Page 144 of Rhodes

Jo stares at him. “How did it get there?”

“You put it there.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You literally did it while you were telling us Ford’s mother bought you pajamas for Christmas.”

Jo grabs her phone from Deuce. “A pajama set is cute. Pajamas are what your grandmother buys you at Costco. Plus, Christmas is in three weeks. This was just a surcie.”

“I happen to love all clothes from Costco,” Deuce says.

“That tracks,” I tell him.

He lifts his beer to me, and we clink our drinks together.

Across the room, somebody feeds another ten dollars into the jukebox, and the music changes from something country to something loud enough that half the bar shouts in protest. The front door keeps opening, letting in the rare New Orleans cold air before somebody shoulders it closed again.

This city has spent the entire first week of December changing its mind about winter. This morning I needed a coat. By lunchtime, I was carrying it. Tonight it's cold enough that everybody came in complaining and then immediately started sweating once the place filled up.

Jo looks down at her phone and smiles. I don't have to ask.

“You've seen him every weekend for the last month,” I say. "Don't y'all ever get sick of each other?"

She turns the screen face down. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

“You were smiling at the phone. I know that means Ford sent you a lovie message and you're swooning.”

“You're crazy.”

“Admit it. You were reading something from Ford.”

She puts her phone away and doesn't answer.

Deuce leans forward. “There’s a Ford face?”

“I do not have a Ford face.” She turns to me. “And for the record, I have not seen him every weekend for the last month. He had duty two weekends ago.”

“You drove to Biloxi anyway.”

“For dinner.”

“You drove an hour and a half each way for dinner.”

“It was a very good dinner.”

Deuce snorts into his beer.

Jo points at him. “You don't get an opinion. You spent three hundred dollars flying to Nashville for twenty-seven hours because some girl from your accounting class invited you to her birthday.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“She had a rooftop reservation.”

I laugh into my drink. This is what most of the semester has turned into. Classes, the reef on Fridays, studying somewhere too loud because Jo claims silence makes her sleepy, and nights like this when somebody sends one text and six people eventually end up around the same table.

Normal. I used to think normal would feel boring once I got it, but luckily it doesn't.