Page 50 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
“I like a good mash-up, I guess.”
“A good mash-up,” he repeated. “It’s a good way to describe you.”
“Not on my sofa!” Bran called from the doorway. Livvie and Trent’s heads popped up over the sofa back.
“Relax,” Livvie said while she smoothed her mussed hair. For some reason,Iblushed.
“I don’t drag my dates to your house and make out on your furniture. Classy, Livvie.”
“This will turn into a thing,” I said, shooting Rhett an apologetic look before I hurried to referee.
“I watch ball games right there,” Bran complained. “You’re going to jinx that spot.”
“The spot where Trent got to first base?” Livvie asked. “I bet if I was one of your basketball buddies, you’d point him to a bedroom and hand him a beer on his way there.”
“My basketball buddies know that me watching from that spot is the reason the Pelicans don’t lose.”
Trent climbed to his feet and held out his hands toward Bran in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m sorry, man. No disrespect intended.” He looked uncomfortable. “I should probably go.”
Livvie shot me a “do something” look, but it was Chloe who saved the day.
“Y’all?” she said, stepping into the room. “The brownies are ready. Who wants one?”
“You hear that, Trent?Brownies,” Livvie repeated. “Have a couple before you take off.”
He looked uncertain. “Sure, I guess.”
We all stood there for a painfully awkward moment. Feeling my chitchat deficit deeply but wanting to put everyone at ease, I shot Rhett a pleading glance.
“Uh, I’m thirsty,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Colossally unhelpful. My disappointment surprised me. Disappointment happened when you counted on someone. That was why I rarely did it.
Chloe looked longingly toward the kitchen. “I’m gonna go get the brownies,” she said, before escaping.
Livvie flopped back down and patted the seat beside her. Trent sat, but he put a respectable distance between them. She glared at Bran, turned up the volume on the TV, and defiantly flipped it to a hip-hop station. My nerves stretched tighter with every kick of the bass.
“I like Chloe,” I said to Bran, who looked like he wanted to fight over the remote.
His face cleared. “She’s cool.”
By the time Rhett came back, Bran was sitting on the floor picking at the brownies on the coffee table. Rhett held a six-pack of beer in front of him. “Something to wash those down, anyone?”
He’d only been gone a couple of minutes, so he must have had it in his trunk. Underage drinking was pretty much the state pastime in Louisiana. In New Orleans especially there was a casual attitude toward teens and alcohol. I’d catered lots of parties where my classmates raised their wine glasses alongside their parents, and no one thought much about it.
But it bugged me. That was your baggage if you never knew your dad because he got blitzed at eighteen and killed himself and your mom’s favorite cousin. Maybe on a different night when I wasn’t reeling from the revelation that this was the anniversary of his drunk-driving death, I might have reacted differently. Maybe if I weren’t feeling exposed from showing Rhett my capstone designs, I might have waved the beer off without blinking.
I did blink, though. I blinked at the stupid six-pack in Rhett’s hand. What a typically high school boy thing to do. Awkward moment? Here, let’s booze through it. And Rhett had seemed like he might not be the typical high school boy. I didn’t have the emotional capacity to reconcile the difference between expectation and reality; Delphine had wrung too much out of me tonight. I shoved myself off the sofa and walked straight out of the den into the kitchen, shedding Rhett’s jacket somewhere along the way. I could hear him asking the room what was wrong and Bran’s rueful, “Dude,” in response.
I didn’t care. I plopped down at the kitchen table and stared at the window reflecting the kitchen behind me. Someone would come after me. Livvie, most likely. It didn’t matter. I had nothing I wanted to say to anyone.
Chapter 19
It was only a couple of minutes before the door swung open and Rhett walked in, his jacket back on and the six pack still in his hand. He headed to the sink, twisted the cap off the first beer, and poured it out. Then he kept going. When the last beer went down the drain, he put all the bottles back in the box and set it on the counter. “I’ll throw these out somewhere else, so Bran doesn’t get nailed for anything.” He walked over and took the chair opposite me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But it wasn’t intentional.”
