Page 69 of Fireworks Flame
“You look beautiful,” he says, releasing me. “Give me five minutes and we’ll get on the road.”
I nod, staring after him as he disappears into his bedroom. My mother is going to love him. She’s going to take one look at him and be utterly charmed. Blue eyes have always been her weakness.
I wish I didn’t suspect I’m about to bring another man into her life who won’t be comingback.
THEN
The three of us girls were propped up on loungers, the glittering infinity pool stretched out in front of us. Fruity daiquiris that we were finally old enough to order crowded the tiny tables. Mac and Deiss had taken the chairs that bookended us and were tossing a little squeeze ball back and forth over the top of us. Droplets of water flew off of it as it passed, hitting my legs and skidding across the bronzing oil. The coldness of it felt good against my hot skin, but I joined in with the other girls’ protests and attempts to slap it out of the air, knowing we were just making the guys want to do it more.
“I’m just saying it’s weird,” Mac insisted. “If chicken nuggets are just mushed-up chicken parts formed into a nugget, why wouldn’t they shape it like a chicken?”
“Because nobody wants to look at a chicken’s face while they’re eating its corpse,” Phoebe said.
“Sure we do,” Mac said. “We’re savage creatures. Haven’t you ever watched a kid eat an animal cookie? They start with the head, every time.”
“He has a point,” Deiss said, popping the ball up over his head before swinging it back toward Mac.
“Does he, though?” Simone shifted her sunglasses, causing her bikini top to slip a little lower. She’d untied the straps, supposedly to prevent tan lines. As she was reaching down to prevent her breast from fully popping out, her hand froze.
“Crap,” she muttered.
“What?” Mac looked around like a dog shaking off a bath.
“Hi, Simone,” two girls said in unison, sauntering up in bikinis paired with three-inch wedges.
“Happy birthday,” the taller one said in a sickly sweet voice. “It looks like you’re having fun.”
“Which is so nice,” the other one continued, “because everyone at the sorority house was really sad for you that you had to do something with your mother instead of celebrating with us.”
“Yeah.” If she was ruffled, Simone did a remarkable job of hiding it. “It kind of sucks, but things ended early with my mom because she had to go to the doctor. She’s worried one of her breast implants might’ve slipped. I don’t want to be mean, but it looks like the left one got hungry and ate the right one.”
I squinted at her because I knew for a fact that Simone’s mother had been happily traipsing around Geneva for the last month.
“Really?” The tall one looked delighted by the gossip. “That’s awful.”
“So gross,” the other one said with a gleeful grin.
Deiss chucked the ball over their heads and into the pool, causing Mac to yelp with confusion.
“Beat you to it,” Deiss said.
Without hesitation, Mac lunged up and toward the pool.Deiss did the same, turning at the edge and winking at Simone before cannonballing into the water. A wave exploded over the edge, causing the girls to shriek and scurry out of the line of fire.
“Thanks for the birthday wishes,” Simone called after them, before laughing gratefully and blowing a kiss at Deiss for getting rid of them.
I shook my head at Simone’s pinkened cheeks. If Deiss didn’t stop with his heroics, she was going to start following him around again for sure. He was usually more careful not to lead her on. But only last week he carried her all the way across campus after the Neon Party left her too drunk to walk on her own. She was beginning to gaze at him like her knight in somewhat tarnished armor.
“Your mom is okay, right?” I asked, partly to distract her and partly from concern.
“Oh, yeah,” Simone said breezily. “She’s never even had her breasts done. I just didn’t want them going back and riling the whole house up, telling them I blew them off to hang out with you guys again.”
“So, you gave them something better to gossip about?”
Simone tapped her finger to her nose. “Exactly.”
“Impressive,” Phoebe said. “I think it worked.”
“Hopefully,” Simone said. “But whatever. I’m not that worried about it. They’re sisters.”
