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“Is it official?” he asks. He’s wearing suspenders and no jacket, and he hooks his thumbs in his suspenders and glares at me.
“Official?”
“Official,” he repeats. “Like, you’re only seeing one another. Exclusively.”
I shake my head. “Evie can see whomever she likes,” I reply.
He follows the direction that Evie went with his eyes. “I see…”
Junior reaches for my jacket pocket and pulls my handkerchief out. He motions to my mouth. I lift the handkerchief and dab at my lips. It comes back pink. “Lipstick?” I ask, as I wipe at my mouth. She got me. She totally got me. “Did I get it all?”
He points to the corner of his mouth, so I wipe there.
“That did it,” Junior says. He waggles his brows at me. “Somebody had a good morning.”
Milton walks into the church, looking quite dejected but still hopeful. Poor guy has no idea.
Junior punches my shoulder. “So what happened last night after you left the drive-in?” He leans toward me and asks very quietly, “Did you go back to your house or hers?”
I shake my head. “Neither. I took her to her grandma’s and dropped her off.”
He looks somewhat let down. “She didn’t invite you in?” he whispers. He looks around like he’s afraid someone will hear him. “I thought you guys had a spark.”
Oh, we did. We were sparking all over the place. “It didn’t seem right,” I admit somewhat sheepishly. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Soon?” he asks, looking like somebody let the air out of his tires. “I just lost twenty bucks, dude,” he admits.
“To who?”
He rolls his eyes. “Barbara-Claire,” he growls. “She swore you guys wouldn’t do the deed.” He huffs out a breath. “I hate it when she’s right.”
Which is pretty much all the time.
The ushers come to close the doors, which means we need to go inside. Junior and I walk quickly up the aisle, and I slide down in front of Ms. Markie, who moves her knees to the side to make room for me. Evie just sits there and pretty much makes me climb all over top of her.
I motion for her to move down, but she shakes her head. I try to scoot her over physically, but she digs in. “You suck, Clifford,” I whisper as I shuffle past her and sit down on her opposite side. I can smell Mrs. Rose–Allen’s perfume from where I am.
“I told you not to be late,” she whispers as I scoot closer to her, so close that our legs are touching, and I drape my arm behind her on the back
of the pew.
“You guys are so cute,” I hear Barbara-Claire sing out from behind us. I hear a click from her phone as she takes our picture. “I’m so posting this,” she says.
Ms. Markie’s phone pings, which prompts her to pull it out just to turn off her ringer. She tips the phone toward me and Evie, and I see that Barbara-Claire has posted a picture of Evie and me looking at one another, seated really close together as we whisper to one another. Evie rolls her eyes as Ms. Markie winks at me and puts her phone away.
“What took you so long?” Evie whispers as she tucks herself under my shoulder.
“Junior was cleaning my face,” I whisper back, close to her ear.
“What was wrong with your face?” She turns to study my features, her eyes skimming all around from my eyes to my mouth to my ears. “You look fine.”
I lift my handkerchief and show her the pink I wiped off my lips. It was quite a lot of pink.
“Oops,” she says with a giggle.
“You could have warned me.”
She leans close to me. “I was busy looking at other parts of your anatomy.”
