Ties That Bind Read Online Free PDF Page A

D-Ray said again, his tone emphasizing the question.
    “Why do you care?”
    “Why are you a bitch?”
    “Grow up, D-Ray. Welcome to adulthood. I don’t have to answer to you, and when I’m being assertive it doesn’t mean I’m being a bitch. When you’re throwing your balls and your testosterone around, do I accuse you of being a jackass?”
    “First of all, I do not throw my balls around. They are attached to my body, and I prefer them that way. Secondly, I’ve never thrown testosterone at anyone. And thirdly, of course you accuse me of being a jackass. On a regular basis.”
    “Well, only when you are being one.”
    “The world according to Sam Montgomery…”
    “D-Ray, Lind Harris is a first-rate creep, and has been since junior high. He spent half of his time trying to cop a feel from girls who couldn’t stand him, and the other half jacking off to yearbook pictures of girls who couldn’t stand him.”
    “You talk like a guy.”
    “Comes from working with them all day, every day. Harris is the epitome of the nerdy creeper who becomes a cop purely as a power trip. You know they are out there. You see them every day.”
    “Yeah, Harris is a creep, but he’s not a bad cop, from what I can see. And you’re holding junior-high shit against him. I mean, come on, get real, Sam. Aren’t we a little too old for that bitchy girl stuff?”
    “If I grabbed your balls during a game of tag football, during a Mutual activity, wouldn’t you be pissed?”
    “At fourteen? Hell no. The reaction would have been exactly the opposite. And besides, you don’t have balls.”
    Sam sighed deeply. “I give up. I don’t like him. Never have, never will.”
    “You’re such a girl.”
    “Make up your mind.”
    “Oh, I always knew you were a girl. I’ve known you for a really long time. You just think you have something to prove.”
    The waitress. a petite, lithe redhead, young and nubile—barely out of high school—delivered their food. She looked familiar, Sam thought. She probably came from a family that Sam knew from some arena of Kanesville’s small-town life.
    She stared at the girl as she walked away, trying to place her, knowing the reality was she did not want to look at her food or take the requisite bite she always forced upon herself. The girl wasn’t that familiar.
    The greasy, starchy aroma assaulted Sam’s nostrils and made her stomach roil.
    Sam stared down at the mountainous hamburger D-Ray would be eating as soon as he figured enough time had passed for him to reach over and grab the food she’d ordered. Why was she here? She wasn’t hungry. D-Ray was, of course. D-Ray was always hungry. In many ways.
    Sam remembered back when her sister and D-Ray were an item, only behind closed doors of course, since Amy and Sam’s father didn’t approve of D-Ray’s mixed background and his lack of a male role model.
    She was little then, eight years younger than D-Ray and Amy and seven years younger than Callie. A tagalong. That’s all she really remembered. D-Ray and Amy trying to ditch her and Callie covering for them.
    Tall and solid, and dark-skinned year-round, D-Ray was a testament to his father’s Tongan heritage. D-Rey’s mother was a small, slight, blond woman with a bitter tongue and a smile like battery acid. Sam assumed that the mostly easygoing, laconic D-Ray took after his father, whom she had never met. D-Ray liked to say that his father, who had been brought over to Utah from the Tongan islands by the Mormons more than forty years before, had returned to his roots and was drinking mai tais and exchanging leis with local wahines somewhere in the Hawaiian Islands. That he was from Tonga made no difference to D-Ray. He didn’t know much about his heritage, but everyone knew about Hawaii. He’d grabbed ahold of that like a drowning man grabs a life preserver. The truth was, he had no idea where his father was. D-Ray’s teeth had been straightened by an orthodontist, his mother grumbling