In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,57
And Shen still had no idea what she was thinking.
Although she’d definitely done this longer than anything else she’d tried that morning and, most important, not once had anyone “accidentally” wacked her in the face with their elbow.
“Hey,” she said, standing on the other side of the barrier.
“Hey.” Shen leaned over the metal railing. “Well?”
She nodded and said around her panting, “I loved it.”
Shocked—he’d hoped for a “like,” maybe an “it was okay,” but “loved”?—Shen replied, “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not just saying that because I recommended it, are you?”
“Why would anybody do that?”
“To be nice?”
“I’m not really nice,” she admitted. “But next to Max, I seem nice.”
“It’s true,” Max added, her short pink hair now parted in the middle and each section pulled into two small ponytails. Different from when he’d first noticed her next to him a minute or so ago.
“Okay,” Shen said. “What do you like about it?”
“Like about it?”
“Yeah. The exercise? The camaraderie? How cute you look in the jersey?”
“He’s right,” Max said, and when Shen looked at Stevie’s sister again, her hair was now in a single, high pony tail, and she was fussing with the bangs. “You do look cute in that jersey.”
Stevie looked down at her shirt, then glared at her sister. “Shut up. No one’s talking to you.”
“See?” Max pointed out. “She’s not that nice.”
Not in the mood to see yet another fight between the two, Shen pushed, “So? What do you like about it?”
“The physics.”
Shen frowned. “Again with the physics?”
“Always with the physics.” And now Stevie smiled. A big, wide grin that lit up her entire face. It lit up everything. Everything around her. It was like she suddenly glowed.
“Don’t you see? It’s all physics,” she explained. “All equations and calculations that require me to solve them in seconds so that I can score or stop someone else from scoring. It’s a constant, never-ending physics party! How could I not love it?”
“Couldn’t you do all that with golf?” Max asked.
Stevie’s wide smile abruptly ended and she glowered at her older sister. “Why don’t you shut up?”
“Why don’t you make me?” Max shot back, her hair now parted on the side, a few braids hanging . . .
“How do you keep changing your hair so fast?” he asked when Max stood next to him. But she never answered his question because she was too busy leaning over the railing and screaming at her baby sister while her baby sister yelled back.
That lasted nearly ten seconds before Stevie grabbed Max by her constantly changing hair and dragged her over the railing, the pair of them rolling across the turf, battering each other.
“Such a physical family,” Oriana noted from her seat. “Jean-Louis Parkers don’t fight like that.”
“She’s right,” Kyle said. “Instead we attempt to exacerbate each other’s personality disorders until mental health professionals are forced to intervene.”
Suddenly Shen appreciated the “physical” approach to family resolutions.
chapter ELEVEN
They decided to eat in the Sports Center’s food court. Of course, this particular food court was specifically geared toward shifters, forcing Stevie to rethink her decision on sushi when she found out that most of the beautifully designed food she was looking at was, in fact, made up of whale blubber and the meat of walrus, bearded seals, and—
“What the fuck is a narwhal?” Max had asked, staring up at the posted menu.
“Kind of the unicorn of the sea. I’ve just never heard it’s edible.”
“It is to polar bears,” Shen had explained and, at that point, Stevie was done. Hearing “It’s edible to polar bears” was simply too much for her at this moment in her life. And, in the end, they ended up getting normal, ground beef burgers. Except, of course, for the size of those burgers.
Stevie wasn’t positive, but she thought the largest-sized burger was bigger than one of the Dunn triplets’ heads. Even Shen didn’t get the largest size. He got the “medium” instead and that looked like it could possibly choke an elephant.
Still, despite the weird food situation, it was a pleasant lunch. Max and Shen chatted about the derby team they’d briefly visited. Especially once Max found out that her cousin Livy Kowalski occasionally played on the Manhattan team, the Assault and Battery Park Babes. Max’s sudden interest in a sport that she hadn’t even known existed a few weeks ago had Stevie a little concerned, but she couldn’t be bothered. What her sister did with her other relatives was low on Stevie’s lists of things to worry about.
Stevie, however, spent her time discovering that Oriana