“Probably nothin‘. We’ll probably end up playing pool over at Zack’s.”
“If you drink and drive, I’ll take your car away,” Paul warned.
“And be home by midnight,” Shelly added, which set off a debate on whether the twins were old enough now to do away with a curfew altogether.
While the Aberdeens argued, Hope carried her plate into the house and dumped it into the garbage can beneath the kitchen sink. She tossed her hat onto the counter and placed the plastic wrap on the salad she’d brought. She glanced out the window into the backyard and watched the teenagers move from the yard toward their cars. A few of them still wore braces on their teeth. Some suffered from teen acne. They looked so normal, but they weren’t. They chewed tobacco and ate testicles. In her wildest imagination, she could not have made up something like that. But even if she had, no one would have believed it. Walter would have told her the story was too far-fetched, even for a tabloid that specialized in the farfetched.
The back-door screen opened and Hope looked over her shoulder. Dylan walked toward her carrying several paper plates. She slid to the corner of the counter, and he dumped them in the garbage.
“Paul is a good guy,” he said, “but he can’t cook worth a damn. You didn’t have to eat that hot dog.”
“It wasn’t the hot dog I minded.” Hope reached for a mayonnaise lid and screwed it on the jar. “How can you all eat testicles?” When he didn’t answer right away, she turned her head and looked at him. He stood beside her, one hip shoved into the counter, his arms folded across his chest, his attention pinned to her behind.
He slowly raised his gaze to her face, past her mouth to her eyes. He shrugged and just smiled at having been caught staring at her butt. “To tell you the truth, I never could work up an appetite for Rocky Mountain oysters.”
She imitated his casual poise. Arms folded beneath her breasts, hip resting against the counter. Outside, she heard snatches of conversation, engines racing, and the crunch of gravel beneath tires. Inside, it all receded to the peripheral of her brain, and she found herself completely focused on him. The sound of his voice, the exact color of his eyes, and the way he pushed his hat up his forehead.
“Personally,” he said, “I never felt right about chewing on some steer’s left nut.”
“How many have you eaten?”
“One.”
She looked at his mouth. She’d kissed a man who’d confessed to eating a “steer’s left nut.” She should have been repulsed.
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I brushed my teeth for about an hour afterward, and I flossed real good.”
She couldn’t have prevented her smile even if she’d thought to. “I’ve always been a sucker for a guy with good oral hygiene.”
He reached for her hand and his warm fingers closed around hers. She tried to ignore the hot
tingle warming her skin and spreading to her wrist. “And I’ve always been a sucker for a sucker, especially if she’s wearing a short skirt.”
She glanced down at herself, at the hem of her skirt resting about an inch, no more than two, above her knees.
“Did you know that when you bent over to set your plate on the table, I could almost see the color of your underwear?”
No way was her skirt that short. She looked back up into his face. “You’d have to stand on your head to see the color of my underwear.”
“Actually, if I tilt my head just a little…” he confessed with an evil glint in his eyes as he brushed his thumb across her palm.
It was just her hand, nothing sexual about that, but for some unexplainable reason, the simple touch felt much more intimate. There was nothing to get excited about, she told herself even as her pulse leaped. No, nothing. “That’s kind of pathetic, Dylan. The last guy who tried to guess the color of my underwear was Jimmy Jaramillo. That was in fourth grade.”
“Now, I’m sure you’re wrong about that. I’m sure there are a lot of guys standing around guessing the color of your underwear.”
“Just you and Jimmy.”
“No, me and Jimmy are the only ones who have told you what we were up to.”
“You’re obviously bored. It sounds like you need a girlfriend.”
“Nah, a girlfriend is the last thing I need.”
“Why is that?”
He turned her hand over and studied each of her red fingernails. “Why is what?”
“Why is a girlfriend the last thing you need?”