Page 53 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
“What if you explained that your whole graduation from LaSalle is riding on being able to use the fabric?”
I shook my head. “It won’t matter.” She’d go out of her way to interfere with my capstone if I gave her the chance. Asking nicely would not only get me nowhere, it might even set me back.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “It sounds like the perfect solution.”
Livvie walked in, looking tired. “I’ve got curfew. Ready to roll?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
She smiled at Rhett and retreated.
“I can take you home,” he said.
“I know. But Livvie lives a mile away. It’ll save you a trip. Thanks, though.” In truth, I didn’t want Delphine to catch sight of him and ask me a bunch of questions.
He stood and helped me up, but he didn’t let go of my hand when I stood. “Thanks for inviting me,” he said. He ran his hand down my other arm to capture that hand too, and then we stood there with our fingers entwined while he stared down at me.
Even though I was the biggest social recluse in the history of LaSalle, I’d been kissed. My first one was the Cash disaster, a totally unwanted intro to kissing. My second and last kiss was also in tenth grade, on my birthday. It was after a Valentine’s party I’d been working where Livvie blabbed to the whole staff that I was spending my sweet sixteen scraping plates, and everyone should do my work for me. A half hour later, this kid Mason had found me out at the van. He asked me if he could give me a birthday kiss, and I had agreed. It was all right.
I could tell by the look in Rhett’s eyes that he was about to snap my eighteen-month-long dry spell. He leaned forward, lightly tugging on my hands, and my eyes half closed as I followed the soft pull. His breath tickled my cheek as he exhaled. It didn’t smell like anything except good. It smelled like good. His lips brushed against mine, not the mashing thing that Mason had done. This was way better, and he trailed his hand up my arm again, skimming slowly and inciting an epidemic of goosebumps as he made his way to my shoulder, pulling me closer to him. He brushed my lips again, increasing the pressure ever so slightly. I closed my eyes, ready for whatever came next, lost in a haze of warmth and slow drift...until I heard the sound of throat-clearing in the doorway, and Rhett’s head shot up. Bran stood there looking amused. “Sorry, player. I was coming in for a Coke.”
Rhett smiled down at me and slung his arm around my shoulder. “I’ll walk you out.”
I stopped when I reached Bran to give him a goodbye hug. “I’m going to let Livvie kill you,” I whispered. His muffled laugh earned him a poke in the stomach before I slipped back beneath Rhett’s arm.
When we stepped on the porch, he slid his hand up to the nape of my neck and pressed lightly, then brushed a kiss against my hairline. “I’ll talk to you soon,” he said.
Not soon enough. Definitely not soon enough.
Chapter 20
“Camille!”
I woke to Delphine hollering up the stairs the next morning. I jumped out of bed, my clothes already sticky in the humidity. My stomach roiled. The fact that she was at the foot of the stairs and not in her recliner told me how furious she was.
I flew down the stairs to meet her. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Nowyou have manners?” she asked, leaning on her cane. “Why pretend, Camille? Well-mannered people don’t scream at their elders and tear out of their houses like you did last night. That was disrespectful.”
I couldn’t argue. Whether she deserved it or not, it had definitely been disrespectful, and the less I interrupted, the faster this lecture would go. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“You are on thin ice, girl. I’ve been stretching my checks for years now to pay for you and everything you need” —her favorite lie again— “and I can see by last night how grateful you are.”
She leaned closer until her face was inches from mine. I could smell alcohol on her, stale fumes from the night before, something stronger than her usual beers. It mingled with her smoker’s breath, and my stomach churned harder.
“I’ve been too easy on you,” she said. “Things are going to change around here. You’re going to earn your keep, so you best find the Audubon painting. No more shifts at Miss Annie’s until you do, understand me?”
The anger I had pushed down yesterday surged back. My job at Miss Annie’s was the only thing that gave me any freedom at all. Freedom to escape this pit, freedom to buy myself the necessities Delphine wouldn’t. I’d been prepared to deal with her wrath, but this went way past anything she’d ever tried to do to me before. She was hauling me back into her cave and cutting my lifelines.
No way.
No way was I going down like this. This was exactly why I had always been terrified of upsetting her; I never wanted to know what happened when she truly lost it.
I took a step closer, and her stink washed over me. “No,” I said.
“Don’t sass me. You get up those stairs and look for that print.”
“If I don’t look for it, no one will. And you can’t make me do it.”
