Page 19 of Rebel Summer

My friend, Jane, had lent me an outfit. The clothes in my overnight bag had been severely lacking in courtroom chic. The flowy floral dress from Jane looked fashionable and gorgeous on her, but it didn’t feel like me, which had me fighting the urge to fidget even more than I already was.

My dad had a meeting on the mainland today, which thankfully explained his absence this morning. He’d been very present yesterday, however, when we’d spent an hour with Mr. Frost, going over the plan for court. What to say. What not to say. And all of it in direct contrast to the feelings in my gut.

Beau, the cop, was now sitting behind me, looking dashing in his blue uniform. He shook my hand and gave me a friendly smile.

My attorney leaned toward me, whispering with minty-fresh breath, “Remember, after you tell the judge your plea, let me do the talking. He’ll set another court date, and then the meeting should adjourn. Next time we meet, we’ll have everything in place to get the charges severely reduced or dropped entirely.”

He oozed confidence, reminding me so much of my dad it was hard not to cringe.

His mouth kept moving, but my unfortunate attention was pulled behind me by the entrance of one Dax Miller—in a blue button-up shirt and khaki pants, I might add. He was in clothes that covered his body and pants that didn’t have grease stains. That warranted a second look. Even his hair was…styled, in a sexy-actor-on-the-big-screen-winning-over-the-jury type of way.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. My attorney specifically said that this was a case brought against me by the state. Not Dax. So why was he here?

“Hey, man,” Dax said to Beau as he stood, and they did a weird hand-slap-shake thing. I tried to ignore it, but it was hard to not see it all out of the corner of my eye, even while looking at my lawyer spouting words at me. I wanted to give him my full concentration, but there was too much happening behind me.

“You see that game the other night?” Beau mumbled to Dax, and I wanted to cry in annoyance. Why was he here?

“Had it on at the shop.”

I knew that the reason I was sitting in court was my own fault, but somehow it felt very unprofessional to have the guy whose shop I accidentally smashed into be friends with the cop who had given my citation. They could at least keep it under wraps in the courtroom. My lawyer’s attention gravitated to something on his phone, and I turned back around in my seat. But their words kept finding me.

“How’s the shop? That tarp hanging in there okay with all the wind we’ve been getting?”

“Barely. It’s almost a full-time job keeping it secure.”

“How are you holding up?”

“I actually spend a lot of nights crying myself to sleep. Tears. Tissues. Everything.”

I scoffed out loud but refused to turn around.

“The Lego car?”

“The Lego car,” Dax agreed solemnly.

“It’s a crying shame,” Beau remarked.

“What if I had been standing in front of those windows? She would have plowed over me like a lawnmower.”

“You’re too pretty for that,” Beau said.

“That’s what I thought.”

Even as I shook my head, a smile itched to escape, though I held it in. That was why he was here. Dax would never pass up a front-row seat to my utter humiliation.

I turned around to meet two guys both holding back smiles at the same time. They had clearly been awaiting my reaction. Using a few specific words, I told them exactly where they both could go, resulting in laughs from both of them.

“Did you hear that language? It’s no wonder she ended up here,” Dax said to Beau.

“Did you brush off the old courtroom outfit from your days as a juvenile delinquent?” I asked Dax pleasantly now that I had his attention.

“You know what’s good about being a juvenile delinquent?”

I leaned forward, pretending great interest. “What’s that?”

“A squeaky-clean record as an adult. I don’t know if you’ll be able to say the same after this.”

“I highly doubt you have a squeaky-clean anything.”

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