Gigi’s giving me the flat look that used to precede irrational demands that the entire family drop everything and help her plan a gala that would outshine Viola Barker’s, since we were all so much more complimentary of Viola in the press than we were of whatever Gigi had done last.
Lightlys don’t do second place.
“Octavia Bianca Lightly, when I say put your hand down a toilet, you don’t try to get out of it by calling meold.”
“I didn’t call you old, Gigi! I said you’renotold!”
“If you put the word in a sentence with anyone over forty, you’re calling them old.”
She silently dares me to say she doesn’t look a day over thirty-eight.
I silently do not take that dare.
This morning at family breakfast, she was all smiles and effusive compliments for Lola’s progress, surprised compliments for Carter’s impromptu voluntary scrubbing of the biology lab cabinets, nose-in-the-air compliments for Dad’s meticulous care of the high school lawn, and obligatory compliments for the progress I haven’t made on the teachers’ lounge.
Clearly, I still have the most work to do on my soul, which is starting to piss me off.
“How do I do this selfie video thing?” Dylan asks as he rises, task complete, apparently.
God bless the man.
He knows how to play peacekeeper.
Or at least how to be a distraction.
“Here.” I shift around Gigi in the small bathroom and put a hand on Dylan’s arm while I press a finger to the button on his phone to reverse his camera.
He sucks in a quick breath, and that’s all it takes to make my nipples hard as glass. Not that the subtle scent of hamburger still lingering on him wouldn’t have affected me anyway in another minute or two.
God, that looked good.
I’m not saying I want meat at every meal—even if I can shake my mother’s voice in my head reminding me not to eat anything that could land on my hips, I stilllikevegetables and beans and tofu, and I’m aware of the environmental impact of meat-production plants—but once wesecure investment money and we start taking in income from alternate crops, tourism, and early-run chocolate with beans from other farms, I don’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks about my lifestyle.
I don’t care if I never have a million dollars in the bank again.
I just want enough to take care of the farm, indulge in making chocolate, and pay my bills.
“And that’s it?” Dylan asks as he peers at the phone.
“Now you hit the record button, and—oh my God. You’re playing with me, aren’t you?”
“A little.” He grins.Gah.The dimples. Also, his front right tooth is just a smidge crooked, and it’s adorable. You don’t notice until you’re right up next to him, but it is. It’s the little imperfections that keep making him hotter.
And I need tonotthink about Dylan being hot. We’refriends. I’m done leaving a trail of bodies behind me when I leave a place. “You know how to operate your camera.”
“I only take pictures. Not video.” He moves it left and right. “Huh. Pretty intuitive. Glad it’s not one of those things where you move it the way you should and you disappear off the other side of the screen. You ready to stick your hand in that toilet?”
I blink at him. He very clearly said, “You don’t need to stick your hand in the toilet,” after the snake didn’t work.
He’s grinning broader as he hits the camera button to start the video. “Hi, world. I’m giving Tavi Lightly lessons on how to do her own plumbing, and today, I’m gonna talk her through sticking her hand down a pipe to dig out the remnants of Captain America taking on a raw chicken thigh in the ocean known as a toilet bowl. You ready, Tavi?”
I’m not in makeup. Notfilmmakeup, anyway. I have a tickle in my nose like I still have a goose feather up there from the fight in the library. And I know we can do a second take, so I smile anyway. “I can’t wait. I’ve always wanted to stick my hand down the pipes that carry the things we put into toilets.”
The man’s smile gets impossibly broader. “First rule of plumbing: the pipes don’t like sarcasm.”
“Oh,ha ha, you.”
“A’right, then.” He points to the toilet. “I already turned off and disconnected the toilet’s water valve. We siphoned as much water out of the bowl and tank as we could, but there’ll be some spillage since we can’t flush this one, so we’ve got towels ready. Lucky it’s clean water, yeah?”
