Page 101 of No Romeo
I snorted. It was like we’d never been apart. “You have issues.”
The brakes screeched when he threw the truck into a space, then untwisted the dangling wires. Wolf was going to kill him.
We got out, and Hendrix stopped halfway across the parking lot, staring straight ahead at the supercenter. “I hate this red monstrosity with a vengeance.”
“You’re so weird.” Not like I didn’t know it, but sometimes I had a moment where it really slapped me. Like his hating an entire shopping franchise.
I still didn’t know why he hated Bullseye so much. It couldn’t just be the greeter thing—
“They don’t even have the decency to have a greeter,” he said. “How am I supposed to enjoy myself if no one welcomes me in?”
There you go. “You want someone to welcome you in so you can enjoy yourself stealing their shit?”
“Exactly.”
The doors slid open. The cold air hit me just before the scent of week-old fish in the deli.
Hendrix grabbed a buggy before passing the old-as-dirt security guard with one cloudy eye.
We passed an aisle of Halloween decorations. I was at the end before I realized I’d lost Hendrix, who was shoving a pumpkin carving kit down the front of his jeans. Why? Not like he could steal a damn pumpkin, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to buy one.
“Hendrix,” I whisper-shouted.
His head snapped up like a prairie dog, and I pointed at the ground beside me. “Get over here.”
He glared before cramming a flashlight down his pants and following me to the kitchen electronics section. We stopped in front of a four-foot-tall margarita maker box. There was no way he was getting past the security guard with that.
“I told you; you can’t steal that.”
The challenge rose in his eyes. “If I waltz my ass out of here with this box, I’ll let you get on your knees and suck me off like the dirty little god of thievery I am.Thenpound one out in the back of Quasimodo’s truck.”
“Wow, you are no Romeo.”
“Maybe not. But tell me you wouldn’t stab a sword in your chest if you woke up to my dead carcass on some tomb floor.”
He knew the plot of Romeo and Juliet but couldn’t say semantics or monogamy…
He grabbed the two-hundred-dollar Margaritaville Mixer—who the hell paid two hundred bucks for frozen drinks? No one in Dayton, that was for sure—and wedged it into the cart. “All right. Let’s go.” Then he whipped the buggy around and headed to the other end of the aisle.
I’d watched that boy get himself out of some crap; he’d even told me to take tampons out of the box. “You’re just going to walk right out with that?” I hurried to catch up.
“Any thief knows that big ticket items aren’t bagged.” He produced a crumpled Bullseye receipt from his pocket. “You just wave the receipt with confidence on your way out.”
I shook my head before we split up, the same way we always had. It was stupid for two of us to get caught. Unless it was me, then he’d always popped up and taken the blame, no matter how much I argued.
I took a shortcut through the school supply section, hoping he pulled this off. If not, he’d have Bullseye added to his list of banned stores, and if all he had left was the Piggly Wiggly…
I was almost to the exit when I heard Hendrix wailing at the top of his voice. “Some dickheads claim that there’s a Lola to blame…Buh duh dum…”Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled he was clearly so happy, but he was making up lyrics to “Margaritaville” and screaming them at the top of his lungs as he rode a buggy filled with stolen goods toward the exit of the freaking Bullseye. “But I know–it’s cocksucker’s fault.”
He waved the receipt for who knew what at the guard as he flew past. People bustled in and out of the doors, most looking, if not scowling, at him. That was one way to seem confident.
The alarm went off when the cart whizzed through the automatic doors into the dark night.
People around me stopped, heading to the guard with their receipts. And Hendrix? He was already halfway to Wolf’s truck. He’d actually pulled it off.
I speed walked toward the car, my adrenaline going full force.
He already had the margarita maker and stolen Halloween goods in the back seat and the hotwired engine running.
