed. “No.”
“Her dad made her break up with me, didn’t he?”
“Look, this isn’t any of my business.”
“Oh,” I laughed. “You made it your business, letting me send letters to your address. Sunny told me you were invested in this like some soap opera bull crap,” I said, and Benny chuckled.
“Yeah, well.” There was a pause where I thought she may be about to tell me. “I’m bowing out.”
“Damn it! Just tell me if he made her do it, Daisy.”
Daisy’s mother called for her in the background. “I’ve gotta go,” she said. “But really, Elias, how did you think it was ever gonna work out? I’m sorry.” Then the line went dead.
Benny shuffled into his kitchen, and I hung up the phone and then dragged my palm over my face.
“Ain’t nothing else to do when your heart done got broked than drink.” Benny shoved a Miller High Life against my chest, and I fell back on his sofa with no intention to drink it.
My life was officially shit.
Two weeks later,I pulled Billie’s 1974 Toyota into the Motel 8 in Fort Morgan.
Groaning, Billie climbed out and strutted to the office in her ridiculous heels, leaving us to wait.
An old Camaro with T-tops and louvers on the back windshield pulled in right beside us. A group of girls in skimpy skirts climbed out, one with a cigarette pinched between her candy-red lips. Judah banged on the back window from the bed of the truck. I turned in the seat just as he plastered his face to the glass and nodded in the direction of the girls, and I waved him off.
He and Atlas hopped down anyway.
It may have been Christmas, but it was still humid as hell and warm when I opened the door and stepped out. My brothers were already right in the middle of the girls, every single one of them smiling and twirling hair around their fingers. Those girls were probably a year older than me, but none of the Black boys ever looked likeboysonce puberty hit. We were all tall, broad-shouldered with muscles we didn’t really have to work for—compliments of my old man. So Judah and Atlas could easily get away with being eighteen if they wanted.
I snagged a pack of smokes from the dash before closing the door. “You dipshits stay outta trouble, would you?” I started toward the highway.
“Where are you going?” one of the girls asked in that annoying sing-song voice teenage chicks think is cute. It wasn’t.
“To think.”
Heels clicked over the pavement. “Oh, come on. Hang out with us. We’re going to get some beer and go to the beach.”
