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  She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame, raising an eyebrow at me. “Sure. Or, you know, you could just ask them stuff.”

  I chuckled as I picked up the perfume bottle, gave a quick squirt into the air, and took a sniff. It smelled good, but kind of flowery. Definitely not the source of her piña colada scent. “Nice.”

  I rifled through a dish of change, coming up with a guitar pick. Damn. A chick who played guitar? That was kind of hot.

  “Yours?” I asked, expectantly.

  My Lita Ford fantasies were squelched, however, when she explained, “No. My cousin’s.”

  Moving on, I ran my hand over a carved box. “This is pretty awesome. It looks old.”

  “It is,” she answered. “It was my mother’s.”

  There was a catch in her voice, making me think her use of the past tense carried excessive weight. “Was?”

  “She died a few years ago.”

  Shit. “I’m sorry.”

  Layla tried to seem unaffected as she shrugged, “It was a long time ago.”

  I couldn’t even imagine what losing a parent must be like. I wasn’t best buddies with my father or anything, but I still wouldn’t want him dead, for godsakes. And even the mere thought of losing my mother was just too depressing to bear.

  She bit her lip and stared down at her feet, prompting me to change the subject.

  The mirror over her dresser had a line of photos running around the perimeter: Layla and Lisa mugging for the camera. Layla and her brother in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Layla and Cooper with their arms around each other.

  I didn’t like that one too much.

  But my good humor returned once I got to the picture of a young Layla on a Big Wheel, dressed in a white karate uniform and wearing an American flag as a cape. I couldn’t contain my chuckling as I asked, “Is that you?”

  She stepped behind me to peek over my shoulder. Just the slightest brush of her arm against my back was like an electric shock, the scent of her an all-consuming drug. “Yep. That’s me all right. I was pretty obsessed with Evel Knievel back in those days.”

  My chuckling tuned into full-on laughter. “That’s hysterical.”

  “What can I say?” she laughed back. “I was a bit of a tomboy growing up.”

  I met her face in the mirror, trying to picture that gorgeous girl as a disheveled ruffian. “No way. I’m not buying it.”

  I couldn’t discern the look on her face. Edgy? Skeptical?

  My eyes diverted from hers to land on a snowglobe. I reached over to grab it, then flopped down onto her bed in order to put some distance between us. I gave the thing a good shake before resting it on my chest to watch the snowstorm.

  “Make yourself at home.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t impose,” I teased, grinning as I held up the globe.

  Her smile was serene as she offered delicately, “It makes music, you know.”

  She breached the few steps separating us and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Her warm hand wrapped around mine as she turned the globe on its side to wind up the base. I gave it another good shake and watched the snow storm to the tune of “New York, New York.”

  I started to wonder what the hell I was doing. I was kind of crazy about this girl, we had the house to ourselves, and we were on her bed for godsakes.

  Something had to give, and soon.

  “She didn’t die.”

  Layla’s comment startled me out of my musing. “What?”

  “My mother,” she explained. “I lied. She didn’t die, she moved away. When I was twelve.”

  “Oh.” I had no idea what to say. I got the impression there was more to the story than a simple divorce situation, based on how uncomfortable Layla was while discussing it. And the fact that her mother had moved “away” made me think it was somewhere very far from here. “I’m guessing you don’t get to see her much.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I lied about it. You just caught me off guard, I guess, and I didn’t know how to talk about it without... I don’t know. I never had to tell anyone about it before, you know?”

  Her mother left and she never talked about it? With anyone? “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone around here already knew the whole story. At least they thought they did. I never had to explain it before.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “Small town.”

  “Oh.”

  The song had ended by that time and an uneasy silence filled the space between us. I forced myself to look up and meet her eyes, but she was apparently fascinated by the scrunchy stretched around her wrist. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. Is that okay?”

  “It’s your life, Layla.”

  She glanced up just then, and the grateful look she aimed in my direction shredded me. I swallowed hard, staring into her eyes, neither one of us willing to be the first to look away. She licked her lips and my gaze dropped to her luscious mouth.

  I’ve been here before. I could always tell when a girl wanted to kiss me, and the look on Layla’s face was inviting me to do just that. All I’d have to do is sit up and pull her mouth to mine...

  But something stopped me. As bad as my lips wanted to kiss her, my brain wouldn’t allow me to go through with it. Maybe it was the way her eyes were staring right through me. The way my heart was hammering out of my chest.

  I never thought twice about it with other girls, but the thing was, Layla wasn’t just another girl. Something was different with her. Something that told me everything would change the first second our lips met. Not just everything between us, but everything in my life. At seventeen, I didn’t quite know exactly what that entailed, but I did know it was a little scary and overwhelming to think about.

  So I didn’t do it.

  To break the moment, I bounded off the bed and returned the snowglobe to her dresser. “Hey, I’m starving. Whaddya got to eat around here?”

  She was still sitting in the spot where I had left her, and I watched her posture deflate a bit before she shot me a look over her shoulder. “You want snacks or like, food food?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it, but after leaving her high and dry, I wasn’t about to make her cook some five course meal for me or something. “Snacks are fine.”

