Page 54 of Rock Bottom Girl

“How convenient,” Amie Jo hissed, eyeing me like a mangy raccoon. “But I seem to recall you being mean and violent in high school.”

I scoffed in her face. “I was mean and violent in high school? Are you forgetting the time you tried to run over Shelly Smith in the parking lot?” Shelly had made the unfortunate mistake of running against Amie Jo for class secretary our junior year.

Of course the entire town was always happy to forgive Amie Jo for her bad choices. Mine, however, still lived on.

“I knowexactlywhat you’re doing,” she hissed at me. “You’re pretending to be innocent, but I know what you’re capable of.”

I’d once broken into her locker and filled it with a dozen of the largest pairs of granny panties that I could find at Walmart. It had cost me two weeks of lunch money, but it had been so worth it. They’d fallen out at her feet between classes and been waved as flags by hilarious classmates.

It occurred after she’d called me an ugly whore during gym class when I missed her set in volleyball.

And then there had been Homecoming 1998 when I’d taken things way, way, way too far.

The warning bell rang, and students reluctantly left the scene of what was shaping up to be a girl fight.

“Go on to class, Milty,” she told her son. “I’ll take care of this.” She waited until the hallway was mostly empty before sidling closer to me.

“Now you listen to me, Marley Cicero. I know you. And I know you had something to do with this. Maybe you’re just jealous that I got Travis and you got nothing. Maybe you feel bad that your life is so pathetic. Maybe the only joy you get in life is by staging these childish pranks. I get it. I wouldn’t be able to stand myself if I were you either. All alone in life. You’re a what not to do. A human Pinterest fail. But don’t youeverdo anything to my sons’ hair again.” Her voice screeched higher.

I absorbed the words. Used to the verbal weapons Amie Jo and people like her employed.

“A human Pinterest fail? I feel like that’s uncalled for.”

“Admit it. You’re jealous of me.” Amie Jo was turning an unnatural shade of red, and I worried about her blood pressure. She was like one of those Instant Pots. You didn’t want that bursting open.

“Whoa. Let’s hang on there a second,” Jake was back at my side. “Amie Jo, I don’t know what you were told, but Marley couldn’t have had anything to do with that prank.”

“It was her! I know it was,” Amie Jo insisted. “If she didn’t tamper with the sprinklers yesterday, she did it the night before.”

“She was with me the night before. All night. Speaking of,” Jake said, sliding his arm around my waist. It was an incredibly inappropriate time for my nipples to go hard. “Do you mind if we do dinner at my house tonight. Last I heard, dining naked is frowned upon at Cashews.” He leaned in and nibbled at my ear.

I could hear him. He was speaking English. But my brain was inserting word salad for what he must actually be saying. Jake Weston was not telling Amie Jo that he wanted to get me naked for dinner.Was he?

I looked at her. She had an expression of horror, revulsion.

Okay, maybe he actually said it. “Baby?” he asked. He pinched me, hard.

I made a yelping noise and then recovered. “Uh. Yeah. Fine. Naked dinner at your place is…fine.”

Amie Jo’s perfect pink lips worked their way through what looked like several four-letter words before any noise came out.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you correctly. Are you two—”

“Dating,” Jake filled in. “Yeah. One look at Marley here during preseason, and I remembered all of those high school feelings that never went away.”

Amie Jo looked like she was trying to say a word that started with “f.” Her front teeth were wearing off all that sparkly lipstick.

“I’ll make your favorite,” Jake said leaning down to give me a peck on my cheek before hurrying off.

The bell rang, and I decided it was just smarter to leave Amie Jo standing there eating her own lipstick. I ducked into the locker room and, as a precaution, threw the deadbolt. What in the holy hell had just happened?

One kiss and…and what? He’d swooped in, riding to the rescue with first Vince and then Amie Jo.

“Yo, Cicero!” Floyd the Coward called through the gym door.

I yanked it open. “I didn’t know you could run that fast, Floyd.”

“No shame, man. That woman terrifies me.”