Page 20 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
He slipped his cellphone from his pocket. “What’s your number?”
I gave it to him, fighting hard to keep a blush from rising. He texted a second later, a simple, “Hi.”
“Now you can text me directions,” he said.
I offered him a small wave and turned toward my class but when my phone vibrated, I slid it out of my back pocket.
Rhett: You’re not going to give me fake directions, are you? *wink face*
Me: Don’t worry. You already got a seat at our lunch table. For what it was worth.
He’d find out soon enough that the answer was, “Not much.”
Chapter9
“Cam has a boyfriend,” Bran proclaimed as soon as Livvie and I squeezed into the booth at our favorite dive, Boudreau’s, with him.
“Rhett?” Livvie asked.
“I hate you both. Also, he’s coming to lunch.” I detonated that minor bomb and crossed my arms.
“He’s kin to Angelique,” Livvie said after processing the information. “He may curdle our milkshakes by proximity.”
I leaned back like I didn’t care that any minute now Rhett would appear and make me a target for a dozen heat-seeking gossip missiles. “He seems okay,” I said.
“I talked to him for a minute this morning,” Bran said. “He’s all right.”
“All right” represented the starting point on Bran’s Coolness Scale. If Rhett passed muster with him, he could hope to eventually attain “Bro” status. Bran’s inverse scale, which also existed solely in my mind, ranged from “shady” all the way down to “tool.”
Livvie looked ready with a follow-up question, but she stopped, and her eyebrow lifted. I knew that meant Rhett had arrived. I scooted over but I didn’t turn around. Rhett slid in next to me.
“Hi,” he said. As the interloper, he had to say hi first. Subtext. Rules. Clearly, they were the same where he came from.
“Hey,” Livvie replied.
“How’s your first day going?” Bran asked.
“Better now that it’s lunch time,” he said. “What’s good here?”
Livvie plucked the menu from his hands. “There are only two choices. Bran?”
“Catfish po-boy.”
She pointed at me. “Cam?”
“Bacon cheeseburger.”
Livvie nodded. “Correct.” She slid the saltshaker to Rhett. “You’ll have to dump this whole thing on your cafeteria spinach salad to equal the sodium in these fries.”
Rhett didn’t blink. “Can I get cheese on them too?”
Livvie nodded. “Well done. You can stay.”
“Uh, not to undo that, but...what’s a po-boy?” he asked.
We all stared. Finally, Bran spoke. “French bread, stuff in between, you eat it with your hands?” He mimed it. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“Chicago,” Rhett said.
