Page 48 of The Prettiest Outlaw

“Damn.”

Her words made me grin my ass off. They were unexpected, but even more than that, they were sincere.

“I’m serious, Nico. You give full-body massages, you’re ambitious, you know what a date is supposed to look like, and the sex is otherworldly? Who are you?” Her voice dropped. “And how did I get so lucky?”

“Let’s go before you get something started in this truck, and we don’t even make it in here for this date.”

I walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. We walked into the building together, stopping at the front desk.

“Hello,” a blonde with a slicked back ponytail said, her smile bright and friendly.

“Hey,” I replied, while Julianna looked around the space. “We’re here for the cooking class. It should be under D. Hill.”

She checked her list. “Oh, here you are.” Her bright red fingernail tapped my name on her list. “It’s down this hall and to your left. There are aprons on the shelf when you walk into the room. Just choose a workstation, and the class will start promptly at seven.”

“Thanks.” I took Julianna’s hand in mine, and we walked toward the classroom. “Hey, there’s something I need to tell you about this cooking class.”

“Do we have to cook naked?” She guessed.

I couldn’t do anything but laugh.

“You’re a clown.” I chuckled. “You’re silly as hell, but I swear that I fucks with it. Do you really think I would be able to concentrate on cooking if you were naked? And do you think I would be able to keep myself from killing every dude in here for staring at you? Nah, it’s not no damn naked cooking class. It’s a cannabis cooking class. Everything we make here is gonna be infused with cannabis.”

“Seriously? Even better!”

* * *

“It was like a six or seven course meal, Ms. Russo,” Julianna said to my mom.

It was the Saturday after the cooking class. My mother invited Julianna and me over so she could make a celebratory dinner for me. She was beside herself with glee that Pastor Sharpe had selected my shop as the church’s official vendor.

“Seven courses?” my mother questioned.

“The meal started with a green salad that we doused in a cannabis infused vinaigrette. Then we made spinach and artichoke dip with marijuana, a chicken and rice soup with a cannabis infused dumpling, an infused pasta with shrimp dish, and for dessert, we made cannabis infused caramels and lemon squares. Everything was so good.”

“Infused with bud?” My mother’s face was scrunched up in disbelief.

Julianna looked confused.

“Bud is what my mom and them called weed back in the day,” I explained.

“Oh,” Julianna said. “Yes. Infused with…bud…so much bud.”

“Nico got you high with his little outing, baby?”

“So high, Ms. Russo. Umm, and then he took me home, so I could sleep it off.”

“She’s lying, Ma. You know I wouldn’t let her…eat all that weed then send her home. She’s trying to hold you. She doesn’t want you to know that she spent the night at my place. But we ain’t do nothing because we were both as high as the sky. Plus, we thought we could touch music, and our tongues felt furry.”

My mother roared with laughter while Julianna mean mugged me, but I didn’t care. My mother already liked her. She didn’t have to work to win Bianca over. Bianca was already giving her the googly eyes and envisioning outings with her future daughter-in-law. I could see it on her face.

“Julianna, we have to have a girls’ day out one day, and you have to take me there.”

“We should.” The smile on Julianna’s face was big as hell.

I thought it was cool as hell that she liked the idea of hanging out with my mother.

“We’ll make Nico the designated driver.”

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