AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER TWENTY
Valerie was at her desk, quietly seething and practicing her new status quo of “doing just enough to get by” when a glint from the glass of Kevin Dowd’s phone yanked her attention for the third time in ten minutes.
Growling, she pushed back her chair, shoved her feet into her sandals, and stomped to the glass door. She yanked it open as Carine strode up the walkway looking red-faced and aggrieved.
Valerie held up a finger, commanding her to zip her lips on whatever she had in mind to say, and walked to the front of the overturned planter Kevin was sitting on. Gritting her teeth, she squatted in front of him.
“What?” He pulled out one earbud and turned down the volume on his music.
She wouldn’t have bet money on it, but it sounded like nineties West Coast rap.
Seriously? You ain’t about that life, Kevin.
“Do you need something?” she asked him. “You’ve been here a little while. Your pacing and flopping routine is getting distracting.”
He cleared his throat and his nervous gaze flitted from Valerie to Carine back to Valerie again. “Um. Waiting on a ride,” he muttered. “Finished early. Dude’s supposed to take me home, but he won’t be here until, like, six.”
“What dude?”
“My father.”
“You call your fatherdude?”
Kevin shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter to who? You or him?”
“I dunno.”
Valerie cut her gaze to Carine, who gave the slightest shake of her head in aDon’t ask mefashion.
Valerie drummed her fingers along the sides of her thighs and really studied the kid. He might have been eighteen, going on nineteen, but she didn’t read him as an adult. Maybe that was by design on his part, or maybe…maybe he just wasn’t there yet.
Leah had certainly needed a few extra years to get there. Maybe that wasn’t such an abnormal thing.
“How about this,” Valerie said. “Tell me something youdoknow.”
“Huh?”
“I asked you a question. In response, you said you didn’t know. So. Tell me something you do know.”
Furrowing his brow, he turned his music down a little more. “I…”
“Quick. Tell me something quick.”
“Fiberglass splinters hurt like a bitch,” he blurted, face flooding with rouge-red color. Obviously, he wasn’t so good at being put on the spot.
Valerie pursed her lips and nodded. “Yeah, they do. I learned that in high school. I was in orchestra in the pit percussion section for a while and played timpani. The ones we had were made of fiberglass. I picked up a few splinters while moving them around.”
Carine cackled. “You were a band geek?”
“Shush,” Valerie said with a teasing grin, happy to see her friend in a better mood. Carine had been in a funk on and off for days because her mother was nagging her, and Lipton was yanking her around over commission percentages.
“I did whatever I had to do to earn scholarships,” Valerie said. “I even got my ass out on the football field every Friday night for four years and twirled flaming batons.” Remembering the heft of them, Valerie gave the phantom pain on her temple a soothing rub. Those batons really packed a wallop when she lost her grip on them.
“I was never that ambitious,” Carine said. “I guess I assumed my parents would cough up the money, and they did.”
“Lucky you.”
