Page 21 of Shelter
“Sure,” I said, shrugging.
We were outside by the pool at Bree Baker’s house. Bree was Louis’s girlfriend, and her parents, ironically, actually were bakers. They owned Flour Power, a whole-grain bakery near the university. And since they opened shop at six in the morning, they were always asleep by nine. Which made the Bakers’ house an ideal place to hang if no one’s parents were out of town. If we could keep it quiet and only brought a handful of people.
And I was fine with that. Crowds did nothing for me. Better still, Bree’s younger sister, Honey, was friends with Ava, so whenever Louis and I went to the Bakers’, I brought her along. My father was in Houston, and he was catching the eleven o’clock flight back to Lafayette, so as long as we were back home by midnight, we’d be okay.
It was ten-thirty. I could have another beer.
Louis returned and waved a cold one at me, but he stopped at the edge of the pool. “Come dip your tired feet into these waters, my brother, and we shall ruminate.”
The higher Louis rose, the more he sounded like a philosophical evangelist. On purpose, thank God.
I swallowed a chuckle, pushed myself up from the lounge chair I had claimed for the last hour, and toed off my shoes. After peeling off my socks and rolling up my jeans, I joined Louis, who already had his skinny legs dangling down into the water. This was no surprise since Louis was always barefoot unless we were at school, or he was working at Pack ‘N Paddle, or it was January.
The water’s cold shocked me out of my silence. “Shit,” I muttered. “How can you stand that?”
Louis gave me a lazy smile. “I feel no pain, Oh, Great Coleman of Whitehurst.”
Yeah, Louis was feeling pretty good. Lucky bastard.
I looked over my shoulder toward the house. “Where’d Bree go?”
He nodded sagely. “I shared my apple of wisdom with my beloved, and in return, she is sharing the food of her people, the ever-coveted Chocolate Brioche.”
At this, I raised a brow. I’d sampled the Bakers’ chocolate brioche before. It was incredible. I hoped she was planning to share some with me.
“I hate to break it to you, Louis, but that stuff’s too good to be wasted on a couple of potheads,” I said, giving him a concerned frown. “Maybe I should eat it so it can be appreciated by someone of sound mind and body.”
His side-eye returned. “Oh, Great Coleman of Whitehurst, you may be of sound body,” he said, gesturing to my arms and legs. “And I may be like a man born of storks and egrets, but my heart is pure.”
I spluttered a laugh. “You? You think your heart is pure?” I lowered my voice so Bree and her friends couldn’t hear. “I doubt the Bakers would think that if they knew you smoked pot and banged their daughter in their back yard every weekend.”
It was nearly impossible to offend Louis, so I knew my comment wouldn’t. As expected, he gave me a devil’s grin. “Loving the Beautiful Bree and revering the Almighty Herb only highlight the purity of my heart,” he announced with reckless volume, his voice taking on a bad British accent. “Those habits attest to a heart full of love and joy. You, on the other hand…” He turned his dazed, bloodshot eyes at me, and shook his head with pity.
I held my face expressionless. My heart certainly wasn’t full of love and joy, whatever that meant.
Louis splayed the fingers of his left hand and began ticking off each, losing his bad British accent. “You have no girlfriend, even though nearly every girl at our school and about six other schools wants you,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You won’t flame up with your best friend, and you spend your free time rolling around on the floor with other guys—”
I narrowed my eyes at him with what I knew was my best menacing glare.
“Which would make me happy for you if you were gay, but I know you’re not,” Louis hastened to add. “Out of all those girls in seven or so schools in town, I know you actually like about four of them, but you won’t do anything about it. And that means your loveless, joyless existence is a choice, so you, my friend, are not deserving of chocolate brioche.”
We heard atskbehind us and turned to see Bree approaching with a plate. “Louis, don’t be greedy,” she gently scolded, stepping in between us and motioning for us to make room. When we did, she dropped down, carefully balancing her plate of warm, chocolate-swirled rolls. She leaned into me. “Louis always gets greedy when he’s high. Here, Cole, you deserve a brioche.”
I quickly wiped my hand on the leg of my jeans and took one off the plate. “Bree, have I told you lately that I love you?”
She tilted her head back and laughed just as Louis scowled. “Hey—” He reached over and plucked a brioche off the plate before clutching it in both hands and tearing off a bite with his teeth.
Ignoring him, I took my own bite of the warm, buttery, chocolate pastry. The Bakers used only the best ingredients in their recipes. Locally sourced organic butter and eggs, fair-trade dark chocolate, pink Himalayan salt…
One palm-sized brioche cost seven dollars, but the few times I’d gone into the bakery with Louis to visit Bree, I’d never given a second thought to handing over whatever I had in my wallet for any of their chocolate creations.
“Mmm,” I sighed, closing my eyes and letting myself fall into the bliss of brioche. I immediately regretted saying anything about Louis banging Bree in her back yard every weekend. Of course, it was the truth, but Bree was always nice to me. I hung around with Louis almost all the time, and more often than not, I brought my little sister with me.
Neither Louis nor Bree ever complained, and they’d been dating for six months now. They always acted as if Ava and I were supposed to be tagging along. And for that, I was grateful.
They were my friends. The only two people I thought of as friends. I had teammates and classmates I might talk to at school, but they didn’tknowme. Louis knew me. He’d known me since sixth grade when I’d beaten the crap out of him for no other reason than he’d asked me why I was dragging my backpack instead of wearing it on my shoulder.
I had been dragging my backpack because my father had striped my back and shoulders with his belt the night before, and the weight of my book sack had brought tears to my eyes.
