Thugs and Kisses by Sue Ann Jaffarian Read Free Book Online

ringing continued several more times, then stopped. Greg was about to break the silence when his cell phone, clipped to his belt, chirped. He looked at the display, shook his head slowly, then answered.
    After listening, he said to the caller, “No problem, she’s here and she’s fine.” He listened. “I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you about Oliver.” He listened a bit more. “No, now’s fine. Come on over.” Then he hung up.
    “That was Dev Frye,” he explained. “He called just now and got worried when you didn’t answer. He’s on his way over to ask you again about Donny Oliver. He said the police want to talk to you, but he wants to hear it first.”
    He turned his chair and rolled around me, heading for the front door.
    “Aren’t you going to stay?” Panic rose in my throat like bile.
    “No, I’m not.”
    He paused, and for a minute I thought he was going to change his mind. Silly me. Then the last and most deadly land mine exploded.
    “I think we need to take a break from each other, Odelia.”
    My heart stopped, or at least it felt like it had. Donny Oliver may have been shot in the chest, but I’d just been slammed into, full frontal, by a freight train.

“Donny Oliver was my first,” I began, not looking at him.
    “First boyfriend? First kiss? First what?”
    “First everything.” I hesitated. “Well, maybe not my first kiss. That happened in seventh grade at Patti Newler’s birthday party. It was my first boy/girl party, and we played spin the bottle. I think the boy’s name was Brian.”
    He gently cut me off. “Back to Donny Oliver.”
    “Yes, back to him.” I curled my legs up under me and leaned back into the thick upholstery of my sofa. I closed my eyes and dug into the deepest and darkest of my banished memories. It was a lot like excavating on an archeological dig.
    “It happened the summer just before our senior year. We were both working a summer job at a local restaurant, just a family place with good, cheap food. I waited tables, and he bussed them and helped with the dishes. It was the first time I’d gotten to know Donny outside of school. He was different, nice and normal—no bravado or cockiness. At the restaurant he wasn’t captain of the football team. He was just minimum-wage summer help, like me.”
    Seamus jumped up on the sofa and settled in next to me. I stroked his soft fur. “Most of his friends were gone for the summer, but his parents and the football coach made him stick around and work and go to summer school. In spite of being quite smart, his grades were low. Too much partying with his friends, probably. He had to get them up if he wanted to play his senior year and be eligible for a college football scholarship.”
    I picked up my soft drink from the end table and took a long drink. Confessing was dry work. Seated across from me on the floor, with his back against an armchair, was Dev Frye. He took the opportunity to take a bite from the slice of pepperoni pizza he was holding, then washed it down with his own swig of soda. The rest of the pizza was in a box on the coffee table. My own half-eaten slice was on a plate in my lap. I picked at the crust with nervous fingers.
    “We knew each other from school,” I continued, “but ran in different circles. Or rather, he ran with the popular kids, while I was mostly alone, except for Johnette, of course. But that summer we became friends. At first we just said hello, then we started having lunch together. Soon I was helping him with his summer schoolwork. In time, we went to the movies together and stuff like that. Nothing romantic—we were just two kids hanging out over the summer. It was nice.”
    I felt tears starting and cleared my throat. “I was a lonely kid. And that was just a year after my mother disappeared, and I had to move in with Gigi and Dad. It was great to have a new friend.”
    “That doesn’t sound too bad.”
    “No, that summer was very nice. But I was no fool. I knew