Paper Kisses (3 page)

“Excuse
me, Miss Atwood ... how did you manage to wreck the car that you rented, and
promised not to damage?”

“I
was, like, grinding my pussy into my jeans trying to get off because the cop
that pulled me over was so totally hot.”

Apparently, in her sex fantasies
she spoke like a Valley Girl.

Sky had always been the one person
she could run to no matter the reason, and although she’d had
CeeCee
and Kevin too, she’d always had a special
relationship with Sky.
 
That relationship
was one of the reasons why she
hightailed
it so fast
out of Dexter.
 
She didn’t want to become
like her mother, stuck in a backwoods town with absolutely no ambition, and her
dependency on Sky scared her.
 

CeeCee’s
house hadn’t changed one bit, and that included the plastic flower on the porch
table.
 
The paint was peeling and it had long
ago lost the yellow pigment that once made it sunny and bright.
 
Now it was more washed out, more of a
mushroom color, which really wasn’t that attractive.
 
But there’d been so many great memories
within the two-story farmhouse style home that Alannah wouldn’t have given a
crap if it were pink with purple polka dots.
 
  

“I’m sorry I didn’t come back for
the funeral,” Alannah murmured.

CeeCee
shrugged.
 
“Truthfully, I was completely
out of my mind so I wouldn’t have known if you’d been there or not.
 
Mom and Dad would’ve understood.
 
They were like that.
 
Say, while I’m slaving over the hot microwave,
wanna
pour some wine?”

“Okay,” Alannah said and headed
right toward the cupboard where she knew the wine would be.
 
The Jones family had never been sophisticated
enough for a
wine
rack and it was a miracle that the
wine wasn’t in a box.
 
She’d loved
CeeCee’s
parents and had been devastated to learn they died
in a car crash only five months after graduation. Twenty minutes later, the sad
memories were pushed away as they sat on the couch laughing over home
movies.
 

“I can’t believe you still have a
VCR,” Alannah murmured as she washed down the last bite of her frozen
dinner.
 

“I have a DVD and VCR combo in my
bedroom,”
CeeCee
said proudly.
 
“How cool is that?”

“That wouldn’t be the adjective I’d
use.”

“Ha!
 
Oh, watch this,”
CeeCee
said, pointing.
 
Kevin was on the screen
trying to ride a mechanical bull.
 
“Kevin
is such a freak!
 
I can’t believe he
entered amateur rodeo night at the festival!”

“Daredevil, that’s Kev,” Alannah
agreed.
 
“
Gotta
love him.”

“It’s a wonder he never broke his
neck all in the name of a dare,”
CeeCee
replied.
 
“You know the Strawberry Festival starts this
week, right?
 
I’m working the kissing
booth.
 
Want to help?”

“Setting it up or working it?”

“Both.
 
It’s for charity, you know.
 
Every year I donate the money to Kevin’s animal
shelter.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Well, if not we can find something
for you to do.
 
Maybe Skylar wouldn’t
mind having you help patrol.”

Alannah’s eyebrows shot up.
 
“Think he’d give me a gun?”

CeeCee
rolled her eyes.
 
“Are you kidding? He
took away my
Beebee
gun.”

Hearing Sky’s name threw her once
again.
 
She’d been working really hard to
not
think of him.
 
Might as well get the
questioning over with now.

“How come you never mentioned he
was living in Dexter?”

CeeCee
pursed her lips and pressed pause on the VCR.
 
“You never seemed to want to talk about high school memories.
 
So why’d you leave so fast?”

“Come on,” Alannah said.
 
“All I talked about my senior year was
getting out of middle America to see the world.”

CeeCee
was unusually somber as she regarded her.
 
“Sky took it hard when you disappeared after graduation.
 
You didn’t even say goodbye.”

 
“Why am I the only one to have left Backwoods
Missouri?”

“Well, Kevin did for a time.
 
He went to vet school in Dallas.
 
I think he wanted to work on a cattle ranch
or something but he moved back here a little over a year ago.
 
He stays with me every weekend.”

“And Sky?”

“He went to
Mizzou
,
studied law and then went to Joplin to the police academy.
 
When he came back he became a deputy and
well, you know the rest.”
 
She paused for
a beat.
 
“He’s had an on-again, off-again
relationship with a woman named Linda who lives in Poplar Bluff.”

Hearing that actually…hurt.
 
Jealousy rose up in Alannah and she had to
swallow the bitter pill down.
 
There was
absolutely no reason why she should feel possessive over Sky.
 
He wasn’t
hers
.
 
No one was hers.
 
It was ridiculous to think hunky, hot Sky
would be interested in boring old her.
 
She couldn’t even hold onto the man who’d vowed to always love her until
death.

Still, she had to know.

“Are they on again?”

CeeCee
shrugged.
 
“Truthfully, I haven’t a
clue.
 
You, more than me or Kev, knew
about his girlfriends.”

Alannah groaned.
 
“Tell me about it.
 
All through high school I was Sky’s punching
bag with his girls.
 
By graduation I was
so tired of hearing about them… I don’t know if I want to ask and risk it
again.
 
Anyway, let’s change the
subject.
 
Who’s all going to this party
tomorrow?”

“You, me.
Kevin,
who’ll be over tonight …
Skylar
always hems and haws,
but I manage to talk him into it.
 
There’ll be about twenty people around our age, some you know and some
you don’t.
 
