Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(3)
Honestly.
Of course, spending all day with Bee had drawbacks. Were it not for Bee and Ryan, my ex-boyfriend and Bee’s current one, David never could have escaped town in the first place. And both seemed more relieved about their lives being off the magical hook than sorry about what they’d done.
I could smell hamburgers grilling at the Snak Shak, coupled with the coconut scent of my sunblock and the sweet syrup from hundreds of melting snow cones. In other words, the scent of every summer since I was a little girl. This was what I’d wanted for months now—some normalcy. So why did I feel all restless and sad?
I jumped as a few cold drops of liquid hit my arm and glanced over to see Bee with the bright pink straw from her Diet Coke still pursed between her lips. “Ew,” I said, brushing off the soda she’d sprayed at me.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” Bee said, setting the sweaty can in the cup holder attached to her chair. “There’s, like, a little black cloud over your head, Eeyore-style.”
I smiled despite myself. “There is not. I’m just, you know, focused on the pool.” I nodded at the water, but Bee just shook her head.
“No, you’ve got your patented Harper Price Brood Face on.” She leaned a little closer then, the rickety chair groaning slightly. “Anything with David?”
Our powers and whole “sacred bond” thing meant that I was supposed to feel when David was in danger. But there’d been nothing over the past weeks, not even the slightest hint that he was anything less than okay. I didn’t even have the sense that he was all that far away. Usually, when we were apart, I felt this ache, almost like a phantom limb or something, and there hadn’t been any of that.
But then there was another part of me that worried that my not sensing anything might mean he was . . .
No, I didn’t want to think about that.
So I turned back to Bee and shrugged. “Nothing.”
She frowned, and I bit back that impulse again, the one that wanted me to remind her that if she and Ryan hadn’t helped David leave town, I’d know exactly what was going on with him.
The rest of the afternoon wore on the way they all did, slowly and with absolutely nothing of note happening (other than some little kid eating both a hot dog and three snow cones, which meant I’d had to call the janitorial people to clean up rainbow-colored vomit, ugh). The pool had fairly informal hours, opening usually around nine, and closing at “sunset.” By this point in the summer, that meant sometime after eight p.m.
This evening, most people had trickled out the gates earlier, probably wanting to get home in time for supper, and for once, I didn’t have to round up any stragglers in the changing rooms. Bee and I threw white terry-cloth cover-ups over our bathing suits and pulled the umbrellas off our chairs, packing them up in the storage room by the Snak Shak.
“Another successful day, guarding the heck out of lives,” Bee said as we made our way to the parking lot, bags over our shoulders. We took turns driving each other to and from work, and today, Bee had played chauffeur, so it was her white Acura we headed toward, parked sensibly under a streetlight. Overhead, the sky was striped bright pink and orange, studded with the occasional dark purple cloud. It was the perfect summer evening, but I still felt like my feet were dragging on the hot asphalt.
“And another day tomorrow,” I said to Bee, shifting my bag to my other shoulder. “And then another one after that, and then—lucky us!—another one after that. A pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie.”
Bee paused in front of the driver’s side door, her keys in her hand. Her blond hair was curling from the water and the humidity of the day, her skin much tanner than mine. “Well, that’s . . . depressing.”
With a sigh, I tugged at the end of my braid where it hung over my collarbone. “I’m sorry. I’m the angstiest lately, I know. I really ought to start wearing black and listening to tragic songs. Maybe start a poetry club.”
That made Bee smile, but didn’t erase the concern in her brown eyes. “It hasn’t been easy for you lately,” she observed, and I felt a really bitter comment—When is it ever easy for me?—leap to the tip of my tongue.
I made myself smile at Bee, opening the car door. “It’s probably the sunblock seeping into my brain or something. Or overexposure to chlorine.”
As I went to get in the passenger seat, I happened to glance down into my bag. Frowning, I realized I had only my towel, keys, and sunglasses, which meant that my book was still at the pool.
“Be right back,” I told Bee, and then jogged back up to the pool’s gates. They were still unlocked; a few of the cleaning guys were emptying trash cans, picking up litter, vacuuming the pool, all the things I was very glad were not in my job description.
There was no sign of the book by my chair, so I walked across the concrete toward my locker in the changing room. The staff didn’t get special rooms or anything, but we all were given our own lockers, so it was possible that my book had fallen out in there.
I kept a bright purple lock on mine and, as I spun the dial, I was already thinking about what I’d do once I got home. Bee would go to Ryan’s, and while I knew I was welcome there, I definitely did not feel like third wheeling it. I could sit in my room with my book and fully give in to this black mood, or I could maybe go out in the backyard and practice a few Paladin moves.