Diane scans the alcohol and holds her palm out. Ariana passes her a driver’s license, which Diane scans and hands back. “If I ever need a new identity, you better give me the name of your guy, Ariana.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Diane.” She grins at the older lady, who rolls her eyes.
“See?” Lil gives me a ‘told ya so’ grin.
When we get back to the house, I carry an obscene amount of grocery bags inside. The girls start stacking most of it in a section of the pantry they apparently claimed as their own years ago, and in the extra fridge in the garage that’s mostly used for soda and beer.
“We should get them a cabinet to keep all this crap up in theirwing of the house.” Marco gestures toward more food on the counter with one of the new beers before opening it. He didn’t look shocked at all to see us bring it into the house. Mia thanked the girls for grabbing her favorite wine for her.
“No,” Mia laughs. “Then we’ll never see them!”
“True.” Marco turns to me. “You haven’t run for the hills yet. That’s a good sign.”
I grunt in reply.
“He almost had to referee a fight, but Melissa’s a chicken shit,” Lil says with a grin before launching into the full story.
Marco raises an eyebrow. “There’s only three weeks left of school. You would think you girls could stay out of trouble for that long.”
“Have you met us?” the girls say in unison.
Fuck. This place is like ifThe Shining,The Twilight Zone, andThe Godfatherhad a weird ass baby.
Chapter 15
Crack. Not the cocaine kind
Ariana
Luca glares a lot. Almost constantly. Tuesday, he glares when we order extra shots in our coffee at the cart on campus, when we eat pizza and candy for lunch, and when we have a water gun fight in the kitchen before dinner.
But I see cracks forming in his armor.
Because that’s what his grumpy grunts, grumbles, and glares really are: armor to protect his heart and soul. I don’t know what happened to make him put it on. I do know his parents pretty much suck. How his dad and Marco can be brothers but so very different as fathers is beyond my comprehension.
I recognize Luca’s armor. I’m quite familiar with it. When shit gets too heavy, I put my own armor on for a few days. But I rarely need it anymore and have people who help me through the days I do. I don’t think Luca’s had much of a support system. No wonder he wears his armor all the time.
Tuesday evening, Lil and I are sitting at the kitchen counter. She’s doing homework. I’m looking at cake recipes.
Dad and Luca walk in, so I’m guessing the baseball game they’re watching is on a commercial break.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, Ariana,” he says back with a smile.
“What kinds of rum do we have?”
“Rum?” Dad asks as he grabs a couple of beers out of the fridge.
“I want to make a rum cake.”
“Oh, remember the last time you made rum cake?” Lil rests her chin on her hand and has a dreamy look on her face. “It was so good!”
Dad opens the beers and hands Luca one. “You stole the whole bottle, soaked the cake in for two days, and got drunk when you ate it.”
“We were such lightweights,” Lil says.
“Well, we were fourteen,” I shrug. Luca raises that sexy eyebrow. I raise my regular eyebrow right back. “But I found a new recipe I want to try.”
