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Annie, with her wide smile and fiery eyes and thirst for squeezing every last drop out of every day. Annie, who’s late for everything and makes a fool out of herself by speaking before she thinks. Annie, who manages to laugh it all off and move on because life’s short, and if you get tripped up, the only way to keep going is to get right back up.
“Uncle Liam?” Legs yells over the noise.
I turn the music down, reach for my coffee in the cupholder. “Yes, sweetie?”
“What does ‘get some’ mean?”
I choke on my coffee.
And I’m caught so off guard that I don’t brake early enough for a red light.
I slam my foot down to stop the car. The action jerks Legs forward in her booster seat and sends a gush of coffee all over my white button-down shirt. “Shi—!”
The vehicle comes to an abrupt, jerky halt.
I twist around in my seat, heart pounding. “Legs! You okay?”
“Fine.” Legs giggles, totally unperturbed. Then again, her mother drives like she’s the only person on the road, and everyone else can get out ofherway. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so terrifying. “The song says that tonight, they’re going to get some. Get some what?”
Blood pumps in my ears and I press my head back against the seat. I don’t know if I’m more rocked by my ill attention to the road or by Legs’s question.
I turn the radio off.
Good grief. I blame Lana Mae for this. Letting her child listen to inappropriate music about casual sex sung by delinquent youth. Aren’t these boys, like, fifteen? Where are their mothers? I have a good mind to write to the record company and…
“Uncle Liammmm, what are they getting?” Legs asks again.
“Probably chlamydia,” I mutter darkly under my breath.
“What did you say?”
No! I’m not prepared to field this type of question. I’m only the driver!
“Um… clams from… India.” I cringe the second the words are out of my mouth.
Good one, Liam.
Will have to make a very awkward phone call to my sister later to explain that one.
“Clams? Eww, that’s gross.” To my intense relief, Legs seems placated by my absolute nonsense of an explanation. “Turn the song back up?”
“Absolutely not.”
Thankfully, we’re pulling into her dance studio, and Legs forgets the lack of music as her little face lights up.
“You ready?” I smile at her in the rearview mirror.
“Ready, Freddie!”
I turn off the ignition and grab her sparkly unicorn backpack from the passenger seat. “Come on then, princess.”
I hold Legs’s backpack over my coffee-stained shirt like a shield as we make our way into the packed dance studio. Girls in tulle and glitter hug and twirl and squeal while their moms gather in groups, jangling their car keys and sipping their Starbucks lattes.
Lana Mae hates it here. Says she doesn’t fit in, and asks me to take Allegra most Fridays. Which means that I’m a Razzle Dazzle Dance Studio regular.
I don’t buy her excuse. I think, deep down, she’s trying to set me up with one of the single moms here. Clearly, my little sister thinks I need to get a life.
Speaking of single moms, there’s (thankfully) no sign of Cassandra, but I do spot Debs—a bottle-blond lady with an overeager voice and a penchant for putting her hand on my arm and trapping me in one-sided conversations.
