Page 3 of Violet Spark
We’d messaged on Discord, mostly, and Snapchatted a few times. He was cute in a pale, tall and skinny, geeky way. His real name was Brayden Price. He seemed to like me. If we could get in close proximity, there might be some chemistry between us.
I hit the arrow and waited a beat. And then, as I expected, my phone went off.
A boy!!!
See, my life didn’t suck so bad. Not in texts anyway.
A gif came in—a cartoon couple with big heads and pounding hearts for eyes.
Too soon,I typed back.
Another gif—a naked butt gyrating—filled my screen.
First date pending. I’ll keep you posted
That would hold her for now, but I had to come clean before she went to LA next week. A week in freezie time might as well be a year, but I had a feeling the days were going to fly by fast.
Gotta go or my phone will be confiscated,I typed. Confiscated by me, the manager of the Desert Freeze.
When I got back inside, Amanda had shown up—I checked the time on my phone—forty minutes late for her shift. Her makeup was perfect, dark hair curled in a side pony, lemon-yellow tee knotted at the base of her ribs to show a band of skin above her high-rise jeans.
She had her excuse ready. “I had an Earth Day Club meeting after school.”
I stared at her.
“The environment is very important to me.”
The Freeze was slow in January. Come May, when the cars wrapped around the kiosk, exhaust fumes strangling us, I couldn’t afford to put up with lateness, environment be damned.
“Try to call next time and let me know,” I said. Very managerial. “To help you remember, you can start with cleaning out the mixers.”
It was a bitch of a task, and I was just the bitch to assign it.
Her gaze went dull, as if she were deeply, incredibly bored, but she shuffled into the back.
Kids these days.
Movement outside had me turning around. A car was pulling into one of the Freeze’s few parking spaces. Unless the drive-thru line was too long—and that only happened in summer—people rarely came inside. We had two tiny tables on the public side of the counter, and employees on break mostly used them to eat or do homework.
I squinted to see better as a guy quickly got out of the car.
Tall. Pale. A sandy-brown mop of fine hair. Looked kinda like a cute computer geek.
I almost didn’t recognize him without the Snapchat filters. Brayden.
CHAPTER TWO
NOOOOOO.Not today of all days. We’d idly discussed the possibility of getting together in real life sometime. But I’d imagined it would be some day when I didn’t have a rainbow of carcinogenic food dyes staining my fingers and the blackest mood staining my soul. It’d be someday when Ihada real life.
Swearing under my breath, I yanked off my hat and pulled down my ponytail to fluff my hair. Powdered sugar didnotmake a good styling product.
“Rique, I’m taking my ten minutes.” Without waiting for his reply, I whisked out from behind the counter. I had a half second to knot my shirt like Amanda had before Brayden was pushing through the door.
Shit, I wished we’d met outside, where I could vent the stink of fruit and bleach. But he was walking so fast. Those long legs of his really covered a lot of ground. No wonder he’d designed his mage character to be so tall.
Shallow of me, maybe, but I got a little shiver of delight that he was taller than me. Tall enough that I could walk into his arms and lay my head on his chest and have him hold me and tell me everything would be all right and—
“Imogen?”
