Page 37 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
He nodded. “Paying attention.” Chloe walked by with Lacey Bolan, another girl from seminar. “Hey,” she called.
“Hey, Chloe,” I said.
She drifted toward us instead of heading to the parking lot. “I’ll be glad when this hot weather is done,” she said, lifting her box braids off her neck.
“I’m going to run the air and wait for you in the car,” Lacey said with a friendly nod before walking off. Chloe looked in no hurry to follow her.
“How are you, Bran?” she asked.
“Made in the shade,” he said, pointing at the canopy of magnolia leaves over us.
She smiled. “That’s funny.”
He smiled back. “I got more. What’s green and hangs from trees?”
“Don’t say leaves,” I warned her. “I know his jokes. It won’t be leaves.”
“Bird snot,” he said, grinning. I groaned while Chloe giggled.
“I’ll have to tell my brother that,” she said. “He’ll love it.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “Is your brother in sixth grade? Because I kill with the junior high crowd.” He was in the middle of some long joke about a shaggy dog and a brick when Livvie walked up.
“Oh no,” she said. “How do you not get as tired of telling that as I get of hearing it?”
Bran shot her a dirty look. “I’ll walk you to the car while I tell you the rest,” he said to Chloe, rising to his full height and scooping up his gym bag.
“Sure, that’d be great,” she said. She dropped her eyes and studied him from beneath her lashes.
Livvie, grinning, watched Bran walk off. “Feels good to dish it out for once.”
“How did it go with Trent?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said. Then she turned to look at me. “Super fine, actually. He wants to do something this weekend.”
I held up my hand for a wiggle. “Was there ever any doubt?”
She shrugged. “It took longer than I expected. Maybe I’m losing my touch.”
I laughed and started for the parking lot. “You aren’t losing a thing. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see when he calls, I guess.”
We reached Jelly Bean, and she clicked it open, then turned and called across the lot to where Bran stood beside Chloe and a bright blue Mustang. “Time to go, Bran!”
He waved. “I’m hitching with Lacey,” he said. “See y’all later.”
“Nice,” I said, climbing into the front seat.
“Idiot,” Livvie grumbled as she settled behind the wheel. “He’s always complaining about not having space in my backseat, but that Mustang is going to be way worse. I don’t know why he doesn’t take his own car.”
Bran had a sporty Toyota pickup, but he rarely drove it to school. “How would he bum rides off of cute girls if he drove every day?” I asked.
“He could offer the rides to cute girls instead,” Livvie retorted. “Now tell me the Rhett conversation again.” By the time we pulled into my driveway, we had spun a half-dozen guesses as to what Rhett’s mysterious backstage dialogue had meant.
“I’m telling you, keep your phone near you. I see a text or a phone call in your future,” she said. “What are you going to do when he calls?”
“Answer the phone, I guess.”
