Page 4

With a wince, he capitulated. “Alright. Yes, that’s unlikely, but weirder things have happened.”

I fiddled with the holes in my sweater. “It’s just… It’s Shepherd, you know?”

Dark eyes met mine, full of understanding. “You’re not in high school anymore. I thought you were over all that.”

Squirmy and uncomfortable, I squared my shoulders. “I thought I was too.”

A beat of silence passed before he sighed. His hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’m going inside. Don’t sprain your brain or anything.” He stood, then did a double take at my screens. “Wait. Is that my iPad?”

The overwhelming urge to defend myself rose, and my voice went shrill. “It was a crisis!”

My innocent expression did nothing to quell his affectionate eye roll. I lifted the tablet, and he snatched it from my hand. “You always do this. Over-analyzing will get you nowhere, Shay. No amount of reading or organization is going to give you the answer. Just email her back. She doesn’t bite.”

I answered with a disbelieving snort. “You know nothing about Southern women, Ravi Parikh.”

Two

My mom’s version of tacos consisted of fried corn tortillas, unseasoned hamburger meat, and ketchup. Growing up, we ate tacos for dinner at least twice per week. The flavor brought back my childhood more than anything except the cedar-vanilla scent of the tiny mobile home in which I was raised.

From the comfort of Mama’s well-worn couch, I cast my eyes over the unchanged shag brown carpet and wood-paneled walls. She served my third “taco” while I explained Ivy’s email.

“So, what did you say?” Mama asked.

“I thanked her for the invitation and asked when she’d like to spare some time for me.”

Mama snorted. “So polite. I’d’ve asked what she wanted.”

I had no trouble believing that. Victim of an abusive stepfather, Audra Honeycutt emancipated herself at fourteen, became a single mother by fifteen, and learned to survive in the face of poverty and discrimination by her wiles alone. My father was never in the picture, and my mother wouldn’t speak of him. I didn’t even know his name.

She’d been alone and had learned how to succeed that way. Beauty was her weapon, her blunt words how she wielded it, and her shrewd cleverness was the ace up her sleeve—and also the reason she’d never resorted to nefarious activities to make ends meet.

If only I had her resilience, but my mother’s was the kind of strength that could only be earned from a stark lack of choices. Sink or swim.

Audra swam.

She was my hero.

I washed down the food with a swig of sweet tea and shrugged. “I figure it’s best to meet her first. What if she offers me something that pays?”

Mom settled onto the couch beside me, Pepsi in hand. She’d only eaten one taco because

“I ain’t twenty-two anymore. I just look at a piece of cake and put on five pounds.” Ridiculous, really, given her enviable figure. Her looks made her life easier, so my mother was greedy with them. She protected them with vicious savagery.

Audra Honeycutt was living proof that pretty people received better treatment—easier job hunts, leniency from authority figures, favors from strangers, higher tips at the diner. This unfairness of life was drilled into me as a child, and I learned to foster every genetic advantage I was given.

Your face is your business card. Intelligence is your currency.

My smarts, the pretty face and lush sable hair I inherited from her—inborn traits she forced me to cultivate. She sent me to the best local schools, and I participated in every extracurricular we could afford. She shared her drug-store beauty products with me and made do with things like olive oil and vitamin E when money was tight. My hair was always done. My clothes unstained.

And as for the advantages that were earned and not innate, I bit into those with the strength of a pit bull. Sink my teeth in and never let go.

Which was why I’d been expecting her next words from the moment she learned I had moved home without a job prospect.

She tapped a nail on her Pepsi can, astute green eyes raking over me. “What if she offers nothing? See? This is why you don’t leave a stable income without another lined up. Now you’re desperate. Desperate people get stupid.”

“I did the calculations, Mom. I had enough savings to last six months. The surgery wiped me out.”

She waved a hand as if to say weak argument. “You should have made payments on that.”