Run Bad Boy Run

Chapter 13

I've only ever been on two dates in my entire life.

The first one was in ninth grade. It had been one of those group gatherings where all of your friends found a collective place to flirt the only way fourteen and fifteen-year-olds know how to: lots of fleeting eye contact, showing off, "randomness", and hugging.

I was too stoked to care.

We were going to a haunted house forty minutes outside of town. There weren't going to be parents. We were going to be real high school kids going on real dates.

It would have been amazing if it weren't for the fact that my date, Noah Taylors, didn't puke everywhere the second we stepped into the house. He claimed it was the tacos we ate before going there but everyone knew it was from fear. One look at the zombie clowns at the ticket counter and he was as green as the Frankenstein monster waiting for us at the front door.

That was the end of our burning romance.

The other one wasn't any more magical.

But this date is different.

If being invited to someone's party counts as a date.

"Ember?" There's a brief knock on my door and before I have a chance to answer, Stacie Chance bursts into the room, smiles and all.

My mother is decked out in a crisp black pencil skirt and jacket, white blond hair styled in long curls on her shoulders to cover most of her cranberry blouse. She looks so well put together, professional, and normal, I glance over at the clock on my desk just to make sure my short nap didn't accidently turn into a seventy-two-hours siesta.

It's nine o'clock on a Friday night. My mother is never in business casual attire at nine o' clock on a Friday night.

I raise my eyebrows, completely shocked. "You look fancy."

With her new heels, my mother is almost six feet tall, so her hug consists mainly of her wrapping her arms around my head. "Thank you, sweetheart! I just got this today. I thought it would be a nice treat for myself to decide to stay this weekend."

You can do a lot of things with an extra five hundred dollars, a little voice in the back of my head tells me.

True, but it beats her habit of burning money at the bars. I'll take a fancy suit over that any day.

"Have you shown it to Corry?" I wonder casually, getting off of my bed and opening my closet.

She closes the door behind her. "No, I haven't." The cadence of my mother's voice indicates that she doesn't plan on showing him her new clothing any time soon. "Where is he, by the way?"

"He's at the game right now," I tell her as I rummage through my closet. "I just stopped home to change before...umm... the stuff going on afterwards. You know, everyone's hanging out."

The last thing I want her to know is that I'm going to Nate Lincoln's house. She's not exactly fond of his parents, and the last thing I want her to do is bother me about something that might not even happen. And knowing Mom, if anything happened between Nate and I (good or bad), she'd be at his house ready to give him a talking to that would result in me having to change my name and skip town.

"What if I don't want you two to go out after the game?" Mom questions sternly. When I look over her shoulder, her lips are twisted in a feeble attempt of keeping a straight face.

I grin. "We'll just sneak out."

"So you're changing for an after party?" she wonders, settling onto the bed across from where I stand. "That doesn't sound like you. Who is it for?"