Cindygroans.
“Please do not mention my dad having anything to do with MagicMike.”
“What?” Shannon says, pulling back. “You always said you like the part where Mr. Mike is trying to get his furniture company off the ground better than the strippingpart.”
“Can we go, please?” Cindy says, pushing Shannon toward thecar.
“Hey.” Cindy turns around slowly. “Did you end up declaring you majoryet?”
“Civil engineering,” she says. “I’m good at math and I like design so I figured it would be a goodfit.”
“Yeah. I was drawn to architecture for the samereason.”
“I know,” she says as shesmiles.
“Okay, so it’s a match made in nerd heaven.” Shannon grabs Cindy’s hand. “Get in thecar.”
“Cindy, wait,” I say as I grab her hand and pull her back. “Can I see your phone for asecond?”
“Um,sure.”
She hands it to me and I put my number in and hand it back toher.
“I want you to call me. If you need anything. I’ll always bethere.”
She bites her lower lip as she slides her phone into herpocket.
“Thanks.”
“I’m staying at a house I rented for the night and I’m not doing anything later, so if you have a change of plans orsomething…”
My heart isracing.
“Sure.”
She turns and gently swings her hips — fuck, is she swinging her hips for me? — and ruffles her long blond hair as she peeks over her shoulder at me. She’s a fucking wet dream. She hops down the curb and gets into the car. She and her friend wave as the engine revs and they drive away, their hair blowing back in thebreeze.
I tip my chin up and shield the setting sun from my eyes as the car disappears around a corner and a profound sense of loss falls over me like acloud.
If she were any other woman, she wouldn’t be going to thatparty.
6
Cindy
I pullthe flier out of mypurse.
It’s a “Saints And Sinners”party.
“It was probably either that or just saints,” Shannon says as we walk arm-in-arm toward where the party’s happening. We stopped at a thrift store after leaving Eli, but I was so distracted that I almost broke a glass bird that was sitting on one of the shelves. After sifting through a million dresses I finally found a blue dress that just called to me. It looked like it might have been a bridesmaid’s dress, probably from decades ago. I has a corset-style top and a puffy skirt and when I saw it I knew it was what I wanted to wear to the party. I thought making a halo out of pipe-cleaner would be the next logical step but Shannon advised me that the dress was enough and that anyone who looked at me would see immediately that I was an innocent littlesaint.
“You know,” I say as we walk under the swaying palm trees, “a lot of saints met some very gruesome ends. To be canonized you have to either perform a miracle or get martyred. You do know what martyrdom entails,right?”
I slice a finger against mythroat.
“That’s very romantic, now can we please get on with our night in onepiece?”
“Hah. One piece. I believe there’s a medieval torture device somewhere that would like to have a word withyou.”