Hollywood Dirt (Hollywood Dirt, #1)(93)
CHAPTER 101
Our covers were blown, everyone in the store knew who we were anyway, but we still put the bags back on and continued shopping. The kiss had changed things, his hands constantly on me, resting on my lower back, playing with the ends of my hair, his fingers sliding through my fingers when we’d stop at a display. I found him a giant cowboy hat that I was able to squash on his head, the worried old man face now looking eerily similar to a country version of Robert DeNiro. He returned the favor with big hot pink earrings that he pierced the side of my bag with. “We’re so sexy,” I mused, striking a pose in front of a dressing room mirror. I had a sudden thought and wheeled around, facing him. “Photo booth!”
“What?” He adjusted his hat in the mirror. “God, this hat makes me look ridiculous.” His hands stalled as his statement sank in, and we both burst out laughing.
I chased down my original idea. “Let’s take a picture in the photo booth.”
“They have a photo booth?” I couldn’t see them, but I was pretty sure his eyebrows were raised in skepticism.
“The photo lab machine takes selfies. Come on.” I grabbed his hand and tugged at it, pulling him and our cart in the direction of the electronics department. I hadn’t been entirely sure of myself, but when we parked in front of the standalone machine, it turned out that I was right. It took pics in bursts of three. We took ten. The electronics girl popped her gum and stared at us like we were idiots.
We were idiots. Something about this man, whether it was having sex with him, or kissing him on camera, or running up a nine hundred dollar bill in the middle of the night at Walmart, made me act like an idiot. The cashier, a pixie brunette who I’d attended high school with, bagged our items, handing Cole his credit card and nodded at me. I smiled at her and wondered, for the first dark moment since entering the store, if she’d been one of Quincy’s ‘anonymous sources.’
When we pushed the buggies out the front door, the parking lot was dark, the ten thousand watts of parking bulbs out. And around us, as far as I could see, was pitch dark. We stopped, the carts squeaking, and stared.
CHAPTER 102
Ten minutes later, our new items in the backseat of the truck, we found out that the power outage was caused by a trip at the power station. I would go into greater detail except that verbiage meant diddle squat to me. It was Carl at the gas station who told me. I nodded intelligently and asked him if the two for two-dollar candy bar deal included Rolos. They didn’t.
On the way back to Cole’s we drove by the Pit. He spoke to the security officers there, who assured him that they would be diligent in watching for any vandals who appeared on the heels of the blackout.
I snorted when he drove off. Vandals? This was Quincy. Those guys were going to have a long night of waiting ahead of them if they expected trouble. We did one final loop of the town, then drove slowly back, his brights on, our eyes peeled for deer.
When we pulled down the long drive, the white house lit by the moonlight, I looked to my house and thought of Mama. This time of night, she’d be asleep. She wouldn’t even know about the blackout but it felt odd for me to think of her, in that house, alone. Once I moved away she would always be alone. That idea, like every time before it, felt odd too. I would get used to it. I’d have to. It was only natural for the young to grow up and leave the nest.
We set up camp in the Kirklands’ living room. I found candles and lit them, the large room glowing in flickering light, and I had the sudden vision of flames licking up the wall, the wallpaper bubbling, and hurried to blow out a few. There. Four candles lit. Enough to see by, just not in high definition. We unpacked in the living room, the floor strewn with our gear, Cocky picking his way gingerly through the pile. I saw some of his poo on the floor behind Cole and nodded toward it, passing him a can of wipes. I put on Cole’s new cowboy hat and ripped open a Nerds rope, chewing on one end of it as I shifted through our haul. Cole returned, scooping up the rooster and I plucked out the bag of peas, holding them up to him. “Sprinkle some of these in his tub. He’ll like digging through the bedding for them.” My words came out garbled, through a mouthful of Nerds goodness, but Cole nodded, grabbing the bag and heading to the bathroom. We’d have to build an outside pen for Cocky. He was too big to be inside, despite whatever notions Cole had for making him a house chicken. I frowned around the piece of candy. He’d. He’d have to build an outside pen. It was silly for me to think that we’d continue hanging out. Just because the sex had destroyed my world and rebuilt it in an entirely new way. Just because we’d had fun and been reckless and kissed in a Walmart aisle. Whatever heartbreak I had coming when Cole Masten left town was my thing, not his. That was what I needed to remember.
“His light doesn’t work.”
I looked up to see Cole standing in the dim corner of the living room, by the bathroom. I shrugged. “So? He doesn’t need the warmth anymore. That was just when he was a chick.”
“Do you mind if we hang out on the back porch? Just ’til the power comes back on?” He held Cocky under his right arm, like a football. A football he now scratched the chest of.
I grabbed the newly purchased bottle of wine, hefting to my feet. “Sure. I’ll grab some glasses.”
After my third glass, our bare feet hanging off the edge of the porch, my head on his shoulder, I decided to tell him about that night. Rehearsal Dinner Night. We’d lost Cocky to the darkness, his cluck occasionally heard from somewhere far in the yard. Every once in a while, Cole would dig his hand into the peas and toss them out into the grass. Sometime next summer, Cyndi Kirkland would be pulling out pea sprouts and cursing his name. At some point, around the second glass, his right hand had slid into mine, our fingers linking, and stayed there. It was on the third glass that my head had rested on his shoulder and my mouth had opened.