Page 10 of Frisco

“Yeah.” It was my turn to swallow, and I took another drink. “This is good stuff, Aly. Real good.”

She pulled her sunglasses all the way off and leaned forward, crossing her arms over her chest. “Spill it, woman. Also, I’m blaming the fact that we’ve been drinking since four that we didn’t think to ask why he came to find her. I mean, that’s Basic Interrogation 101.”

“I know.” Harper bobbed his head. “We’re slacking in our skills.”

“Totally slacking.”

Two more large gulps, and then I gave them the CliffsNotes.

There was a beat of silence.

Then, explosion.

“You knew him before?!”

“Wait! That guy that Connor was friends with?”

“What guy? Why am I not remembering? I need to remember too. Help me remember!”

“The guy that beat up Hank and Miller and that whole group. You know. Connor’s friend. Sophomore year. He wasn’t back the next year, but that guy.” Aly slammed her hand on the table. “I had no idea you had the hots for him! You totally iced me out. We were best friends. Best friends tell each other everything!”

“That guy?!” It seemed Harper had just remembered.

Both their voices went shrill.

I told them about Gloves, about the prison favor. I kept out the help they were going to give to Ruby and Claudia, but I loved my friends. They were still stuck on who Shane King was from high school.

Aly fanned herself. “Too bad he’s not a farmer. I’d totally do him then.”

That was another thing Aly liked. Farmers. She’d been burned by a guy out of high school, and after that, she started a quest for a millionaire farmer. She kept hoping to meet one, but so far, she’d not been successful. She met a lot of guys. A few of them had met Harper afterwards, but that was pre-Harper’s boyfriend.

I wasn’t sure if we were saying his name yet. I took my cues from Harper on that. Sometimes he needed to vent for days. Sometimes it was a while until he started talking. In high school, there’d been an incident he didn’t talk about for six months. That was the hardest for me to handle, because it’d been a really bad situation.

Also, once I found out all the details, I’d told Connor. On the down-low, he’d beaten the shit out of the guy who did the bad thing to Harper. I had no clue if Harper ever found out.

“Wait. So he’s helping you with something? Why you?”

Aly answered that with a knowing snort. “Because she’s Connor’s favorite. Duh.”

I gave Harper a small smile.

His eyes narrowed, and he dropped his shades on the table. “They’re helping out the Demon and Spawn?” His names for Claudia and Ruby. He wasn’t real original with his naming.

“Yeah.”

Aly frowned. “How are they helping them?”

I told them, and immediately Harper rolled his eyes. “Why is Connor so nice? I know your sister never visits him, and he’s always emailing you and asking you to handle something for your mom, so that’s her interaction—she asks him to do shit, knowing he can’t because he’s in prison, but he’ll still want to help and so he turns to you. And you do it, because you love your brother, not for that Demon.”

Have I mentioned how much Harper enjoys my mama and sister?

He shoved back in his seat. “Ridiculous, if you ask me.”

“So you’re going to think of something?” Aly asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re one percenters. Like, the real kind of one percenters. That’s terrifying, you know?”

“But you know Shane.” Aly was being all gentle with me, speaking in a soft tone.

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