Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,53

with Polly. You never said you had a job.” It sounded like an accusation, even though I hadn’t meant it to.

“Well, it’s not like we’re friends,” she said. Dawn’s words were direct, but her tone wasn’t cruel. Our not-friends status was stated as a plain fact, same as if she’d told me it was Monday.

Still, it bugged me, because we should have been friends, shouldn’t we? We played on the same team. Though, if I thought about it, my only real friend on the team was Tina, and if I went down the roster, most of the girls were people I just saw at soccer, not people I shared secrets with. Plus, I never really said all that much to Dawn even at practice, probably because of the baby rumors. I immediately felt like a jerk; the right thing to do would have been to ask her, but there was no good way to ask someone to confirm or deny gossip about themselves.

“I guess I mean that after tryouts, you’ve never missed practice to work or anything,” I said.

She shrugged. “I took more weekend shifts once I figured out Bobby was serious about practice.”

“Oh.” I hoped Polly would emerge soon, because I was just about out of things to talk about with Dawn. “Do you like working here?”

Dawn peered around as if looking to see who was nearby. “Not really,” she said. “But we get commission, and it’s kind of easy to make sales since we’re the only bridal shop in Powell Park.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “I still just babysit. The kid I watched yesterday made me listen to him sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ seven times and I still only got two bucks an hour.”

Dawn laughed. “Kids are the worst.”

“I know, really,” I said before I caught myself. If she had a kid, that wasn’t the nicest response. “Some kids are okay, though.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and made a clucking sound, then turned away from me to start organizing a rack of dresses sandwiched between white jewelry cases carved with swirly designs. A prickly heat covered me. I’d totally said the wrong thing.

“I mean some kids are fun, if you get to know them . . . ,” I rambled.

“If you want to know if I have a baby, you can ask me,” Dawn finally said. She pushed several dresses on the rack to the side, making space, then spun around to retrieve several putrid green dresses hanging on a hook nearby and clicked their hangers onto the rack. “I know what everyone says about me.”

“I didn’t . . .”

She held up a hand. “I know, and I don’t care,” she said. “But I don’t have a baby. My dad ran out on us last year. We had to go live with my aunt in Michigan while my mom figured out what to do for money. Then my dad came back, and my mom’s with him again, but I’m working. My mom thinks he’s sticking around this time, but I’m not going to be screwed over again by relying on him. Or her.”

I wandered toward a bowl of Jordan almonds on a white desk in the middle of the store. I took a green one, turning it over in my hands instead of eating it. How did you answer that? “I didn’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure people would understand.”

“Maybe. But I would rather people make up stories about me than know my dad’s a deadbeat and my mom thinks she can’t do any better,” Dawn said. “Plus, the rumor only makes sense if you’re a raging sexist. Like, who’s the guy who knocked me up? Why didn’t he get sent away? Where is he in all these stories? Oh, yeah, no one thinks about that, ’cause he’s a guy.”

“It’s not really fair, though, to you,” I said.

“I don’t care. It’s kind of made me think. Like, doesn’t it bug you that girls are supposed to be ashamed if we have sex, unless we have plans to, like, marry the guy or something?” She made a broad gesture to the store full of white dresses. Her point struck me hard, and I realized that the rumor about Dawn had also made me assume she wasn’t very smart. I was an asshole.

“I don’t know if people feel that way,” I said.

“They do. All that It’s the seventies! Women can do anything a man can!” Dawn said, her tone fakely enthusiastic. “Bullshit.”

“Well, we can have sex, as long as

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