AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m glad June’s coming, she’s cute,” he says.
I freeze, the door halfway open. There’s a buzzing sound in my ears.
Seth starts laughing.
“Kidding,” he says, and pushes the door the rest of the way open with his back. “Well, not kidding that she’s cute, but I’m not dumb enough to go for her. Not with that brother.”
I glare. He just grins at me over his shoulder, then carries the beer on into the house, and I follow.
Apparently, I’m that dumb.Chapter ThirteenJune“It has to go around the stake first,” Rusty informs me.
“No, it doesn’t,” Daniel says. “Rusty, we already went over the rules.”
“It’s a house rule,” she says. “Once it goes through both wickets it has to go around the stake and then back through.”
“You can’t make up house rules midway through the game,” Daniel chides. “Also, that’s not a house rule here.”
“After this game, it’s a house rule,” she says, like she’s negotiating.
“We’ll talk,” Daniel says, a phrase I’ve noticed him using a lot. “June, please go ahead and finish your turn.”
“Thanks,” I say, lean down, and hit my croquet ball with the mallet. It goes through a wicket, so I hit it again, through another wicket, and it stops in the middle of our croquet course.
“Okay, now you have to get it around the stake before you go back through,” Rusty is telling her dad.
“No, I don’t,” he says patiently.
“I regret telling her about house rules,” Eli admits to me, sotto voce.
“I can’t imagine why,” I say, leaning on my croquet mallet.
“I tried to tell her that it was a house rule in checkers that if you get killed, you go back to the start of your board,” he goes on, watching Daniel knock a ball around. “And she didn’t believe me, but she did demand an explanation of house rules, and now I’m living in a hell of my own creation.”
“Sounds like you deserve it,” I say, and he just sighs.
“Maybe,” he says. “Wish me luck, it’s my turn.”
It’s Sunday afternoon, after dinner, and I’m currently part of the “keep Rusty entertained” task force. Yes, it takes three adults, and yes, the three of us are barely managing, but this kid is a force of nature.
I spot something from the corner of my eye, and I jerk my head around to glance at the house.
A squirrel runs across the roof. Not Levi. Not even remotely Levi, though my heart’s still pounding.
I don’t know what happened yesterday.
I mean, technically I know. I kissed Levi in the bathroom. I kissed him a bunch, and it was great, and I really enjoyed it, and then my brother called and reminded me that I’m inserting myself smack-dab in the middle of something I shouldn’t insert myself into.
Levi and Silas have been friends for literally as long as I can remember. It amazes me that they’re still as close as they are, after thirty-something years. I don’t know anyone else who’s managed that. I don’t know anyone else who’s even come close.
And the second Levi stepped out of the bathroom to answer the phone yesterday, I started wondering what the hell I was doing.
I felt guilty. Really guilty, even though it doesn’t really make sense, not if you think about it. There’s no reason why me making out with Levi has to affect his relationship with my brother, except I’m stupid and I know that it will.
Besides, I don’t really trust myself right now. I have bad taste in men, and I know it, and even though I’m pretty sure Levi is different, I don’t trust my own judgement.
What happened to my self-improvement project? What happened to being a brand new June, to personal reinvention and all that?
This is what I tried to talk myself into while I soaked in oatmeal for three-and-a-half hours last night, even though every thirty seconds I was back to thinking about Levi’s lips on mine, his hand around my wrist, the gentle-but-firm way he pushed me against the counter—
“JUUUUUUNE.”
I look down at a very annoyed Rusty, and instantly figure out that it’s my turn.
“Sorry,” I say, and move to the center of the field, knock my mallet into my ball. It goes through two wickets, and I try again to remember the rules of this game.
“Wooo!” Daniel says, holding his arms aloft.
I just look at him, confused.
“You just won,” Eli explains. “That’s the last stake. Unless you want to play with the rule that after you hit that stake, your ball becomes poison—”
“Nope!” says Daniel.
“Just kidding,” Eli says, grinning. “Winner does clean up, though.”
“We’ll stay and help,” Daniel says. “Rusty, can you grab those—”
“I don’t mind,” I say quickly. “Really, go have some pie, I’ll be right in.”
“Okay!” Rusty shouts and starts running back to the house.
“You sure?” Daniel asks.
“I got this,” I tell them.
He and Eli shrug, then follow Rusty back to the house.