It’ll be a total blast!”

Alannah reached out and took
CeeCee’s
hand, squeezing it.
 
“I can’t wait.
 
It’s been so long since I just relaxed by the
lake.”

“I wish you’d stay longer than a
week,”
CeeCee
said with a pout.

“Hey, I just got here.
 
Let’s not think of me leaving just yet.”

“I know.
 
I’ve just missed having someone to talk to,
having
you
to talk to.
 
We’ve all missed you.
 
Especially Sky.
 
He was a basket case for
awhile
.”

“Come on,
Cee
,”
Alannah muttered, squirming a little.
 
“There wasn’t ever anything sexual between us.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What are you trying to say?”

CeeCee
rose from the couch and gathered up the plastic frozen dinner plates before
glancing at her.
 
“Who do you think took
over your punching bag job?”

The words rendered Alannah
speechless and all she could think were the immortal words of George Takei.

Oh,
my.

Chapter Two

As soon as the first honk sounded
through the dead of night, Alannah sat up in bed with a gasp.
 
High-beam lights were blinking off and on,
reminding her of a disco ball.
 
Scowling,
she jumped from bed and headed out of her bedroom at the same time that
CeeCee
came out of hers.

She turned on the stairway light
and they both started down when the front door lock turned and Kevin Ramsey
strolled in.
 
He was tall, lanky, and way
too happy for one o’clock in the morning.

“Cecilia Elizabeth Jones, don’t
tell me you went and bought a sports car!” he called out, his bellowing voice
filling the foyer.

“Nah, it’s Alannah’s,”
CeeCee
said with a laugh as she hugged Kevin.
 
“You can lecture her on the dangers of tiny
motorized go-karts.”

Kevin looked up the stairs, to
where Alannah had halted halfway down.
 

“Well, hell,” he said with a smile
on his handsome face.
 
“You finally got
your butt back to Dexter where it belongs.
 
So come down here and give me a hug.
 
Haven’t seen you in a mess of years.”

Alannah finished heading down the
steps and as she reached Kevin’s space he reached out and grabbed her off her
feet for a hug.
 
Out of the four of them,
Kevin was the most laid back.
 
He was the
type of guy who fit into any clique, be it skaters, smokers, jocks, or
nerds.
 
He had that type of personality
that was calming and heaven knew it was just what she needed.

“Whoa, Kevin!” she said.
 
“Hi.
 
Please put me down.”

He set her down but didn’t let go
of her as he studied her face.
 
His
fingers smoothed back her red hair off her face.

“You’re even more beautiful now
than in high school, Alannah Atwood.”

“And you’ve grown pretty damn tall,
mister!”

“What did that bastard do to you?”

She blinked and her good mood
evaporated in a blink.
 
“Excuse me?”

“I could always tell when something
upset you, so talk to me.
 
What did that
asshole you married do to put that unhappiness in your eyes?”

She shook her head and touched his
cheek.
 
“Maybe some
other time, Kev, when it’s not the middle of the night.”

“Sure,” he said, ruffling her sleep
tossed hair.
 
“Let’s make you forget him,
shall we?
 
So,
Cee
,
my darling, where’s the
beer
?”

CeeCee
laughed as she headed toward the kitchen.
 
“Follow me to the celebration!”

Alannah watched after them with
tolerant amusement.
 
She’d forgotten how
perceptive Kevin could be.
 
The Grandfather
clock in the corner showed the time as ten minutes after one, so why the hell
was she following after them?

****

The slamming of a screen door
jarred her awake and Alannah discovered she’d been sleeping with her head on
the kitchen table.
 
The surface was
littered with coffee cups, beer bottles, chip bags and various other assorted
junk food paraphernalia.
 
She sat up and
wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth, feeling like she’d been run over
by a Mack truck.

“Morning, sleepy
head!”
CeeCee
greeted cheerfully.
 

“You’re too fucking happy for this
early in the morning,” Alannah grumbled.
 
“What time is it, anyway?”

“Six-thirty.”

“Good god.”
 
Her elbow hit an empty beer bottle, which
went careening across the table to hit another bottle.
 
She winced at the noise.
 
“How much did we drink?”

“Well, let’s just say I have to
take a trip to the recycling plant.”

“
Man,
and
I feel it,” Alannah muttered.
 
“I haven’t
drunk that much in ages.”

“Hurry up and get ready, we don’t
want to be late,” Kevin called out from somewhere.
 

“Huh?
 
Be late to where at this ungodly hour?”

“The lake,”
CeeCee
said patiently, as if she were talking to a child.
 
Alannah half expected her to tack on a
duh
.
 
“Have to get there really early or we’ll
loose
the volleyball net.”

“Of course,” Alannah said
dryly.
 
“How silly of
me not to think of that.”

CeeCee
waved a hand as she grabbed a bag of ice from the freezer and headed out the
door.
 
“You got half an hour!”

The screen door slammed shut behind
her.
 
Great.
 
Half an hour.
 
Alannah groaned as she rose and headed
upstairs for a shower.
 
Half an hour
later, she sat squashed in Kevin’s small truck cab with
CeeCee
half sitting on her and trying not to get in the way of the shifter.

“You know,” she said.
 
“I really didn’t mind following you in my
car.”

“No way are you driving that golf
cart around me.
 
Most of the time truck
drivers fail to notice tiny cars like that and then
SPLAT
!
Instant
roadkill
.”