Hissy Fit (Southern Gentleman 1)

I frowned. “I don’t know…why do you know her?”

Grady took a sip of his coffee and grimaced at the heat. “She graduated a year or two behind us. We shared the same homeroom class our senior year…remember?”

No.

No, I did not.

“Are you sure?” I questioned.

He nodded. “Sure as fuck. She was also in another class with us, but for the life of me I can’t remember which one. All I know is that you kicked her out of her seat, and the poor girl was blind as a bat and always used to ask me what was written on the screen.”

I didn’t remember.

But Grady had a mind like a steel trap. If he said it happened, then it did.

“What’d she look like?” I asked.

“Small, gangly, no boobs. Plain hair. Big glasses.” He paused. “She got her eyes fixed halfway through that year. I remember asking her why she didn’t wear them anymore. You remember them pulling a Carrie on her during prom, right?”

I frowned, trying to think back to prom. I’d been drunk as fuck that day, and I couldn’t remember half of what had happened. Prom hadn’t been my favorite past time, but only because my high school girlfriend had told me she was pregnant, and she wasn’t sure who the father was. “What?”

That’d been a bad day, but luckily a few days afterward, my prom date had informed me that she got her period and that we could continue on as we’d been doing before prom. I’d immediately told her to go screw the man she’d cheated on me with, Cody James.

Speaking of the devil…

“Cody James asked her to prom, and she went. Was dressed in that long Cinderella dress that Sonny spilled punch on, remember?” he pushed.

Now that, I remembered.

I didn’t remember the girl, so to speak, but I did remember the incident.

My date, Sonny, had tripped. She’d fallen into the punch bowl and the bowl had tipped over, spilling its contents on a lower classman that had come with my rival, Cody James. I hadn’t paid her a second thought.

But now I felt bad.

I remembered the way that dress looked. I also remembered her hurrying out of the gym and not coming back. Cody James had started flirting with Sonny’s best friend, Eliza. Then Eliza and Cody had fucked in the janitor’s closet.

“Ouch,” I acknowledged. “That sucks. I do remember that.”

Mostly.

“Yeah, heard she rented that prom dress and had to pay eight hundred bucks for it because the lace was stained red. Do you remember that time that that girl got ran over in the school parking lot?” Grady continued.

“Yes,” I confirmed, a knot of worry filling my belly.

“That was her—the one that was run over—not the one that was doing the running over. She was walking to her car and the school principal backed up and ran her over. Broke her hand and some kind of internal injuries,” Grady reminded me.

I remembered that well. Principal French had gotten fired over that one.

The girl had spent a month in the hospital and had returned looking like a scalded cat who looked like she’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

“Holy shit,” I said. “How did I not know this?”

Poor Raleigh. I felt awful. The poor thing sure the fuck didn’t have a great high school career, that was for sure—at least not that particular year anyway.

“Because you were stuck up Sonny’s ass—literally and figuratively—and didn’t pay attention to anyone or anything but her and football in high school.”

My sister came breezing into the room. “You were a pretty awful person.”

I snorted. “You liar.”

I wasn’t an awful person. I’d just been preoccupied at the time, trying to get a scholarship and take care of my family while also trying to make good grades, and have a social life.

It definitely hadn’t been easy.

“I’m not a liar. Grady, am I a liar?”

Grady held up his hands in surrender. “Baby, that’s my best friend. You’re my wife. I am so not getting into the middle of this. And anyway, I’m tired as fuck.”

Grady did look tired.

He also was asked repeatedly to find a different job, but the money was good for this one, and it was kind of hard for a father of four to take a lower paying job when the one he had gave him two weeks off and gave him an extra two grand a month to blow how he saw fit.

“Mom!” Johnson called, interrupting our discussion. “I can’t find one of my red socks in the washer. Did you happen to wash it and put it away already?”

I held out my hand to Grady, and he slapped ten bucks into it, looking annoyed with his kid.

“The last time I saw it, it was on the floor in your room. I put it on your desk so you wouldn’t forget about it.”