  Layla led me back down to the kitchen, and I flopped down at the table where a can of Coke was waiting for me.

  She scanned the pantry as she asked, “So, what are you in the mood for? Crunchy or chewy?”

  “Crunchy,” I answered.

  “Sweet or salty?”

  I snickered. “Salty.”

  She turned from the pantry and held up two bags of chips. “Ruffles or Doritos?”

  “Doritos always win. Hey, do you have Cool Ranch?”

  “Nope. Sorry. Are they good? I’ve never even tried them.”

  “Blasphemy!” I shouted. Never had Cool Ranch? What kind of a girl was I dealing with, here? “Are you kidding? They’re awesome.”

  She put her hands on her hips and busted my chops. “Well, gee, Trip, I could run to the store for you...”

  “I’ll take the regular Doritos, wiseass.”

  She tossed them at me before sitting down at the table, and then I held my drink out to hers in a toast. “To cheese-flavored corn chips and even cheesier homework assignments.” Layla groaned in agony as I laughed, “Wow, yeah, sorry, that was pretty bad.”

  “So,” Layla asked, cracking her Coke. “How should we approach this?”

  I smirked and answered, “Oh, I have some ideas.”

  “Well, spill ‘em, Wilmington,” she said, smiling back.

  I was really digging this new level to our relationship. I mean, maybe we were originally thrown together because of social politics, but the more we hung out, the more it felt like it was by choice. She was starting to get my sense of humor, and had no problem bantering back like a champ. I was starting to rea
lly like this girl, even beyond the fact that I would’ve given my left nut to see what she looked like naked.

  I leaned across the kitchen table and asked, “We’re supposed to give an oral report, right?”

  Layla eyed me warily. “Yeah, so...?”

  “So, Mason is expecting us to get up there and read off a piece of paper or something, right?”

  She crossed her arms and answered, “That’s normally how one gives a report, yes.”

  “Yeah, but we’re supposed to do a visual, too.” Her eyes tightened, trying to deduce where I was going with this. I lounged back in my chair, waggled my eyebrows, and dropped the bomb. “I think we should make a movie.”

  “A movie.”

  “Yep,” I answered, tossing her a smirk. “I’m going to make you a star, Miss Warren.”

  Her eyes went wide as her jaw dropped. “Wait. You want me to act?”

  It was hard not to chuckle at her reaction. “It’ll be fun.”

  “I am not a public speaker.”

  I waved her off. “You won’t need to be. It will just be the two of us while we’re filming. Do you have a video camera?”

  “No, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm...” she replied absently, squinting at the air in front of my face. “I’m sure I’m going to regret telling you this, but I think I know where we can get one.”

  “Awesome. Then I’ll leave that part up to you, sugarpop.”

  I swear I saw her blush at that. Damn. It was so much fun to provoke a reaction out of her. I had to go for it.

  I lowered my lids suggestively, bit my lip, and leaned in to slither, “Hey, whaddya think about going a little porny with it? Juliet Does Verona. We could make it really hot.”

  I was only teasing, but my comment flustered her way more than I intended. “Trip?” she squeaked out, before clearing her throat. “Have you even looked up the scene we were assigned?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Act three, scene three.”

  “So?”

  “So, unless we rewrite Shakespeare to make it so Romeo gets it on with the nurse, I don’t see how we’re going to be able to make it ‘hot.’”

  Baby, if you only knew. “Sweetheart, I make everything hot.”

  Layla stared at me blankly for a beat, trying to gauge whether or not I was serious.

  But then my lip twitched and she busted out laughing.

  Chapter 8

  THE GRIFTERS

  Something changed between Layla and me after that first Tuesday together. We’d come to an unspoken agreement about each other: I could tell she thought I was pretty awesome, and trust me, the feeling was mutual. I’d never been buddies with a girl before but who better to break that streak than a cool chick like Layla?

  Yeah, I was still into her, but I’d kind of resigned myself to the fact that we couldn’t be anything more than friends. At least for now. Because the fact of the matter was, we actually made pretty great friends. It was kind of weird to think we’d only known each other for two weeks. It felt like I’d known her a lot longer. And I know she felt the same.

  What can I say? Sometimes, when it comes to certain people, you just click.

  I still wanted to suck her face, however.

  By the time I came into school on Friday, I was confident she’d be ecstatic to hear my big news. I kept it to myself all day, waiting for English class to spill the beans.

  As luck would have it, Coach Ritter was substituting that class, basically ensuring that fifth period would be a free-for-all. He’d apparently secured an AV cart for the day, and had chosen some random After School Special for our viewing pleasure. The entire class was doing anything but watching it, and Coach was too invested in his newspaper to give a damn.

  Layla took her seat as soon as we walked into the room. I perched a hip on the corner of her desk and just let out with it. “Hey, guess what?”

  “What?”

  I huffed a breath against my knuckles and rubbed them against my shirt. “You’re looking at the newest employee of Totally Videos.”

  Her eyes went wide as the corners of her lips turned into an elated smile. “Shut up! You got the job? You’re kidding!”

  “Nope. I start on Monday.”

