Riley smiles at me as I pull up in front of her house. “You really didn’t have to drop me off first. How are you going to get home?”
I swat my hand at her. “I haven’t been driving all my life. I always find a way to get around. Besides, I’m not sure I trust you behind the wheel yet.”
“Good point.” Riley rubs her eyes again.
“But thanks,” I say. For some reason, wanting to prolong these seconds in the car with her. “For getting the car. For driving me to Richmond. For turning into Snoop Dogg back there.”
Riley laughs.
“Really . . . not a lot of people have my back like that. So . . .” So what? I have no more words to express how grateful I am for everything Riley’s done for me. If she has some ulterior motive, I don’t want to know. I just like feeling about her the way I do right now—next to her in the car.
Riley locks eyes with me and she has tiny freckles of green in her eyes. I never noticed those before. Like tiny flecks of emeralds buried in sand. I blink and unbuckle my seatbelt. “It’s late. I should head to the bus stop.”
“Jay.” Riley’s hand is over mine again. Still soft, still the right temperature. “I . . . I remember.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“The compliment? About your lips? And . . . I meant it.”
My other eyebrow raises, too, along with my pulse. Holy shit. Riley Palmer thinks I have kissable lips. And I think I care about Riley Palmer thinking I have kissable lips. Soon, her body sways toward mine—like a magnet pulling her to me. And my body sways to hers, too, like they both know just what to do without us telling them. Like they were supposed to be doing this all along.
Her mouth comes closer to mine and—holy shit. Holy shit. I’m about to kiss Riley Palmer.
A thud on the window sends us both jerking back against our seats.
Fifteen
MRS. PALMER GLARES AT US THROUGH THE PASSENGER SIDE window, her face covered with green slime. I’m sure that she’d look just as scary without the face mask—her glare is enough to slice me in two.
Riley takes a deep breath and rolls down her window. “Hey, Mom,” she says.
“Don’t just ‘Hey, Mom,’ me. We specifically told you to be home by ten,” Mrs. Palmer snaps. I glance over at the clock on the dashboard. 10:03. Guess the Palmers didn’t give a damn about traffic. “And why is he behind the wheel?” Mrs. Palmer lasers in on me again and I want to bury myself under my seat. “Do you even have your license, Jay?”
“Yes,” I say. Mrs. Palmer’s eyes narrow at me. Reminds me of the time she caught me pocketing an extra cookie during Christmas service years ago. “No,” I correct. “But I do have my permit.” I give her a weak smile. All see, I didn’t completely break the law.
Mrs. Palmer pinches the bridge of her nose, green gunk oozing between her fingertips. “Riley, you know the rules.”
“Yes, ma’am. But you know how I feel about driving in the dark, and Jay was kind enough to—”
“You shouldn’t even be hanging out with Jay!” Mrs. Palmer flinches, just for a second, as if remembering that I could hear her. Too late. Heat rises to my cheeks again, but not the good kind. This one scorches in a different way. This one feels like shame. “I mean, you shouldn’t be hanging out with any boys after dark. You know the rules.” Even with her paraphrasing, I get it. She tries making it all about what Riley did wrong, but all I hear is that the wrong is me. I guess I’m good enough to teach Sunday school, but not good enough to be out at night with their only daughter.
“Mom, can we not right now?” I think Riley nudges her head at me. I’m too busy staring down at my hands on my lap. My head feels too heavy to look up.
Mrs. Palmer sniffs Riley then lets out a gasp. “What’s that smell? That better not be what I think it is.”
“It’s not . . . it’s incense. The bookstore was having a Caribbean night featuring West Indies authors.” The lie comes out of Riley’s mouth so smoothly that I should be scared. But nothing’s more fearful than Mrs. Palmer at the moment.
“I’m going to stop you right there, Riley Faith, before you get yourself into even more trouble. Get out of the car and get into the house. Now.” Mrs. Palmer directs her wrath toward me again: “The Reverend and I will have a word with you tomorrow, Jay.”
Great. As if Sunday service isn’t suffering enough, now I get to have a private sermon from Reverend Palmer. He’ll find some godly way to tell me to go to hell. I nod and get out of the Palmers’ car. I don’t even say goodbye to Riley because my throat’s too tight to let the words come out. Shove my hands in my hoodie’s pockets as I trudge down the street toward the city bus stop. Riley and her mom are on the sidewalk behind me, exchanging a few heated words that I can’t quite make out. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know how many more times I can hear Mrs. Palmer tell her daughter how much of a loser I am.
“Jay!” I look over my shoulder and Riley’s jogging after me. “Hold up!”
I shake my head at her. “You shouldn’t be out here still, Riley. You’re in enough trouble.”
“It’s okay. I told her to give me a minute and that I had to grab the keys from you.” She looks behind her to make sure her mom’s disappeared into the house, then turns back to me and sighs. “I’m so, so sorry about that.”
I shrug, even though it feels as if my shoulders have weights on them. “No worries. I’m used to folks thinking I’m trash. Par for the course when you live in the Ducts.”
Riley’s face falls as she shakes her head over and over. “No. No. It’s not personal. Jay, my parents love you. They just don’t want me hanging around any guy. They think I’m supposed to live at school and church. School and church. That’s it. They’re always talking about how they want more for me.”
Her words sting more than her mom’s glare. “Yeah. Exactly,” I say. Of course they want more for Riley. More than Bad News. More than a guy from Bad News. Hell, more than me. Period. No matter how proper I speak or how groomed I keep my hair or how I smile at old folks when there’s not much to smile about, my own people still look at me like I ain’t shit. MiMi’s right—can’t win for losing. “Look, you’ve been mad cool, Riley. Way cooler than I deserve. But maybe we should chill out.”
If Riley’s face went any more slack, it’d be a puddle on the sidewalk beneath us. “Jay . . . don’t do this.”
“Later, Riley.” I turn back around and continue toward the bus stop. I don’t check to see if Riley’s watching me. If she were, it’d be even tougher to say goodbye. Cutting her loose before she got even more tangled was for the best. Now I just have to find a way to untangle Nic.
“Hold on, pass me that mirror,” MiMi says, sitting up in her hospital bed. One of the nurses helped her plait her hair into halo braids. Let her borrow some lipstick to make her feel more presentable. Deacon Irving had arranged it so that the local news station would visit me and MiMi in the hospital. Talk about Nic to get the word out. I should be grateful for all his help, but MiMi still hasn’t mentioned him paying her an actual visit. Guess he doesn’t want the folks in the hospital running their mouths as much as the ladies at church.