Page 140 of 1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Forty-Seven

“Sorry. I suffer from word vomit. It’s worse when I’m nervous, but it never really goes away.”

“My dad sort of warned me about that,” I admit.

“That was smart of him. Seriously, you must be the envy of all the dude-bros in your grade,” Violet says.

I run my hand over my chest. “I’m due for a trim.”

“A trim?”

“Yeah. I use a number four trimmer in the summer. Keeps the mosquitoes from getting caught in my arm hair.”

“That makes sense. It would be a good insulator in the winter, though.” She grins. “You’re like a yeti.”

I snort-laugh. I could get used to Violet.

“So let’s talk about our ’rents before they come out. If we’re meeting, that means they must be pretty serious, right?”

I nod. “Seems that way.”

“I haven’t met one of my mom’s boyfriends since middle school. How about you?”

“There was one woman in my freshman year. She had two younger kids, I think, but I never met them, and they only dated for like, a couple of months, maybe?”

“And our parents have been dating for what, like, five months now?”

“That sounds about right.” I sip my drink. “My dad’s been working out with me a lot more lately, maybe trying to buff up for the summer.”

“Or he’s trying to buff up for all the boning they’re doing,” Violet mutters. “He’s got an ass you can bounce a quarter off of, that’s for sure.”

I spit spray my drink all over my chest. “You checked out my dad’s ass?”

“Not on purpose.” Violet makes a face. “The first time I met him they were doing the horizontal tango.”

“Wait. What?”

Violet waves a hand around and almost smacks herself in the face. “Nothing. Never mind. It’s not important.”

“You can’t say something like that and then wave it off.”

She sighs, but launches into the story. Her face grows progressively redder and by the time she gets to the part about my dad’s bare ass, she looks like she might burst into flames.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

I don’t share the story about getting caught bringing girls home by my dad and Skye. Or that Skye drove the girls home and apparently took them out for coffee and dessert afterward.

Dad and Skye return, both wearing huge grins. We eat snacks and talk. I find out Violet is a math nerd, and she gets all A’s in school. I’m more of a C-minus student. Especially with English, since I’m dyslexic. But I have a tutor for that. Although, if I’m honest, we don’t spend a lot of time on the tutoring part. I’ve gotten really good at giving orgasms, and not all that good at writing essays.

It gets hot in the afternoon, so we jump in the pool. Violet falls in no less than three times over the course of the afternoon. Dad barbeques steak, corn and salad for dinner and Violet and I offer to take care of dishes, mostly because our parents are making eyes at each other and it’s gross.

“Okay, so I’m all about probability and statistics, and taking into account past relationships and present circumstances…” Violet says as she scrapes the plates into the garbage disposal.

“Math isn’t my favorite subject,” I say.

“You use angles all the time in hockey, though. Like when you’re shooting the puck thingy at the goal, that’s angles.”

“I just point and shoot. Why are we talking about hockey? I thought you weren’t a fan.”

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