Page 33 of Evil King

I nodded. “I guess that’s true.”

As if summoned by the mention of his name, my phone buzzed, and when I pulled it out, I saw a text from Deon.

We didn’t even have sex for real, and I still slept until noon.

Just imagine when we do have sex for real.

About how long do I have to wait for that?

I was just talking about that with Avery. Soon, I hope.

Me too. Are you with her now?

Yeah. We’re shopping.

Consider me shutting up then. Tell her I said hi. Enjoy yourself.

Thanks. Call you later!

I can’t wait.

“Ugh,” I grumbled. “I really do like him.”

“Oh, is that him?” Avery said. “Slide me your phone, but don’t let Nathan see.”

I peeked up at Nathan, but he was in the middle of flirting with the waitress, so it was easy to set my phone on the table and slide it over to Avery. “The pics have been saved and deleted, by the way.”

Avery sucked her teeth. “Stupid, responsible woman.” I chuckled. She scrolled through the recent texts and then smiled. “Aw. He’s so sweet. Tell him I’m Team Deon,” she said, sliding my phone back across.

“I will.” I tucked my phone into my pocket and then raised an eyebrow at Avery. “Hey, should we order dessert since Mr. Crashes-Our-Date is paying?”

“The most expensive one, I think,” Avery replied.

We did exactly that and ordered an apple pie a la mode to share, and once we were done eating, we packed up all of our bags, collected Nathan, and made our way back out onto the road. We’d covered the first half of the outlet mall during the first half of the trip, so we took a right out of the restaurant toward the shops we hadn’t covered yet. We were pretty much ducking into every shop along the way, even though we only bought from one out of the batch.

“It’s such a waste of time. Why go into a store and not buy anything from it?” Nathan finally snapped after the seventh store we entered and bought nothing from.

“Because shopping isn’t just about buying stuff,” I said. “It’s about the experience. We like pursuing and seeing what’s available, but we aren’t going to buy something just to say we bought something.”

“Besides,” Avery cut in, “no one invited you. You just showed up. If you think this is such a waste of time, just go home.”

He shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“If you complain anymore, we will stop and stand in place until you leave,” I said.

“I’m fine,” he repeated with more force.

Avery and I exchanged irritated glances and then continued on. After about three minutes, we reached another store we wanted to duck into, so I looked over at Nathan and said, “Do you want to just wait out here?”

Nathan didn’t respond. He walked over and sat down on one of the cement benches situated outside of a fountain and pulled out his phone.

“Great,” I said.

With Nathan out of the way, Avery and I ducked into the small boutique with cute graphic t-shirts and other scene clothes and accouterment. “Let’s take a long time,” I murmured to Avery, and she snickered.

We did a loop around the store, pulling different clothes out of their racks to view them. Avery did pull a couple of shirts down to buy, and I grabbed a pair of jeans. Part of me wondered if we were subconsciously just buying stuff to appease Nathan, but I forced that thought from my mind. If it happened too much more, I’d bring it up, but for now, if we were happy, I didn’t want to ruin it.

“Oh my god,” Avery called.

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