She doesn’t wait for an answer. She hooks her backpack that was sitting on the floor over her shoulder and shoves her feet in her shoes before walking out the door without a glance back. “I feel like I can finally hear my own thoughts,” she says with a sigh once we walk outside where it’s much quieter. Her loose hair frames her round face, and she presses her hands to her temples, showing how she was seconds away from losing her mind inside that house. A smile finally peeks through her heart-shaped lips when she sees me holding back a laugh.
“How are your parents able to handle all that noise?”
“They aren’t home,” she explains, turning to her car parked in the driveway. “They went to some dinner thing, which is probably why it’s that loud in there. I don’t think they could pull that off if my mom was home.”
I take her bag off her shoulder and let it dangle from my fingers. “So where are we going?”
“Hungry?” she asks, all evidence of her aggravation gone with the suggestive smile on her face.
“Yeah.”
“Well, come on, Hayes,” she calls, skipping to the driver’s seat of her car.
I hop into the passenger seat, settling her backpack at my feet, and we buckle up. Teeny pulls out of the driveway. With her focus on the road ahead, I’m able to take her in, no longer surrounded by loud noise and angry teenage boys. She’s wearing white shorts, cut off mid-thigh, exposing the warm skin tone of her legs. The tank top she’s wearing is a bright blue color, and it shows off the sharp curves of her shoulder, the edges blending in with the lines of her shoulder blades. Her hair is down and a little wavy and damp, like she showered recently, though not too recently with the added bounce to the ends.
She flicks at the radio with her fingers, her nails painted a lavender color, and she stops at a station when she hears a song she’s familiar with. I sit back, listening to her hum while she turns down winding roads driven through memory.
“Did you bring all your review stuff?”
“No, I thought I’d wing it,” I tell her, a sarcastic tone in my voice. “You know, by the coattails of my badly pronounced French words and your tutoring skills.”
She peers at me with a quirked eyebrow. That’s when I pry open my French textbook and whip out the study guide Mrs. Fix passed out last week.
“Okay, smart ass.” She pulls to a stop in a small parking lot that has a liquor store, a small sandwich shop that’s closed for the night, and a hole-in-the-wall diner.
“What is this place?” I ask, stepping out to meet her at the hood of the car.
Teeny links her arm through mine and guides me through the door, the words “Marie’s Diner” elegantly painted in cursive across the glass. “They have the best hazelnut waffles. And Coke floats. Unless you’re too cool for that kind of stuff.”
I scoff, expelling a loud “pshhh” through my teeth. “Never too cool for ice cream and soda.”
We’re shown to a booth seat where we place our study material on the wood grained table. I sit directly across from Teeny as she politely orders for us, and we start to open our textbooks and highlighters. It isn’t crowded inside, which is slightly surprising considering it’s dinnertime, but it draws in less attention as Teeny and I start to pour over our study guide.
“So, I think we should start with the vocabulary words,” she says, her gaze zeroing in on the stapled stack of papers in front of her. “I’m still struggling with some of the words.”
“You?” I ask suspiciously.
“Yeah, why?”
“I highly doubt that,” I tell her, folding over my notebook to a fresh page. “Didn’t you get like ninety-four percent on the last vocab test?”
“Ninety-six, but that’s not important,” she tells me, brushing off my skepticism. “The new list of words for this chapter are freaking hard!”
“God forbid your GPA drops half a point.”
She shoves at my shoulder from across the table. “Whatever,” she teases. “Like you aren’t sailing through calculus with flying colors.”
I shrug. “I prefer numbers over words.”
“I guess we each have our strengths.”
We’re interrupted by the arrival of our drinks, and we gently push our things aside.
“Moment of truth.” Teeny nudges my Coke float closer to me with her index finger and a wide grin. “If you don’t like this, I don’t think this is going to work. I couldn’t handle that kind of difference of opinion in someone I consider a friend.”
I push away the inkling in my head that’s causing me to flip through all the reasons why Teeny calling me a friend suddenly seems inaccurate. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
“Are you saying you can’t handle the heat?”
