Page 38 of Can We Skip to the Good Part?
Ella nodded, but it was hard to believe entirely. She decided to move them away from the subject matter that still made her chest ache. “Are you close with your parents?”
“Well, we talk every day, but close is not a word I’d use.” The light changed, and they drove on. “Today, my mom asked me if I’d given any thought to a more dignified hairstyle. That’s a pretty standard example of daily conversations.”
Ella balked and didn’t hide it. She couldn’t. “Your hair isgorgeous. People pay tons of money to try and achieve what you have through genetics alone.”
“Ella, I had no idea you felt this way.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Wow. You’re really into my hair.”
Ella laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Enjoy your moment.”
“I’m relishing every second. Do you see me over here?” The funny thing was that Max’s version of relishing was still very much in control and polished. Everything about her was. Ella was getting good at reading the nuance, though. That slight smile that played on her lips. The small sparkle in those brown eyes. She also sat a little taller.
Ella laughed, enjoying their back-and-forth. “I do see you. But you’d better calm the hell down. Don’t want you to crash the car with all that relishing.” She watched Max drive for a beat longer, appreciating her profile, the way she focused on the road like she owned the damn thing. She tried to imagine Max being bad at something, and couldn’t quite conjure the image.
“Weren’t you supposed to keep me humble?”
Ella shrugged. “A blip. They happen. I’ll get back to making your life hard in a minute. What’s your mom’s problem with your luscious locks?”
“That’s not an awful nickname. Maybe we should keep it.”
“No.”
“She thinks I wear it down too often to be taken seriously, except, of course, when she wants me to woo a man and make him my lifelong mate. Then I’m free to toss at will.”
If Ella had been drinking something, she would have spit it out all over the expensive windshield. “Woo a man? Woo aman?!” She hadn’t meant to scream that last part. “Does she know you?”
“Ella. I think you just called me super gay.”
“I did. I mean, you’re like the mostlesbianlesbian. It’s not the way you look, it’s the energy.” She leaned in. “She must see that. You would be in Honors Gay if this were school.”
“Oh, you’ve said some nice things to me before, but that one wins.” She flashed Ella a wide-eyed glance and went back to the road. “And Iwasin all honors classes, by the way.”
“Well, of course you were. I was not. Too busy doodling.” She looked around. They seemed to be off the beaten path. The familiar sights of Everly Springs were nowhere to be seen. Fewer streetlights and fewer cars. She had a feeling they were close to the bar. Or was it a club?
“You’re an impressive bisexual, too,” Max said. “I didn’t mean to not return the compliment.”
“Thank you for thinking of me and my fluidity.”
Max lifted a shoulder. “Anytime, Ella. What’s your middle name?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Fine.”
When they arrived at Sally Sue’s, Ella took in the scene because it wasn’t at all as she had imagined it. The one-story building, all by itself down a dusty, dark road, didn’t feel a part of the city at all. The parking lot around the back was a literal field, and the people heading inside and spilling out the entrance had all dressed the part.
“Now that’s a lot of flannel,” she said, rethinking her outfit. She came around the front of the car to wait for Max.
“Isn’t it?” Max took off her coat, dropped it onto the front seat of the car, and gave the door a slam. Ella went still at the sight.Whoa. The sounds of The Chicks drifted into the parking lot, her underscore to the visual of Max fucking Wyler lookinglike thatin jeans, black cowboy boots, and a red-and-black checkered shirt that made her the sexiest woman she’d ever seen. Since when was she into cowgirls? Since fucking now. With her hair down and her shirt unbuttoned to a generous neckline, Max looked like the October page of a sexy calendar, and honestly? She wasn’t even showing that much skin. “What? Ella, you’re staring.”
“You didn’t warn me.”
“About what?”
“That you were …” She had to reframe that thought because the sentence, "You were going to look so ridiculously hot tonight,” wouldn’t do. “Were, uh, going full Western.”
“I had no idea you had opinions, or I would have.”
“Well, I do!” she shouted without meaning to. The emotion had just burst straight out of her. A woman passing by turned abruptly at the sound of her voice. “Sorry,” she told the woman in a much quieter voice.
