CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(25)

“No fight,” I said, keeping my voice even. “She was tired and I had some time to kill.”

I could feel Kasey nodding. “That’s good.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “God, it’s so hot.”

“It’s Arizona. In the summer.”

“Yeah.” Kasey started doing something with her top. She was fussing with the straps and had gotten close enough that her arm brushed mine as she examined herself.

“I hate tan lines,” she pouted as she pulled the strap over her left breast away and left it barely (BARELY!) covered.

I tried not to look. I tried.

Fuck.

Failure.

I looked. And just like that there was a party in my shorts once more.

“I hate them too,” I said even though tan lines were one of the last things I gave a shit about, right down there in the bowels of my concern list with stuff like knitting. And cat memes.

Kasey smiled at me, all dimples and sex. Mostly I wanted to jump right out of that pool and run like hell away from the hot girl. But from somewhere deep and primal another part of me ordered me to stay where I was.

That part liked looking at the hot girl with all the nice skin.

It liked the dirty ideas that Kasey’s smile promised.

It liked the hand that was touching my—

Wait a f*cking minute.

There was a hand on my dick.

There was a hand on my dick that didn’t belong to me.

The hand on my dick certainly didn’t belong to my girlfriend either, the girlfriend I loved and who wouldn’t appreciate someone else’s hand doing what it was currently doing.

“Remember this?” Kasey purred.

“I gotta go,” I said, shoving away the hand with a splash and hauling myself up and out of the pool. I didn’t look back, grabbing my pile of shirt and shoes on the way out. I didn’t even pause to put my flip-flops on until I stepped on a sharp rock in the parking lot and cursed in pain.

“Nice going, *,” I said to myself and it could have applied to anything I’d done in the last twenty-four hours. A nearby old lady who was power walking down the sidewalk in purple active wear gave me a stern look.

There’s nothing worse than what you come from.

As I pulled my cotton t-shirt over my head I had a bad taste in my mouth. For the rest of my life I would remember those words. I would remember that my own mother had said them and meant them.

I needed to go home. Now. I didn’t mean home to my mother’s house, where it was clear I was only grudgingly welcome at this point. But Erin was home to me. Stone was home to me. I needed to be where they were.

In the thickest heat of a summer afternoon in these parts it’s possible to fry an egg on the ground. It’s also possible for the rubber soles of thin shoes to melt. I didn’t hang around in one spot long enough to test out if this was that kind of day. I hurried past the streets and landmarks at full speed.

Maybe I could still salvage something out of the day before I had to be at work at Carson’s Garage. I was sure I could at least get Stone interested in digging up some spare change and getting lunch somewhere. If I went to Erin with my arms out I knew we could get past our earlier argument. And one of these days the two of them would learn to stop rolling their eyes every time the name of the other came up and put aside their differences. They’d do it for my sake. Now that it was on my mind, the idea of spending a few peaceful hours in the company of the two people I loved best made me feel more cheerful.

It even made me sort of forget about the Mystery of Kasey Kean and the Groping Hand.

When I banged on my front door Stone didn’t come out to answer. I’d forgotten to bring a key earlier but the spare had been returned to its rightful place beneath the flat rock in the front yard. The house smelled of cigarettes so Stone must have been lighting up a few earlier as an act of defiance.

As for Stone himself, there was no sign of him. I reached for my phone to text him but then remembered something. As I was being fingerprinted at the Emblem police station last night I had realized my phone was not in my pocket. Instead, it had almost certainly had gone to a watery grave with the Gnome’s Cadillac. So far I’d managed to avoid mentioning that to my mother. Anyway, all it meant was that I was phone free for the foreseeable future.

Since I didn’t have any idea when Stone would return I didn’t see any point in hanging around an empty house. I was smiling on my way out the door. Erin would be glad to see me. I was sure of that, even though we’d ended on tense terms this morning.

As I jogged through her front yard I paused over a sound. It was laughter, high and sweet. It was Erin’s laugh, although I knew from years of practice that it took a lot to get her to laugh like that, with such joyful abandon. It never stopped me from trying though.

I felt a stab of irrational jealousy that someone, somehow, had made her laugh like that today when earlier she’d seemed like the last thing she was about to do was laugh. Probably one of her sisters had done something funny. I was ready to laugh along with whatever the joke was by the time I reached the side door that opened right into the Rielos’ kitchen. I opened it without knocking because it was exactly what I’d done countless other times.

The sun’s brilliance contrasted with the dull green color of Erin’s kitchen and my eyes couldn’t adjust right away. I blinked. Several times. I saw them.