  Her jaw gaped. “I’m on Mondays! We’ll be working together! Oh, this is going to be so cool. What other days did you get?”

  I couldn’t help but grin like a fool. I was happy to see she was as excited about this as I was. “Wednesday and Friday.”

  “Hmmm. I’m Monday, Thursday, and Friday.”

  “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

  “You’re not kidding. Oh my God. What did your father say when you told him you had to quit?”

  I’d suffered through thirty-some-odd hours at that boring office job, every minute of which was spent in pure misery. But because I always put on a brave face and worked hard, my father was pretty shocked when I told him I was quitting. It wasn’t like I was leaving him out in the cold, for godsakes. I made sure that every file was put in its proper spot before giving my notice. He only gave me the job in the first place because I was his son. It wasn’t like he’d be left scrambling to try and fill my vacant position or anything.

  Didn’t stop the screaming match that ensued immediately upon my resignation, however.

  I didn’t want to get into all that with Layla. “He wasn’t thrilled, but he’s happy it’s at least because I got another job.”

  “A shitty job!”

  “A shitty job that’s enabling us to make our movie. Did you get the camera yet?”

  “I did! I felt like such a thief. Darnit. If I’d only waited a few extra days, you could have boosted the thing instead of me.”

  I chuckled at her use of an old-timey word like “boosted.” “Hey, easy there, Bonnie. No one’s stealing anything. We’re giving it back when we’re done.”

  “I’m aware of that, Clyde,” she said, shooting me a sidelong glance. Damn, this girl just got me. “But if we get busted even borrowing the thing, now we’ll both have a job to lose. Either that or Martin will keep us around just to torture us with boxing duty.”

  “What’s that?”

  She sighed heavily before answering, “You know how the video covers never have the actual videos in them? Just a block of Styrofoam?”

  “Yeah....?”

  “Well, they don’t come to the store like that. Whenever there’s a new shipment of movies—which is often, by the way—we’re the ones that have to stuff them. It sucks. Most of the job does, actually. Don’t say I didn’t try and warn you.”

  “Nah,” I snickered. “We’re gonna have a blast. You’ll see.”

  My statement was proven true my very first day on the job. Lay and I drove into work together, so she was able to direct me to the employee lot in the back. I parked near a mesh dumpster filled with cardboard boxes, and Layla chose that moment to warn me. “Oh, hey, wait. Trip. Hold up.” She put a hand on my bare forearm, causing a lightning bolt to shoot across my skin. “Do not let Martin know that we know each other.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s sorry he ever hired me. It would only validate his regret to see how much goofier I am when I’m with you.”

  I laughed. She was right. We were total idiots with each other.

  As we were getting out of the truck, I promised, “I’ll keep it under wraps. Scout’s honor.”

  “You were a boy scout?”

  I winked and shot back, “Only when it comes to you, sweetheart.”

  She knew my endearments were always delivered firmly tongue-in-cheek, but even still, I could tell she was starting to like it whenever I called her that.

  Lay headed in first, allowing for a few stealthy minutes to separate our arrivals.

  When I reported to the back office as instructed, I was surprised to find that Martin was a kid, not much older than me. He sounded a lot older on the phone. In any case, he seemed competent enough as he hand
ed me a navy blue vest and a nametag before showing me around the store. Throughout the entirety of my training, Layla kept catching my attention to roll her eyes at me in solidarity. I guessed she’d had to endure this same nonsensical tutorial, too.

  Martin was a bit of a tool and he took his shit job way too seriously, but he didn’t seem like a particularly bad dude. I’d had way worse bosses than him before.

  It was determined that my main duties would be stock and cleanup, but he still had Layla teach me how to work the register “just in case.” After that, she took advantage of my newfound skill and left me to man the front counter while she emptied out the returns bin.

  She was busy putting the returned movies back on their shelves while Martin was cooped up in the back room probably whacking off or something, which left me to take care of the customers.

  Problem was, there weren’t any.

  “Hey, Lay!” I called.

  Layla had her arms loaded with a stack of video tapes. She didn’t even turn toward me to answer, “What?”

  “I’m kinda bored out of my frigging mind right now.”

  She didn’t break stride to suggest, “Well, instead of just standing there with your thumb up your butt, why don’t you find something to do?”

  Challenge accepted. I waited for Layla’s back to be turned before hopping the counter and dropping into a low crouch, creeping stealthily around to the candy display, grabbing a big-ass bag of Skittles on my way to the Drama section. I peeked over the shelf, scoping out my target only two aisles away. Quietly, I tore a corner off the bag and poured a few candies on the floor, preparing my battle station.

  I got a good line of sight on my prey before flinging a Skittle at her, watching as it whizzed past her hair. At first, she wasn’t sure what had happened. She turned toward the counter only to find that I wasn’t there, then gave a scan around the store. When she went back to work, I threw another one at her. It pinged off the shelf behind her and ricocheted off her arm. No way to ignore that one.

  I ducked back down and tried to stifle my laughter as she sighed, “Trip. I know you’re over there.”

  I raised my voice an octave and mumbled out the corner of my mouth, “Whooo’s Triiip?”