Page 144 of Pride High 3: Yellow

“Who?”

“The girl you’ve been seeing. Sharon says she heard you doing it in here with someone.”

Diego rolled his eyes. Sharon was his mother’s best friend, which is the only reason she’d gotten the job as the shop’s receptionist. The woman was nosey as hell. Diego wasn’t fond of her. “She needs to mind her own damn business.”

“No kidding,” Marti said with a snort. “But I can’t imagine any other reason you’d want to be in a school play.”

She wasn’t wrong. Ricky had been the reason the first time around. Sure, he’d also wanted to avoid coming home to endless work, but he’d known that a school play wouldn’t change anything. Diego shrugged. “Maybe I just like to dance.”

Marti made a face. “You’re dancing? Like in a musical?”

“Yup.”

“Now Iknowit has to be a girl. Fess up! What’s her name?”

“Mindy,” he replied, since she was the one who had roped him into auditioning again. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell his mom about Ricky. She would have questions that he didn’t have the answers to, because he didn’t get it either. Diego only knew that he liked the little guy. A lot.

“Is she the redhead?” Marti asked.

Diego tensed. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“I saw her photo in your room.”

“Oh. Right.”

“She’s pretty,” Marti said, as if he should be proud, when in truth he felt embarrassed about how often he looked at her photo. “Are you really going to be dancing in the play?”

“Come see for yourself.”

Marti shook her head dismissively. “That’s all right.”

“Would it kill you or something?”

“No, but we both know you don’t really want me there.”

“What if I did?”

She eyed him a moment. “When is it?”

“Friday. Seven o’clock.”

She didn’t make any promises, which was fine with him, because he wouldn’t have believed her anyway. He watched Marti stand up and glance around the room, her features tightening. He stood as she walked to the door and paused there.

“Your father liked to dance,” she said.

“Really?”

Marti nodded. “He was good too.”

“Did you dance with him?” Diego asked.

“Sometimes. I wish I hadn’t been so shy about it.” He watched her hands clench into fists, picturing how her manicured nails must be cutting into the palms, until they went slack again. “I was thinking of ordering a pizza,” she said.

“Works for me,” he replied.

“Okay.”

She closed the door behind her when leaving the office. Diego walked around the desk and sat in his dad’s old chair, the seat still warm. He noticed the brass knobs of the drawers, how the top one on the right and the bottom-most on the left were the most shiny, like they got the most use. Then his eyes moved to the framed photo on the desk, which he always left face down so it wouldn’t surprise him. His mother must have righted it, because three people were smiling at him now. They might as well have been from another planet, despite looking just like his parents and a younger version of himself. That’s how alien they felt. Usually. At the moment, he could remember his mother making him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off, how he’d clung to his dad’s back when riding a motorcycle for the first time, and diving into the middle of his parents’ bed to show them a bug in a jar.