You Say It First - Katie Cotugno Page 0,50
asshole.
“Hey, Colby,” Joanna called, reaching back to take a six-pack of hard lemonade from her friend Maureen in the passenger seat. It seemed like a lot longer ago than just last night that they’d gone to Highland Burger Bar, which didn’t keep him from wishing a sinkhole would open in the middle of this parking lot and swallow him. “How’s your mom feeling?”
“What’s wrong with your mom?” Meg asked, frowning a little. Colby shook his head.
“Um,” he said, smiling across the parking lot at Joanna in a way he hoped was friendly but not friendly enough to get himself in trouble. Maureen didn’t bother to hide her stink-eye. “She’s better.”
Joanna nodded, glancing curiously at Meg. “Hi,” she said, holding her hand out. “I’m Joanna.”
“Meg,” Meg said, and they shook.
“How do you guys know each other?” Joanna asked, passing the lemonades off to Micah.
Colby didn’t know why the truth felt weirdly embarrassing to him. “We met dressed as furries at Comic-Con,” he deadpanned before Meg could answer, which made Jordan laugh his honking donkey laugh. Meg, Colby couldn’t help but notice, didn’t smile.
A couple of other cars pulled into the lot just then, thankfully; Jordan and Jo’s cousin Brady with the painful-looking acne and a couple of the girls Micah worked with at Dollar General, the sound level rising until it felt more like an actual party. Maureen dropped her phone into an empty plastic cup to make a speaker, Jay-Z echoing out into the darkness. Somebody else brought a thirty-rack of Bud Light. Meg sat on the bumper of the Prius with her ankles crossed and chatted with some girl Jo knew from the hair salon, both of them animated. Jordan finally got his joint lit while Micah held court in front of the empty fountain.
“You doing okay?” Colby asked Meg, catching her arm as she dug in the back seat of the Prius for her water bottle. She wasn’t drinking, he’d noticed, though to be fair neither was he. He wasn’t exactly dying to add a DUI to his rap sheet, on top of which he had a sneaking suspicion beer actually made his nightmares worse. He’d had another one two nights earlier, blunt and terrifying, his dad screaming his name from inside one of Rick’s stupid model homes. It occurred to Colby to wish his subconscious had a little more finesse.
“I’m fine,” Meg said now, offering him the bland kind of bullshit smile he imagined she usually reserved for her friend Emily. “Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said, suddenly not sure about her tone. It was weird to have facial expressions to match it with all of a sudden, the delicate arch of her eyebrows and the purse of her heart-shaped mouth. “Why?”
Meg shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, picking idly at one of the stickers on her water bottle—the whole thing was covered with them, Yes We Can and HATE with a red line drawn through it and This Machine Kills Fascists, like maybe she was worried the T-shirt wasn’t working hard enough to announce her personal brand. “Just wondering.” Then, with a raise of her eyebrows so quick he wasn’t even sure if she’d really done it: “Joanna seems nice.”
Colby almost choked on his tongue. “Uh, yeah,” he said, wanting to explain but not knowing how to, wishing briefly for the safety of a telephone line. “Yeah, I mean—”
“Yo, Colby!” Micah called, waving his Bud Light in their general direction. “How many men does it take to open a beer can?”
Oh God, here they went. “How many,” Colby asked dutifully, though in truth he wasn’t altogether mad about the interruption.
“None,” Micah reported. “It should be open when she brings it.”
Jordan guffawed. Colby rolled his eyes. “Hilarious,” Joanna said, shaking her head indulgently.
Only Meg didn’t react. Instead, she got very still for a moment, considering Micah like a prey animal from across the parking lot. “Why is that funny?” she asked, her voice perfectly even. All at once, it occurred to Colby that possibly he’d been wrong about being the only person she was willing to fight with.
Micah looked startled for a moment, like he didn’t understand the question. Jordan was still chuckling to himself, though that might have been the weed. “Relax,” Micah said. “It was a joke.”
“Sure, but why is it funny?”
Micah shook his head. “You know why it’s funny.”
“I don’t, actually.” Meg was looking at him with her head cocked just slightly to the side. “I don’t understand the conceit of the joke, so