Page 32 of Silent Count
I take a deep breath and then put on a smile. “Okay, but you’ll have to braid my hair tonight—tight. It will get so wild with the heat, water, and wind.” I pull my hair up into a ponytail and take an elastic off my wrist to wrap it.
“I know you’ve been avoiding the topic, but we need to talk about the letter,” she starts.
I turn my head toward the window. “To answer your question, no, I still haven’t opened it, and I don’t have any intentions of doing so right now.”
“Chelsea …”
“Aunt Laura,” I sing back to her. “This is Torie’s weekend. Can we just shelve it for a few more days?”
She lets out a sigh. “Of course we can. I’m just so happy you’re here, and I have all of next week to harass you about it,” she says with a smile, and I groan, which she clearly ignores. “So, anything new with you at school? How are your classes going?” She merges onto the highway toward Naples.
“Classes are good; work is good. Oh, I forgot to tell you.” I turn toward her in my seat. “Noelle and I are staying at her boyfriend’s house because our apartment building had to get fumigated.”
“Oh, gross!” She fake gags. “You know how I feel about bugs.”
“I know. I don’t even want to think about what was in the walls, honestly. We never had any issues in our apartment though.”
“Doesn’t Noelle’s boyfriend play football or something?”
“Yes, he does, and so do his roommates.”
“Oh, so I’m sure that’s a real hardship, staying there.” She laughs.
I laugh with her. “Definitely doesn’t suck. Especially when they all walk around shirtless.”
“I bet! I vaguely remember a few of them when we moved you in last year.”
“Yeah, so Casey is Noelle’s boyfriend. Then there’s Silas, who was the really tall one, and Bo. He’s the quarterback,” I say, looking out the window.
“I’ve seen him on TV, I think. He’s very good-looking.”
“He is indeed. And nice.” I look at my phone to check my texts just in case he texted me after we talked earlier, but nothing new is showing. “I’m actually tutoring him too.”
“Oh, really? For what?” She tilts her head in question.
“He got a bad grade on the first test in a psychology class, which accounts for a large part of their overall grade. So, in order for him to stay eligible to play, they hired me to help him get the grade up.”
“Well, if anyone can help him, you can. My smart girl.” She reaches over and takes my hand.
It took me a while to get used to her hugging us or showing us any physical attention really. My parents hadn’t been affectionate with us at all. But I don’t mind it now.
“Yeah, and I kind of like him too. We’ve been flirting a lot. Which is funny because we’ve been around each other pretty regularly, but it’s like a switch flipped, and now we’re all flirty with each other.”
I’m not sure why I’m telling her other than the fact that I haven’t really told anyone about it yet. Noelle and I haven’t gotten to spend a whole lot of time alone this week, so it wasn’t easy to find a time to talk to her about it.
“Oh, to be young and flirty.” She sighs. “Enjoy it all, kid.”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s just fun right now. I don’t know if it’ll turn into anything. We have very different paths. I’ll be going off to law school, and he’ll be heading to the NFL next year.”
“You never know, Chels. Keep all possibilities open.” She squeezes my hand, then releases it to turn the wheel, and we exit the highway.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing him naked a few times. That’s definitely a possibility I would like to keep open.”
I bark out a laugh when I look over at my aunt and her wide eyes. I can tell she’s trying to be cool about it though.
“I’m sure that would be a delight. But you don’t need to tell me about it if it happens. Just promise me you’ll practice safe sex if it comes to that.”
“Absolutely. The pullout method is highly effective,” I say sarcastically.
