“Well…” Colette poked at her neck. “I suppose I have no business talking about your delinquent when I got this from one of ours.”
Both Avery and I stopped eating and stared at Colette. “Wait. Jaxon?” I yelped.
“Turns out he likes a goody-two shoes.”
“And you’ve liked him forever,” Avery said.
“Seriously!” I screeched. “I didn’t know that.”
“I swore Avery to secrecy. I have a reputation to protect. How would it look for me if everyone knew that I liked that rapscallion?”
Colette took a bite of her sushi, and Avery and I took the opportunity to roll our eyes. Sometimes, Colette thought she was way more important than she was. If something was happening with her and Jaxon, that was good. She needed someone who was a little rough around the edges.
“Needless to say, we skipped lunch in the interest of something a little more…sweet,” she finished. Again, I opened my mouth, but Colette stopped me. “Not that sweet.” She looked at Avery. “But close.”
Avery started to clap. “Time for the big reveal!”
Colette did a shimmy in her seat. “I’m so excited.”
“I mean…” The way the smile rose to my face almost instantly was annoying, but I ignored it. “His name is Deon.”
“Deon,” Avery and Colette said in unison.
“We knew each other when we were still kids. I’d just moved to Postings and didn’t know many people in our neighborhood, but Deon saw me sitting along on the front steps one day and came over. He invited me to hang out with him and his friends, and when he found out that I didn’t like being treated like some damsel, he wouldn’t let them do it either. It was kind of like I was one of the guys, but then Deon, he… Well, you’ve seen him. He’s gorgeous! I had a crush on him pretty quickly, but he liked me too, so it was okay.”
“I saw the look on both of your faces when you were talking,” Avery said. “He must still have feelings too.”
“I think so. That’s what it seemed like when we were talking, anyway.”
“Wait,” Colette interjected. “If he lived around here, where has he been? Did something happen between you guys?”
I shook my head. “No, at least not that I know of. We went out for a date one night, our first date. Deon packed this beautiful picnic, and he brought me up to the park in Postings Proper. We were gonna watch the sunset, and I was hopeful that he would kiss me by the end of it. We were unpacking everything when all of a sudden—bam! This guy fell from… I don’t know where he fell from. It kind of seemed like he fell out of the sky.”
Both Avery and Colette’s brows hunched. “Out of the sky?”
“Yeah. I think he may have committed suicide and jumped from one of the buildings. All of a sudden he landed splat on the ground right in front of us. We walked over to see if he was okay, but a cop saw us and thought we’d done something wrong. We ran and split up so that we could get away from the cop, but then after that, I never saw him again until today.”
“Did he get caught?” Avery asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “He was supposed to meet me in this spot that was, like, our spot, but he never showed. The next day, I went to his house to see if he was there, and his mom said that he didn’t want to come out. Over the course of the next few weeks, he just refused to see me, and then when my dad got promoted, we moved, and that was that.”
“Wow,” Avery said. “That’s a really romantic, dramatic story. It’s like you’re in a movie or something.”
“Maybe, but it just felt terrible, thinking that he liked me so much and then having him ghost me like that.” The way he smiled when he saw me popped into my mind again. “He seemed so happy to see me today though.”
“Maybe it was his mom?” Avery asked. “You should talk to him, find out what really happened. This could be the great love story of your life!”
“How could you give her such terrible advice?” Colette asked. “He’s not her great love story. He’s a felon.”
I rolled my eyes at Colette. “Just because he looks a little rougher than who we hang out with doesn’t mean he’s a felon,” I responded.
“No, dear,” Colette said, looking straight into my eyes. “The fact that he just got out of prison does.”
“Prison?” A chuckle left my lips. “Deon didn’t go to prison.”
“That’s what I heard,” Colette said. “From a very reliable source.”
“Oh, yeah? Who? Jaxon?”
Colette took a final bite of her sushi, finishing it off. “The principal. I was in the office, filling out my paperwork for class president, and he let it slip while I was there.”
“Are you serious?” Avery asked before turning to look at me. “Good god. Do you think you’re mixed up with a felon?”
7
Deon
The hope that day two at school would bring fewer points and whispers was quickly abating. People kept their hands up over their mouths as I passed so that they could lean into each other and not have their words discerned. To make matters worse, whether he’d done it intentionally as a means of making good on his threat or by accident because he was a blabbermouth, rumors about me having just gotten out of prison were already floating throughout the school. The fact that I had more tattoos than most middle-aged men and had better fitness than the gym teacher and school coaches didn’t help my case at all, but it was still irritating.
“What!” I finally barked at a group of students whispering in hushed tones as I was on my way to lunch. “You got something to say?”
They jumped and scattered like roaches when someone turned the lights on. No, it wasn’t helping ease
