Page 30 of As the Rain Falls
“I’m dropping you off by the gates, or I’m not dropping you off at all.” I turn the steering wheel to the left, maneuvering the truck through the parking lot.
My tone sounds serious enough, and she doesn’t question me. Cassandra grins instead, her upturned nose twitching as she does so.
She’s so cute.
“What do you mean by not dropping me? Are you bringing me to work with you?”
“Only if you’re not afraid of walking on cow poop.”
My lips pop around the last word, and her enthusiasm fades, replaced by a devastating look of disgust on her face instead.
“I thought you’d know how to avoid all the poop by now.”
“I do, but I’m just guessing that you don’t.”
“So much for being a farmer.”
I throw her a quick, curious glance, feeling a little surprised that she even remembers that I work at Well’s farm.
“You’re keeping tabs on me, Rivera?”
“I do like to know things,” Cassandra answers simply, not giving me much information at all.
I lean my head back against the seat while also slowing the car down.The parking lot is empty, and I’m assuming Cassandra is walking into class a lot later than she was supposed to do today. I try not to stare as she blindly reapplies her lip gloss next to me. She smacks her lips together twice, making loud sounds before looking at me again. I release the pedal and force the car into a full stop.
“Do I look crazy?”
My answer is as honest as it can be. “You look pretty.”
Cassandra likes to keep an effortlessly beautiful kind of look that probably makes other boys think that she doesn’t do a lot.
I know the real deal.
I mean, I lived with my sister for seventeen whole years of shopping for hours just to find the right kind of concealer—the one that’s not too yellow, too red, too dark, or too bright. I also sat through enough rounds of getting fitted for the perfect black dress to be able to tell when a girl is careful about those things; Lucia had her first date with Antony a few days after her fourteenth birthday. It was kind of a big moment for her.
Cassandra’s hair does look exceptionally voluminous today, but it’s not a bad look by any means. A few gold strands are thinner and shorter, slipping out of her ponytail to frame the sides of her round face. The color of her eyes reminds me of chamomile tea and honey, warm and sweet.
Something about the way her mouth is shaped, how her Cupid’s bow is softly undefined, makes her painfully beautiful to look at.Nobody can deny that, not even me. It’s a good thing we don’t see each other every single day, or else it’d become a fact increasingly harder to ignore.
“You really think I’m pretty?” Cassandra asks, sounding honest-to-God surprised by my answer.
“Yeah, I do.” I look away, catching sight of her flaming cheeks with my peripheral vision. “Will you take my jacket with you?”
“I really shouldn’t,” she answers and tries to take the jacket off, but I stop her, catching her wrist.
“I want you to,” I insist, staring at her.
“But it’s yours.”
“You’re right, it’s mine. And I don’t want you to get cold in class,” I explain, thinking of how Mrs. Yun likes to keep her windows open all the time.
Cassandra avoids my gaze, a smile trying to break through.
She’s cute.
“Alright, Becky. Thank you.”
I let her arm go, feeling the tips of my fingers itch.
