Rebel at Spruce High (Spruce Texas Romance #5) - Daryl Banner Page 0,2
paired with a boy my age who was assigned as my new best friend and protector. Oh, how very fast hopes and plans die in this sad little house.
Then, as if summoned by Satan himself from the archway behind me, comes a deep voice. “Or you could take up a sport your senior year, grow some man-hair on them boy-balls of yours.”
Meet my stepfather Carl, a charming man who always has an intelligent pearl of wisdom to contribute to any conversation.
I address him blithely. “You mean like you did?”
“Better bet I did. It’s the only way a boy learns to be a man.”
I nod somberly. “Guess I’ll be doomed to hairless balls. At least my future boyfriends won’t complain about getting my man-hair stuck in their teeth.”
Carl squints at me, not getting it.
He doesn’t have to. The jab alone gives me a private moment of satisfaction.
I turn back to my mom with a smug smile, ready to resume our morning chat, but find her staring critically at me, clearly not appreciating my behavior.
My smile crumbles away, and after a moment’s resentment, I soften my attitude. “As nice as a sport sounds, I just don’t think it’s up my alley. I prefer something more creative, like painting.”
“Painting.” Carl gives my mom a look, then seems to hold his tongue as he yanks open the fridge, grabs the milk, and downs all that remains straight from the carton. I watch his neck dance as he gulps every bit of it. Then he tosses the emptied carton at the trashcan. It misses and tumbles onto the tile.
My mom doesn’t so much as flinch. She probably forgot she even suggested cereal to me at all. That’s alright. I can’t stomach a bowl this morning anyway. “Basketball obviously wasn’t your sport,” I note, staring at the carton Carl makes no effort in picking up.
He gives me a sharp look, then marches right up to me. A curly smile twists his face apart—a smile that my mother could easily take as friendly and well-meaning, despite the mockery in his eyes. “My sport of choice was football.” He punches that word. Football. “Full-contact sport. All muscle. All strength. All man.”
I squint at him. “Sounds pretty gay to me.”
“Sorry, my little man, but you can’t play that gay card with football here in Spruce,” he fires back, prepared already for my admittedly childish, antagonistic retort. “Coach Tanner Strong heads the team, and he’s gay as all get-out, and he’s all man, too. He just proves you can be gay and tough.”
My mother, who mistakenly (or deliberately) takes this for some kind of awkward male bonding, lets out a light and buttery giggle before abandoning her spot by the sink. “You two, I swear, if I had a nickel,” is all she says as she passes us by, taking her book and her mug of coffee with her.
The atmosphere in the kitchen chills in her departure. Carl’s friendly mask drops, and his eyes turn to ice. “You demean me like that in front of Marly again, I’ll make your life hell. I can make your life hell. Every day, every night. You want your life to be hell?”
We have had many disagreements over the years. And the one thing I’ve come to learn is that my stepdad is all bark and no bite. These very unveiled threats are a part of his regular vocabulary.
I lift my chin to him. “Her name’s Marlene. She hates it when you call her Marly.” I smirk. “Isn’t that a dog’s name, anyway?”
He squints challengingly at me. “You can throw me all the lip you want, little man, little scrawny man … but if you had tougher skin on that wireframe body of yours back in the seventh grade when you needed it, you would have graduated last year with all your friends instead of starting your senior year as an eighteen-year-old wonder. You know it. I know it. Your mom knows it.”
I hadn’t expected him to pull out that particular weapon. He’s been sharpening it all summer, that much I can tell from the way they slice straight out of his chapped, uneven, half-snarled lips.
And the cut stings, just how he meant it to.
Good thing I’m a pro at wearing a blank face. “At least I will be graduating high school,” I casually point out, “which is more than you can say for yourself. Is that a streak of grease on your cheek from the auto shop, or have you not showered yet