Wrong Question, Right Answer (The Bourbon Street Boys #3) - Elle Casey Page 0,39
to do that?”
He looks at me. “Jenny says I should grow a beard because I’m too good-looking. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m too good-looking and that intimidates you.”
I can’t help it. I laugh. “Lucky, you forget; I’ve known you since you were, like, eleven years old. Remember those teeth you had?” I pretend to shiver in disgust. “Yikes.”
He sticks his front teeth out at me. “Fixed themselves, didn’t they? No braces, baby.”
This is the Lucky I know, not the one sobbing over things he can’t change. I’m more comfortable on what feels like solid ground.
“Maybe,” I say, “but every time I look at you, all I see are those buck teeth.”
“Seriously?” He sounds almost hurt.
I scoot back on my bed so I can lean on my pillows against the headboard. Lucky watches me go.
“Remember when we decided to make that clubhouse over on that bare lot where you were shooting your BB gun, the first day we met you?”
Lucky drags himself up to the headboard with me and lies on his back, staring at the ceiling. He’s wearing a nostalgic expression that probably mirrors my own. “Yeah, I remember that. That was the coolest day of my life.”
I laugh, but when I realize he’s serious, I stop. “Really? Why?”
He looks at me. “Because the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on came over to me and asked if she could try my gun. And when she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with it, she asked me to show her how to shoot. And then, when I knocked all the cans off the wall, she told me I was pretty cool. Remember, I had those buck teeth, so any compliment was a big deal.”
He probably expects me to shove him for saying that, but I don’t bother. I’m ignoring his ridiculous assertions of having an infatuation with me since way back when. Talking to Jenny the overly romantic matchmaker has made him see his past in a way he never did before. I get it; it’s nicer thinking of it that way than focusing on our real lives, on our parents and the reasons why we spent so much time not at home.
God, life was so easy when we were kids. We had no responsibilities, no parents hassling us or getting in our way—they were always happy to have us gone, too caught up in their own problems to deal with us—and no Charlie. I hadn’t yet made any mistakes. Except maybe for that one big mistake I made not sticking with the buck-toothed nerd. He showed a lot of promise, even then.
He taps my leg with the back of his arm. “What are you thinking?”
“I was just thinking how life was so much easier back then, and how I wish I could start over.”
“We can start over. You and me. Let’s have a do-over.”
I smile again, transported back to the memories of kickball. Same dirt lot, same group of friends. “Do-overs. Those were awesome. You could totally screw up and just yell Do-over! and if everybody agreed, you did it—erased the mistake and tried again.” If we had only known the true power of the do-over back then and appreciated the fact that we couldn’t carry it with us into the real world, we probably never would’ve grown up. “But we don’t get do-overs as adults,” I say. “When you do something, it’s done, and then you have to live with the consequences.” My words pull me back to the present. I look down at Lucky. “What are we going to do if I’m pregnant? Seriously.”
He struggles to sit up until he’s resting his back against the headboard right next to me. He takes my hand in his and laces our fingers together. We both stare straight ahead at the wall opposite us.
“It’s going to be fine,” he says. “You’re not pregnant. But even if you were, we’d handle it. Just like we’ve handled everything else growing up together. Just like we handled Charlie, just like we handled Sunny. We’re a team. We’re going to be fine.”
“We’re not going to get any do-overs.” Not for life and not for our relationship. What’s done is done; we are who we are.
“No, no do-overs. But we don’t need ’em. Moving forward won’t be such a bad thing—I promise. Just wait and see. I’m almost never wrong.”
I look over at him, tears shining in my eyes. “It’s that almost that scares me.”