Feels like Trouble (Lake Fisher Book 4) - Tammy Falkner Page 0,2

cover my mouth and try to hold back my snort, but it’s damn near impossible. Because written right there on Evie Allen’s hip are the words I belong to Grady Parker.

“Yours is just as bad,” Ms. Markie says to me.

I stand up and pull the apron down a little. And sure enough, written right there on my hip are the words I belong to Evie Allen.

“Whoa,” I breathe.

I look up at Evie. She stares at me. Then she says, “Aww hell naw,” and she walks in the other direction as fast as her bare feet will carry her.

“So how did I end up in the bushes?” I ask as I wash my hands at Ms. Markie’s sink.

“I think that was an attack of conscience.”

Rightly so.

She waves a hand toward the apron. “Do you think you could put on some clothes now? I’ve seen your bare bottom a few hundred times since you were a baby, but I’ve about had my fill of it today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Can I have a biscuit, first?” She picks up the plate and holds it out to me. I take one off the top, and then another since I have two hands and there’s a whole plate of biscuits. Not to even mention that Ms. Markie makes the best biscuits in Macon Hills. I snatch one more and then I ask, “Do you know where my clothes are?”

I’m careful not to let crumbs spew out of my mouth, because it would be a travesty to waste even a small piece of Ms. Markie’s biscuits.

She jerks a thumb toward where Evie went. I walk in that direction. I take my time, because I suddenly feel like I’m walking toward my execution.

If there’s one thing I know to be true, it’s that Evie Allen hates my guts.

She always has, and I’m pretty sure that whatever happened last night hasn’t changed her opinion of me.

I stand outside Evie’s bedroom door, trying to collect myself enough that I can knock and call out to her without forgetting my own name. Evie always has had a way of making me forget who I am.

I knock on the door and she opens it up so fast that I nearly fall into the room. I brace myself on the doorjamb with my hands and stare at her. “What do you want?” she asks. Then she points her finger in my face, almost bumping my nose with it, and says, “If you call me Clifford, even one time, I’m going to kick you square in the nuts. You’ll never father a child in your entire life, Grady Parker, if I have anything to do with it.”

I cover my package with my palm and take a step back. I had almost forgotten to use my favorite name for her. I’ve called her Clifford since forever, since we were young. She had gotten a big red stuffed dog for her birthday, mainly because she loved the books, and she carried that Clifford dog around with her everywhere she went.

“You don’t have to be quite so vicious,” I tell her.

“You don’t have to be quite so obnoxious,” she replies. She covers her nose with her hand. “And you stink. You smell like moonshine and…” She leans toward me and sniffs, her nose scrunching up. “Is that cow shit?”

I sniff hard, pointing my nose down toward my chest. “I do not smell like cow shit,” I say. I do smell quite vile, but I can’t quite tell what that smell is either. I smell so bad I’m offending myself. I lean toward her. “Whatever it is, you smell like it too,” I inform her.

She jerks like I just slapped her. “You take that back, Grady Parker.”

“Make me, Clifford.”

She sucks in a quick breath, and then she lifts her foot to make good on her promise. I block her foot with my hand. “I hate you so much,” she says. She says it like “the flowers smell nice” or “the yard needs mowing.” She says it like something she has said so many times that it no longer comes out as an insult. It’s just there.

“The feeling is mutual,” I assure her.

“Why are you even here?”

“Ms. Markie said you might have my clothes.” I look around her room, but I don’t see them.

“I have no idea where your clothes are.”

Suddenly, a fireman’s-style knock from the front door jerks us both out of glaring at one another.

“What’s that?” she asks, trying to lean out so she can look