Before & After - Nazarea Andrews Page 0,7
“Hi, Jokes.”
“Knock knock,” I say.
A grin lights her face, and she says, “Who’s there?”
“Lettuce.”
She rolls her eyes and I nudge her with the toe of my boot. “Lettuce who?”
“Lettuce in please; it’s cold outside.”
“That’s horrible,” she says, but there’s a sparkle of laughter in her eyes.
I push off the stool. She’s wearing heels, but they still put her almost two inches shorter than me, and I’m struck by how tiny she is. With her big blue eyes and wild red hair, in a thin sundress and sandals with some kind of weird wedge that does fucking amazing things to her legs, she looks like a presence much bigger than she truly is. A part of me wants to scoop her up and tuck her somewhere safe, where she won’t get bruised by the world.
Because I know a fuck ton about the way the world can bruise the innocent.
“Where you at, Jokes?” she asks, and I blink out of my thoughts to focus on her. She’s watching me with curious, patient eyes.
No one has ever called me out like that. Pulled me from the dark spiral of my thoughts as easily as she just did—no one but Scotty.
I think I fall in love right then.
I shove that stupid thought down, and nod at the POS truck Scotty and I picked up a year or so back. I hold the door open for her, and she doesn’t even seem to care that the truck is a rusted wreck. She just gives me a small, private smile as she slips into the cab. I shut the door behind her and jog around to slide behind the wheel.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“A favorite place of mine,” I say and her eyes brighten with curiosity. But she doesn’t press for more as I put the truck in gear and pull away from the curb.
Keagan’s is a record store, although lately he’s been taking in boxes of old, used books. Records don’t sell, not the way they used to.
We push into the store and he lifts his head to peer at me from behind a ragged copy of Playboy. I wave once and steer Peyton toward the back corner. A stack of poetry books sits next to the coffee pot, and I glance at it as I pour her a cup.
“This looks like tar, Jokes.”
I nod and dump some shitty powdered cream in it before handing it to her. I make my own cup as I explain, “It’s a rite of passage. Keegan doesn’t really trust you unless you can choke down this shit. And it is shit. But I put up with it so I can come back here.”
I take her by the hand and she doesn’t protest as I lead her through the rows of crates.
Keegan doesn’t organize anything. He just puts it out there and lets folks wander through it. “I don’t know how long I’ve spent flipping through records and drinking this nasty coffee. A long damn time.”
She steps up beside me and touches the glossy cover of a record by Aretha Franklin. “My grandmother loved her. We used to listen to her for hours while Grammy would make cookies and I’d frost them. Every time I hear “A Rose is Still a Rose,” I can taste her cookies again.”
I swallow hard, shoving down the pang of loneliness that rises at her words. Not her fault, and she can’t possibly know why it stings.
I grab a crate and nod at the coffee. "Come with me."
Peyton give me an amused half-smile as she follows me to a small area with ratty couch. It looks vaguely like it was rescued from a dumpster after making a nice home for a rat family.
Smells that way too. For a heartbeat, as I drop onto the couch with a puff of stale old odor, I think I've fucked up bringing her here. Flawless and classy in her dress, she sinks down next to me, and kicks out of her wedges, curling up with her feet tucked beside her. "What are we looking for?"
I lick my lips and she follows the motion, and I know women enough to know exactly what that means,. She leans forward, just a little, and I get a peek of the gorgeous cleavage I've been trying to ignore. She smirks and taps the crate. "Focus, Jokes."
"I'm very focused," I say, my tone hoarse and hungry. Her eyes dart to me, and she hesitates for moment, but I pull back before either of