Page 86 of Bridesmaid for Hire
“Was the snake not venomous?” he asks, lifting up to get a look around.
I hold back my laughter as I say, “You weren’t bitten by a snake.”
“But…I felt it. I saw it slither away. My leg hurts.” He pats at his leg, far too confused yet convinced that he was done wrong by the slippery no-limbed body.
“Yes, well, it seems like you might have scared a snake away, but you didn’t get bitten. It was actually a branch in the bush that cut you.”
His face falls flat as he lifts up some more to look at his calf. “No, I know what a branch feels like, and this was not a branch, this was…this was a bite.” He tilts his leg up to get a better angle to look at his calf andI can see it in his face when he realizes that he was in fact, not bitten by a snake.
His brows dip in confusion, his mouth thins, and his shoulders sag.
“Soo…there’s no snake bite?” Reginald asks.
Liko shakes his head. “No, just a scrape from a branch, but let’s clean it up quickly.”
Brody looks up at me and I wince, knowing exactly what he’s thinking, I can see it in his eyes. He has once again humiliated himself, but no doubt, this is way worse than the beach.
Not sure how he’s going to bounce back from this.
But God Almighty, I’ll never forget the feral screeches he let out.
Truly, the best gift I’ve ever received.
“How’s the calf?” I ask as we continue down the path, bringing up the rear end of the group and giving ourselves plenty of space between the Hoppers and ourselves.
“Fine,” he says tersely.
“You’re limping a little.”
“Because if I don’t limp, I’ll look like a complete asshole who lost his mind over a scrape from a branch.”
“Hey, Liko had to use a butterfly strip, so it wasn’t just a scrape.”
“He did that just to be nice. I think to help me save face. I could see it in his expression. He was humiliated for me, just like everyone else.”
“Well, he did a nice job and the wrap around your calf looks like you truly took a beating from the jungle.”
He glances at me. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
“I honestly have no idea. Just trying to make conversation.”
“Maybe it’s best that we don’t.”
“If we don’t converse then it’s going to look like you’re mad at me, and are you mad at me?”
“Uh, I don’t know—are you the one who pushed me into the bush?”
I look up at him in shock. “No. I didn’t push you. Don’t try blaming the snake fit on me.”
“Is that what you’re calling it?”
“Seems like an appropriate title.”
He grows closer as he says, “You saw that snake, it was the size of my leg.”
“Wow, overexaggerate much? It was the size of a twig.”
He shakes his head. “No way. That was the size of my leg, if not bigger.”
