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“Hi,” she said in a breathy voice that had my mind digging down through all kinds of dirty memories, making the ache worse.
“Hey.”
“What’s up?” she asked. “You’re not here in an official capacity, are you?”
I shook my head, looking her over. I felt relieved to lay my eyes on her again, felt happy to see her thriving in her job, looking sexy as all get-out in a lilac-colored and silky-looking business kind of shirt above some seriously tight-fitting black pants. Her outfit seemed different than the T-shirts and jeans she usually wore to work, and the color of her shirt made the brown of her eyes almost glow. I cocked my head, wondering why the change.
“No. I just wanted to check in. Say hi.”
“Hi,” she said again. There was peace in her expression and, at the same time, an excitement, like looking at me lit up her whole world.
Did it? She lit mine on fire.
“So,” I said, leaning toward her while she lowered herself into the chair behind her desk, “about that question I asked you. You never did answer.”
She lifted her hands from the desk, elbows resting on top, and pointed both her index fingers to her mouth, tapping them lightly on the edges of her lips. “I didn’t, did I?”
“Nope.” I uncrossed and re-crossed my ankles. I held my breath, feeling like I might chuck my lunch all over the papers and files on her desk and the cute little brown and white horse-shaped paperweight she kept on top as I waited for her answer.
Although I couldn’t help but notice the slow way her eyes traveled down my shirt and back up. They landed on my neck, and she cocked her head a little as her eyes finally found mine again. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, I’ll go to the dance with you.”
My whole face cracked into the biggest grin. “Well, hot damn, girl.”
Her smile grew impossibly bigger, she giggled, and I about died and went to Heaven.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ABEY
Things were all well and good. Red Graves’s miraculous turnaround had wound its way through the rumor mill. There’d been a little bit of talk.
“Maybe he’s lyin’.”
“Maybe he’s dyin’!”
“Maybe the judge told him to change his attitude or he’d send Red to prison.”
None of it was true.
Red had learned a hard lesson, and then he fell in love in an instant. “Insta-love” was what we romance connoisseurs called it, and Devo’s mama put her new suitor in his place. She’d no doubt gotten an earful of all the despicable things Red had said and done since she lived with Devo. So, Liluye Mescal told him he needed to get his shit together ’cause she wouldn’t be with any man who treated her daughter or anybody else that way.
But it didn’t feel to me like Red was whistling a new tune just because Liluye told him to. If that had been the case, he wouldn’t have hired one of the kids from Ace’s House—a gay kid—to work at his store part-time so he would have more time to take up photography again. He’d wanted to offer the job to Sylvie, but we’d learned that she would be living with her aunt in Laramie permanently. Her father was still in jail, serving out the rest of his punishment, but Sylvie’s mama still held her father’s line and wouldn’t allow Sylvie to go home.
She was better off with her aunt. Even Red agreed with that.
Red also wouldn’t have volunteered to take the daycare kids to the park once a week or offered to teach an outdoor survival and safety class for teens once a month if his new attitude hadn’t gone soul deep, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have hung a sign in his front window that said “EVERYONE is welcome in The Red Wild Outdoors—ALL colors, genders, orientations, religions, cultures, abilities, beliefs, sizes, and ages. Even grumps and vegetarians!” The sign looked more country than it did rainbow-y, with pictures of cartoon chickens, cows, and horses, but the meaning was the same.
It was a peace offering.
And it felt genuine to me. Red smiled and laughed all the time now.
And all it had taken was friendship and the possibility of love.
Now, there was one last person I needed to set straight.
