Page 35 of The Best Shot

Yasmine: In the neighborhood.

Annie: …ok.

Yasmine:

Tabby: “in the neighborhood” at RICOCHET??

Annie: lmaooo

Annie: is Hale okay??

Yasmine: Seemed fine.

Annie: just fine??

Yasmine: Yep.

Tabby: Operation Find Hale A Woman continues

Ava: I’m not giving up.

Yasmine: You should.

Tabby:

Yasmine: I mean if he’s not interested.

Ava: He’s interested.

Yasmine: In what.

Annie: exactly

Yasmine: Goodnight.

Annie: HA.

10

“IT’S THE PRINCIPLE.”

HALE

The problem with fucking a friend, however reasonable (and good) it felt at the time, however mutual and uncomplicated you’d both agreed it was, was that pretending you didn’t want to do it again turned out to be a goddamn Olympic sport.

And I was not medal material.

I wanted Yasmine Valentine again, and I wasn’t being smart about it. I’d already proved that. I’d followed her into that bathroom with nothing in my head but yes, like common sense was something that happened to other people.

I was under the hood of a ’72 Chevy C10, knuckles deep in an engine rebuild that deserved better than what I was giving it, trying not to think about her in that parking lot.

I’d taken one step toward her. One step, and she bolted.

The shop ran hot and loud around me. Old oil had worked itself permanent into the concrete, the tool chests stood in their usual red row against the wall, and from bay two came the stutter of an impact wrench and Darnell cussing at a transmission like it had said something about his mother.

Over all of it, because it was my day to pick the music, Jazmine Sullivan was working her way through a song about taking a bat to a man’s car.

My grandfather bought the place in eighty-four. The sign out front said McClellan’s then, and it said McClellan’s for the next thirty-nine years, because the town had already made up its mind what to call it and my granddaddy wasn’t a man who argued with a settled thing. My father didn’t change it either.