AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I did.”
She tilts her head back against the headrest and laughs. Like, shoulder-shaking, hand over her mouth, eyes crinkling at the corners laugh. After a few minutes, she looks over at me and shakes her head. I pulled up to the drive-through and raise my eyebrows at her.
“What kind of milkshake do you want?” I ask.
“Uh, chocolate strawberry banana, please.”
“What kind of milkshake is that?” I scoff, pulling up to order.
She shrugs, and I roll down my window.
“Hi, welcome to Cookout, order when you’re ready,” the woman behind the machine says.
“I’ll take a caramel cheesecake milkshake and a chocolate strawberry banana milkshake,” I order.
“Pull up to the window for your total, thank you,”
I pull out my wallet and inch forward behind the car in front of me. Lucy reaches into her purse and starts digging around, handing me a five-dollar bill.
“No.” I shake my head at her.
“What?”
“I’m not taking your money, Lucy. Your fancy shake is only like four dollars, don’t worry about it.”
She rolls her eyes and stuffs the money back in her purse. “My shake’s not that fancy.”
“It’s three flavors. It is, essentially, a blended banana split.”
I pull up to the window and hand the worker my credit card, Lucy taps her finger against her chin.
“You know, I never thought about that, but it kind of is,” she agrees.
The worker hands us our milkshakes and my receipt and I pull out of the parking lot. I glance at Lucy, her leg still up on the seat as she sips her milkshake. I head back for the cemetery, but my fingers tap anxiously on the steering wheel. I like hanging out with her, and I like making her laugh. I’m not ready for the afternoon to be over yet.
“Did you go to college?” she asks.
She always catches me by surprise with her questions. She always asks them out of nowhere, and, usually, with no context. I like it though, it keeps me on my toes.
“I did for a year. I dropped out when my mom got sick, the medical bills were piling up so I got a job to help my dad pay for them, even though I had to secretly make the payments because he wouldn’t accept my money.”
She looks over at me, a tender smile on her lips. “That was a really nice thing to do.”
I shrug and rub the back of my neck. “It was the right thing to do, and in all honesty, it didn’t help a whole lot. Dad still had to take out a second mortgage on the house.”
“I’ll bet it helped more than you think. And I’ll also bet your dad knew it was you who helped with the payments.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know, I just feel like it’s true. What was your major?”
“I wanted to be a veterinarian. But not for, like, dogs and stuff—for farm animals like horses and cattle.”
She glances over at me, surprise on her face. I smirk, feeling a little proud of myself.
“Really? Why farm animals, and is there really a demand for that here?”
“There is, and I know that because my family has a farm. It’s not huge or anything, we have two horses and maybe fifty head of cattle at any given time. When I was younger, we had a lot more, but with my mom getting sick and everything, dad just kind of lost his heart for it. Since she died, I’ve been the one taking care of everything.”
