My brows dropped in response. “Who’s she with?”
“Katie,” Scott whispered excitedly. He tapped his elbow against my arm in a weird conspiratorial gesture. His brows waggled suggestively with excitement.
“Come on. We got you,” Scott reassured.
Lauren hiked a leg over the top of the fence. Scott nodded at me to join in helping her down.
I hesitated, knowing that any time I touched Lauren, she took it as a sign of encouragement. My hands fisted at my sides. I didn’t want to help.
My strict adherence to manners instilled in me since birth fought my bad attitude, and I forced myself forward. Lauren wiggled around until she dropped down against me, chest to chest, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck. I heard the balloons knock against one another behind my back.
She clung to me. I hit a growth spurt last year. Nine inches in twelve months with no sign of slowing. My current height of six feet, two inches tall towered over most of my friends. I was also strong due to ten years of playing football. My father was the varsity head coach of the local high school. Since he had won more than he lost, he held local celebrity status. Of course, I was given no choice but to play ball.
Lauren, on the other hand, had peaked at around five feet tall, and weighed maybe ninety pounds. She hung on to me until I bent to put her feet on the ground. Her viselike hold remained. We stood eye to eye, me looking down, her looking up, in an awkward stance as tears trickled down her cheeks.
“When’re you comin’ back to see your dad?” she asked. The waterworks made her voice raw, and she sniffled an awful sound right in my face.
I tried to straighten to my full height, but she held on tight. It took my hands gripping her forearms, giving a quick push to break her hold.
The balloons jostled free, floating into the sky above my house.
“Darn it,” Lauren said, using her fingertips to wipe at the tears and eyeliner under her eyes. “I made you the chocolate chip cookies you like. Katie’s got ’em.”
As if on some sort of cosmic cue, Katie hiked a leg over the fence, immediately losing her balance. The cookie tin dropped to the ground. It landed in such a way that the lid popped open. The cookies tumbled onto the grass.
“No,” Lauren yelped. “I made these for your ride.” She scurried for the cookies, making her best effort to salvage them.
“Beau. They’re here to load the truck. They could use you and Scott’s help to speed things along,” my mom said firmly from the kitchen door. She had finally found me. “Come on. It’ll put us on the road sooner and they’ll pay each of you twenty-five dollars.”
I acted as if I didn’t hear her.
At least until the right verses wrong code that I’d been born with reared its dumb head. I sucked. My mom had fought with my father, arguing to allow me the freedom to make my own decisions. It was the beginning of the end of my parents’ marriage.
My father had earned a reputation for being meaner than a diamondback rattlesnake. Seriously angry most of the time, but my choice to quit football took his wrath to an all-time high. Where my father refused to look at or speak to me, not a single word since the night I broke the news months ago, he directed the brunt of his anger out on my mom.
I finally cast a look at her. The pretense of not hearing her was lost anyway when all three of my friends turned her way.
“Hi, Mrs. Brooks,” Lauren said, still bent over the cookies. “I made you guys something special to eat for the drive. They dropped, but some survived.”
“Hi, girls.” My mom lifted a hand in a wave. “You’re sweet. Beau will have them eaten before we ever reach the interstate.”
Lauren beamed at me, clearly loving the idea.
Scott whacked me with force on the chest. “Get your ass movin’, Brooks. We got money to make.”
What was left of my mood sank.
Scott and I started toward the house in unison, step for step. My mother waited at the door as we walked across the yard. She didn’t trust me to actually follow through and come inside. Only stepping aside to hold the door open for Scott and stopping me with a hand on my forearm.
“Please try to be happy for us. This is the fresh start that we need.” Her words ran on a loop, like a broken record, over and over again. I got it. And she wasn’t wrong.
I finally gave a single nod, my gaze focused on the man with a clipboard, assessing the many boxes and furniture in the living room.
Scott came into my line of vision and took on a fighter’s stance in front of me. His fists drawn, executing the perfect playful one-two punch at my shoulder. “Burnin’ daylight, son. I’m stronger than you, no matter what you think. I got two to your one today.”
“You’re a douche,” I muttered, rubbing a hand at my shoulder. He’d used way more strength than necessary. My mom released her hold on my arm, allowing me to follow Scott inside.
“Don’t worry. I’ll console the girls when you’re gone,” Scott tossed out, winking at me from over his shoulder.
