Page 60 of Ready to Score

“Please go away.” She spoke the words into the horn.

“Can’t. I have a responsibility to make sure you’re good right now.” Lim’s husky voice was immediately recognizable, even muffled through glass.

Jade fought the urge to scream and yell and kick. She picked her head up quickly, not even bothering to pull the window down. “Can you give me a ride home?”

Lim just nodded, and within the span of two minutes, they were buckled into the front of the other woman’s Subaru hatchback with the air blowing in their faces and Syd playing through the speakers.

“I still can’t believe you drive a Subaru,” Jade grumbled.

“You can’t?” Lim laughed. “Lesbians and their Subarus, country gays and their trucks. There’s no denying it, honestly.”

“Fair enough,” Jade said. “Everybody hates on my truck.”

“I don’t know why. It’s veryyou.”

“Is it?”

Lim kept her eyes on the road but nodded. “Oh yeah, it’s sturdy and solid, obviously breaks down every now and then, but it gets back up.”

“Gladys breaks down way more than I do,” she said.

“Is that her name? Gladys?”

“It was my daddy’s truck, and he loves Gladys Knight.”

They stopped at a light, and Franny turned to look at her. “You know what? My dad loves Gladys Knight too, actually.”

“Really?”

“‘Neither One of Us’ is his favorite song,” she said, smiling. “My parents went to Dallas to see her perform at some festival a few years ago.”

“My daddy always says he hates that he was born too late to have been a Pip.”

“Can he sing?”

“Not a damn lick.”

They shared a quiet laugh as the car pulled forward again. “The Subaru very much does not have a name.”

Jade gasped. “That’s sacrilege. Every good car needs a good name.”

“I don’t know… Nothing ever felt right, honestly.”

Jade ran her hand along the dashboard, then the headrest of Lim’s seat. She even tickled her fingers along the buttons on the radio. “Feels like kind of a Georgia to me.”

Lim pulled a face. “Absolutely not. I dated a Georgia, and she used to pick her foot skin in bed.”

“Eww…”

Suddenly, they were jolting forward and back fast, and Lim’s hand shot out across Jade’s chest in some kind of attempt to keep her from shooting forward. The car in front of them had slammed on its brakes for a turn it hadn’t signaled. Lim cursed, then pressed down on her horn for a few long, long seconds while the car ahead made its turn. Then they were on their way again.

“What about Nelly?” Lim said suddenly. “Like ‘Whooooa, Nelly.’”

“That’ll work,” Jade said, laughing, as they pulled up in front of her little house. “This is me.”

She pointed at the little two-story cottage home with its white brick exterior and dark shingled roof.

“It’s really cute.” Lim leaned over, her face closer to Jade’s as she checked it out through the passenger window.

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