Sweat slicks my palms and makes my hands slide over the steering wheel as I drive past favorite restaurants, stores, and salons. My weekends won't be spent indulging in my wild material girl side or driving to the beach house to polish off a bottle of something sweet and numbing, and then sleep it off with the sound of the crashing waves in the background.
I will be servicing my community each Saturday for all the hours of my morning and most of my afternoon, too, and by the time I'm done, everyone else will be in the middle of their weekend benders.
Anyway, I can't get involved with that stuff anymore even if I wanted to. Since I broke up with my disgusting pig of an ex-boyfriend, I moved across town from my old neighborhood, changed schools in my senior year, and dabbled in reckless criminal mischief, so I’ve blown any chances for local friends.
The only person who loves and accepts me is Brenna, and she lives in godforsaken New Jersey and is deaf to my pleas to move to the more hospitable and sunny South.
I'm alone here. But, given my record for going apeshit when I have an audience, that's probably a good thing for me.
I pull up to a little office in the backwoods of nowhere and grab my paperwork. I have to have it signed by the foreman, or whatever they call the officer in charge of watching all of us criminals. When I get inside, there's a little desk where a woman in uniform is checking off names and giving out tasks. I give her my name and she squints at the paper for a minute.
"Even Lennox?" she double-checks.
"That's me." I clutch at the paper in my hands nervously and chew my lip. Did I somehow manage to screw things up already?
"You'll be painting today." She eyes my outfit. "We have smocks you can change into."
My cheekbones feel singed. "It's okay. These are work clothes."
It's not a lie. My work clothes just happen to be very fashion-forward.
"Suit yourself. You'll start in the station room, around the corner to the left. You've painted before, I assume?"
I nod, and this time my answer is a complete lie I pray won't bite me in the ass.
"Good. There are several guards who will be patrolling the premises regularly. Stay on task or your service card won't be signed, and you'll have to make today up. If you need help, come to this office or give a holler."
She shoos me away with a wave of her unmanicured, jewelry-less hand, and I go around the corner and to the left.
The door is open and there's a radio blaring. I can hear the rhythmic sweep and clack of a paint roller. I guess I'll be working with someone else.
I walk in the doorway and a huge drip of light blue paint blobs on the dropcloth at my feet. I step over it and almost crash into...him.
"Oh! What are you doing here?" I demand stupidly as he stops rolling paint on the walls and stares at me, shock naked all over his face.
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?" His mouth pulls tight, a bowstring just before the arrow flies. "Un-fucking-believable, Kevon," he mutters, and he eyes me from the top of my ponytail to the tip of my inappropriate footwear with a look that is definitely pissed-off and annoyed.
"Excuse me?"
I feel stupidly over-dressed and unprepared for even this simple day of painting, and now the one person who was slightly nice to me on one of the most embarrassing days of my life is being a complete and utter ass, and it’s caught me off guard.
I immediately hate myself for having had a crush on him, and I hate him with instant, total fury. If he couldn’t bother to be nice when he saw me, he could have at least been neutral and not made me feel like an out-of-place idiot.
Anger settles on my tongue like a hot pepper, and one bite is all it will take for me to access the spicy heat.
"I just, uh, didn't expect you. Didn't expect to see you. Again." He tosses the roller into the tray and paces, running a hand over his short, black hair. "This is..." He looks up at me, those deep blue eyes scanning my face the way honor students speed-read a book a minute before an exam. He clenches his teeth so hard his jaw ticks, and then announces, "I should sign up for another duty station."
I crunch down on the pepper of my anger and my temper flares. I want to keep cool, but I lash out blindly, my emotions too overwhelming to hold in check. Every insecurity about this crazy day bubbles to the surface and leaves me raw.
"Sorry it's such a huge issue to work with me. You know, where I come from, judging someone based on their clothes is considered a really shitty thing to do. I may dress well, but that doesn't mean I'm useless."
I stalk a few feet closer to him, so angry I should be able to jump right in his face. But something about him stops me.
He's perfectly still, perfectly quiet and cool, but there's a dangerous edge in those warm blue eyes. Like the outside of a volcano, dormant for so long you forget how vicious it can be until it explodes.
"It's not your clothes. It's not that I don't think you can work." His voice is low and deceptively sweet, candy from a stranger I know I shouldn't take. "It's just not a good idea if we work together. Nothing personal."
But his eyes, half deep blue velvet, half dark blue diamond, tell me loud and clear that his declaration is a bald lie. This is all only personal, and I decide to throw my stubborn pride out the window and plead my case.
Which is weird for me.
I don’t
