Page 55 of Ugly Duckling
“Just friends don’t kiss like that.” His eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that Webber’s sweatshirt?”
Sutton pulled the sweatshirt away from herself and said, “Oh, yeah. It is. I need to give that back to him before he leaves. I was freezing earlier. The cold front came out of nowhere.”
“They’ve been talking about that cold front all week, doll.” Yates smirked. “It didn’t come out of nowhere.”
“It did.” She winced. “But I forget that I’m not three hours away from Dallas anymore. It hits here quicker than it hits back where I used to live.”
Yates looked over at me. “We found a hidden way in?”
“Where did you come in?” I asked.
She walked us back through her steps, stopping to pick up the bag of Cheerios that I was going to eat for lunch before continuing.
I watched her with amusement as she led us to the smallest window in existence before saying, “There’s where Webber gave me a boost up. They should really put a lock on this one.”
“To be honest,” Yates admitted, “I didn’t think it was humanly possible to fit through that window. It’s too high for a little kid to get up there and pull through. Plus, they’re not strong enough to even hoist them out. The other side is a ten-foot drop-off to the ground. But now that we’ve been made aware of the accessibility from a little slip of a woman, I guess we’ll start marking these windows.”
“Yeah, you will,” I mumbled. “I’m taking lunch since this woman seems to be inhaling mine.”
Sutton flashed me a Cheerio-filled grin, which, might I add, was completely unrepentant.
“I get hungry,” she said. “Plus, I knew this one was yours because of the Bluey stickers.”
I shook my head.
“Bluey and The Lorax.” I groaned. “I’m so tired of hearing both of those!”
“Introduce her to How to Train Your Dragon,” Yates suggested. “My niece loves them.”
“I tried, man. I tried.” I caught my sweatshirt off the stool in the break room as we passed. “Let me know if you think you need more of the crew. The school is closed for the next three days for fall break. We need to be finished by Sunday, no later than six p.m.”
“I’ll have a better idea by the end of the day,” he said. “Enjoy your lunch.”
The way he said lunch made me think he wasn’t talking about food.
I handed over my sweatshirt and said, “Here. Switch them out and we’ll drop the sweatshirt off at his shop before we go to lunch.”
“What makes you think I’ll be going to lunch with you?” she teased. “I’m supposed to be in training.”
“Because you are literally eating Cheerios right now,” I pointed out, reaching out to snatch the Cheerios back only to find them wholly out of my reach before I could move even an inch.
“True,” she said as she popped a few more into her mouth before sweeping the sweatshirt off and tossing it at me.
I gave her my sweatshirt, and she yanked it on before she brought the sleeve up to her nose and inhaled. “I don’t know what you do with your laundry, but I love it. The sheets last night smelled amazing.”
“I’d like to admit that it’s something special, but I just use the baby shit from Tide, and dryer sheets that are also supposed to be for sensitive skin. I think Downy makes them,” I admitted sheepishly.
“Well, whatever combination you’re using is perfect.” She dropped her arm, then took another bite of my Cheerios.
I jerked my head toward the front office and said, “Let’s go.”
She followed me, waving at the men that were half in the office, half out, going through a mess of wires that we’d had to pull at the front door to rewire the front entry once we’d put in the new blockade.
Parents and visitors would have to enter into a small room once they were buzzed in, and they’d have to go through a metal detector before the inner door would open to allow them entry into the school.
“Wow,” she said as she looked at the mess of wires that extended onto the outside of the building. “This is a complicated mess.”
“Boone is a fuckin’ master at wiring. He was in the bomb squad when he was in the Marines, and spent quite a bit of time defusing bombs when he was deployed. He joined with Oklahoma City and worked with their bomb squad for about eight more years before I lured him away. He’s one of our biggest assets right now, because we don’t have to hire an outside technician to work on all the wiring. He’s a certified electrician on top of everything else.”
