Here to Stay Read Online Free PDF Page B

dogs. She’d seen the unspoken warning in the direction of Elijah’s gaze and in his stance. “He just knows Evan’s drunk and a moron and not worth it.” Just the way her parents’ champion Tide never bothered to fight Warren; a cold stare was enough. “Come on, let’s go. We can give them a ride.”
    Anne Beth said, “I doubt they want company.”
    Sissy exclaimed, “Oh, puh-leeze. He’d never go for her.”
     
    S ISSY HAD NOT WANTED a Thunderbird for her sixteenth birthday. She had wanted a Corvette.
    But she had received a turquoise Thunderbird and was delighted all the same. She’d driven Anne Beth to the party, and now she was taking Elijah and Lucia home. She’d dropped them off in order. Anne Beth’s house had been closest, then Lucia’s.
    And now she and Elijah sat in the idling car outside Lucia’s house.
    “Do you need to get right home?” Sissy asked.
    Elijah glanced up, startled. “No. What about you?”
    “I feel like having an adventure,” she said. “We could go to the Strip. We could go see the fish at the dam.”
    “Kind of iffy down there this time of night,” Elijah replied.
    “No, it’s not. We can get fudge.”
    “Okay,” he agreed, and she saw his straight white teeth as he grinned in the dark.
    The Workmans even go to the orthodontist, she thought, still mentally arguing with her mother’s opinion of the family. Not that they’d discussed it lately. Sissy hadn’tseen Elijah for months, except at school and sometimes at parties.
    “Want to drive?” she asked.
    “You trust me?”
    “Definitely. After all, you didn’t swing at Evan. That was good judgment.”
    His smile seemed slightly chagrined. “Why’s that?”
    “Because he’d never forget it, and he’d act like a jerk to you for the rest of forever. That was nice of you, by the way.” Instead of getting out of the car, she stood up in her seat in her white pedal pushers and pale blue blouse. “Let’s switch seats.”
    Elijah crawled under her, and she stepped over him, giving him a chance to admire her ankles.
    “You’ve always liked Lucia, haven’t you?” she asked airily, settling in the passenger seat and finding the seat belt. “Seat belts,” she said. “It’s a family rule.”
    Elijah obediently found his and adjusted it to fit him. He switched on the turn indicator, looked out in the street and pulled away from the curb. “She’s just a friend,” he said.
    Sissy tossed her shoulder-length, straight hair, still wet from swimming.
    “In any case,” she said, “Evan’s a clown, and he’s obnoxious, and I’m glad you didn’t get in a fight.” And I was right, she thought, that Elijah and Lucia aren’t that way about each other. Well, maybe she is about him.
    Sissy, on the other hand, was over Elijah Workman. Well, over the way she used to be about him. Right now, he was interesting primarily because he was the kind of person her mother wanted her to have nothing to do with.
    “Go over the dam,” she instructed.
    “Why?”
    “Because my parents are at the club, and they’ll come back over HH.”
    He’d reached a Stop sign, and when he’d come to a halt he looked over at her. “You mean, you’re not supposed to be doing this?”
    “No,” she insisted. “I just mean that I’ll have to listen to…” she sought for the right words and settled on “…advice.”
    He did not pull ahead. The street was quiet, no one behind them.
    “About what?”
    Why must he be so annoyingly direct? And what could she say? She wasn’t about to tell him that her mother wouldn’t want her spending time with him. Her dad might not even be crazy about the idea. Of course, her dad wasn’t crazy about her having a boyfriend at all. Instead, he encouraged her to learn all about the colleges she might want to go to. He had the right idea; she knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t going to let a boyfriend stand in her way.
    “My father’s worried I’m going to get a boyfriend,” she decided to