Page 17 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
He turned around to check me over. His gaze narrowed. “You look different.”
I tried not to squirm. As idiotic as I had felt for doing it, I’d swiped on some mascara and borrowed lip gloss from Livvie in the car this morning, despite her teasing.
“Watch out,” she had said. “Your green eyes are poppin’. Prepare to have half the senior boys fall at your feet. Including the new one.”
I had shushed her, but Rhett was definitely the reason I’d played up my looks. Normally I never wore makeup. It was super lame to want to stand out for Rhett, who would be swarmed by girls within minutes of stepping foot on campus. Yet here I sat, mascara-ed and hopeful that he might be in one of my classes.Dumb girl.
Bran tugged on a strand of my dark hair. “It’s down,” he said. “That’s what it is. I haven’t seen it out of a ponytail in forever.”
I swatted his hand away. “It’s no big deal. I just thought I’d do something different.”
“Uh huh,” he said, like he knew I was hiding something. “I thought it might be your lagniappe today. Like you survived Angelique last night so now your hair’s down because you’re a liberated female or something.”
I snorted. “My Angelique problem isn’t over until graduation. Hiding from her all night was big fun. Let’s not do it again next year,” I said.
“Not even for the cash?” he asked. Each of the eight servers had gotten a fifty-dollar bonus from Judge LeBlanc.
“Would you put up with Angelique’s abuse for fifty bucks?”
“Not even for a thousand,” he conceded. “I wonder if she’s mad that her party isn’t the talk of the school this morning. I feel sorry for the guy who stole her thunder.”
I had an inkling I knew who he meant. “Are you talking about the new student?”
“You heard about that already?” he asked, startled. I was the last of us to know any gossip because I rarely talked to anyone besides Bran and Livvie. They always had the juicy nuggets first.
“He was the guy hiding in the library last night,” I explained.
“Hiding from Angelique too, I bet.”
I shrugged. “Maybe not. They’re cousins.”
“Why is he coming to LaSalle?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It didn’t come up.”
Bran looked exasperated. “You had first crack at a senior transfer, and you didn’t get anything good out of him?”
“It didn’t come up in the long conversation we had about whether he wanted beignets or crostini,” I said. “Sorry.”
“So that’s it? All you got is that he’s Angelique’s cousin?”
“No, I got a few other things. His name is—”
“Rhett.”
The voice came from behind me, and I recognized the warm, faintly husky tones right away. He sounded like someone had taken some fine grit sandpaper to the edges of his voice, roughing it up just enough to make it interesting. Bran glanced up, and I turned to face the new guy in the flesh. Even in the glare of the classroom’s fluorescent lights, the contrast of his light gray eyes against his dark hair was almost mesmerizing.
“Hi, Cam,” he said with the slightly flat inflection I’d heard in his accent last night.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re in this class?”
“No. But I saw you come in here, so I wanted to say hi.”
I reddened and somehow forgot how to talk, so Bran jumped in.
“Good to meet you,” he said, offering Rhett a fist bump. “I’m Bran.”
Rhett bumped back awkwardly and nodded. “Hey.” The warning bell rang, and he glanced around, noticing that Mrs. Hebert, our teacher, was pulling books and file folders from her bag, ready to teach. “Am I already tardy?” He sounded confused.
