CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(23)
Con exhaled noisily and rubbed the back of his neck. “Look,” he said, moving over to the window. “We’re both in shitty moods right now so why don’t we catch up later?”
“Maybe,” I said darkly. “You go have fun at the pool.”
“I will. And you have fun sitting in your room by your lonely self.”
He jumped out of the window without another word and headed toward Stone, who was pacing moodily in the yard. He said something to his brother and Stone shook his head before lighting a cigarette. Conway seemed annoyed by their conversation and stalked through the Gentrys’ front yard, kicking the rocks as he went.
When he was out of sight I realized I couldn’t remember the last time we’d fought.
Or the last time he’d walked away without kissing me goodbye.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CONWAY
There wasn’t much in life I hated as much as I hated arguing with Erin. We didn’t fight often. She wasn’t like the other girls at school, always finding a reason to wallow in stupid drama games that no one could win.
I’d startled her when I came through the window. I could tell that right away. She shoved something into her desk drawer before turning on me all wide-eyed and guilty. No guy had a right to know everything about his girlfriend, but I wasn’t used to feeling like Erin might be hiding something from me. Even though I had shrugged it off right away, now that I was walking alone through the dusty streets of Emblem it bothered me. Maybe whatever she’d shoved into that drawer had something to do with why she was so irritable.
Or, maybe after having a night to sleep on it, she’d talked herself into being angry at me for yesterday. I had to admit I felt guilty for what I must have put her through. If she was sore about wandering around Emblem for hours, worrying over my fate, then she had every right. But then when we found each other in the parking lot of Dino Gas everything seemed all right. Erin had run to me full of kisses and love and relief. The only sore point was that she refused to believe that the whole mess had been my fault and not Stone’s.
Stone had been equally cranky this morning. He was that way even before Courtney, his non-girlfriend, called and lit into him for not paying enough attention to her, which was kind of an eye-rolling complaint all around. After all, she already knew what kind of a jerk Stone was when it came to girls so I don’t know what she was expecting when they hooked up. I’d never seen Stone go nuts over a girl, never afflicted with the kind of heart-singing passion that got a guy’s pulse racing and his mind fuzzy. He’d never felt the way about anyone that I felt about Erin. I really hoped someday he would.
I couldn’t help but grin to myself over the thought of Stone getting knocked over by a grand old-fashioned case of love sickness. It would take some kind of exceptional girl to manage him but with all the billions of females in the world there had to be at least one who could manage the job.
When I set out for the pool I’d been in a crappy mood and I’d planned badly. No water, no towel, no swimming trunks. Just me stomping through the streets of Emblem in my flip-flops and getting thirsty. I could get away with the gym shorts as a swimsuit and in this dry heat towels weren’t a necessity. But it would be nice to have a way to clear the dust out of my throat. Around here kids got used to toting around their own water bottles by the time they hit kindergarten.
Reaching into my pocket, I was pleased to discover three rolled up singles. It would be enough to let me duck into Dino Gas and grab a couple of waters before heading to the pool.
Main Street loomed just ahead. Lately I’d been looking at it with more cynical eyes. I’d grown up thinking that the center of Emblem was quaint and homey and familiar as the back of my hand. Now it just looked demoralized. Shabby. Here was the rickety Dirty Cactus where the local bikers strutted their badass selves before peeling out in a blur of noise and leather. Over there was the squat structure of Earnshaw’s Drugstore where there was always a bowl of stale lollipops on the back counter. Carson’s Garage was beyond my line of sight all the way at the north end but I figured it looked how it always looked, greasy and run-down. Other than a smattering of eateries, a hardware store, and a beauty shop, plus the police station and jail, there wasn’t much that would make visitors take a second look. Besides being home to the state’s largest prison, Emblem’s only claim to fame was a brief status as the territorial capitol sometime between the Civil War and the decade when people started driving cars around. In honor of the town’s semi-historic past, a shuttered bank had been repurposed into a pathetic museum that showcased curled newspapers behind dingy Plexiglas. It was always manned by curator Mrs. Albomerit, who was roughly two hundred years old and smelled like that chemical shit my mom poured on her head whenever she treated herself to a home perm.
That was about all there was to Emblem. Yet, for all its shortcomings it was still home. The idea of moving up to the more exciting scenery of college town Tempe had its appeal. But no matter where I went or what happened Emblem would always be in the back of my mind.
Ebbie Crack was behind the register in Dino Mart. That was her real name. Once I asked her if she was ever going to change it and she’d stared at me all puzzled and bewildered as if I’d started serenading her in Russian. She was somewhere in her mid twenties and was probably born to be an Emblem lifer, not that there was a thing wrong with that. Emblem was full of more good people than shit people, even if it was easy to forget sometimes.