#hakiiro

The air was cool on my skin as I made my way to the stables. I chose my blurrg, saddled and mounted it, and left the grounds.

“Let the hunt begin,” I murmured to myself.

Although it was certainly more peaceful, it wasn’t as fun hunting without the guys. I missed the buzz of competition in the air, and the chance encounters where we’d compare our kills (or lie about them). I missed Mikal, too, even though the whole point of this morning was to see how I’d do without him.

Contrary to the Pentarra boys’ jeering, I was at a disadvantage without Mikal. He had helped scout, and even if he hadn’t been much use at shooting he knew all the places where animals tended to gather. I couldn’t seem to find any signs of life—not even the tiny lizards that skittered across the rock for kortokks to peck. I wondered if the time of day was working against me: it was early in the morning instead of afternoon, and perhaps a lot of animals were still asleep.

Whatever animals I did find, I did not succeed in killing. I tried to nab a couple of kortokks as they zigzagged from one stony cleft to another, but only hit rock. I snuck up on a senshiil, but missed my aim.

Things weren’t looking good. By the time I had to start heading back, I still didn’t have a single kill.

But luck found me at last. On my way back to the grounds, I spotted a wild blurrg all alone in the middle of a rocky clearing. It was grazing on brush with its back to me, groaning contentedly and swinging its massive tail.

I took in a sharp breath, and quietly dismounted. The first time I’d hunted, Mikal and I hadn’t even seen a blurrg—and no one had brought home any evidence of one (although many claimed to have shot ones that escaped).

A blurrg would more than make up for my lack of other quarry. I’d be able to keep my victory streak—and my reputation with the guys. I gripped my blaster tightly, excitement rising in my chest.

But…I wasn’t the only one getting excited. My blurrg uttered a low, rumbling noise, and I turned to look at him.

“What’s up, buddy?” I asked—then happened to look a little southward, and saw what, indeed, was up.

…Oh.

And then I looked back at the wild blurrg. Which was how I figured out that she was, well…

…Probably a girl.

“Aw, geez,” I muttered. “C’mon, buddy. Focus, will ya?”

But ol’ blurrgy boy was pretty focused already—and his focus, frankly speaking, was quite large.

He groaned again, and strained against the reins. It reminded me of college, when I used to tag along to frat parties with my buddy Treeso. Sometimes accompanying him had felt like barely restraining a love-stricken blurrg.

I had to admit I was interested to see how this would play out. I wasn’t sure I wanted to kill a female blurrg, anyway (not that the Pentarra boys would have cared). I figured it couldn’t hurt to withhold my shot, and let the guy shoot his. So I let go of the reins and gave ol’ blurrgy boy a brother’s salute, and he advanced toward the target of his affections with a grumbling roar.

I had half a mind to look away. But since I had never seen sex before, between sentients or animals or anything, I was curious. Especially about the logistics: blurrgs have big, long, meaty tails, and I wondered how they weren’t going to end up getting in the way.

So…I watched.

You know. For scientific reasons.

The female blurrg noticed Blurrgy Boy as soon as he approached, but did her best not to make things easy for him. As he circled around her, she turned away from him again and again (reminding me of my dance with Pennie around the armchair the night before).

But ol’ Blurggy Boy was undeterred. If anything, her disinterest only served to bolster his resolve. After stalking around her a couple of times, he suddenly rammed into her with his entire body, causing her to squeal.

“Oh, shoot,” I murmured.

He butted into her a couple more times, and finally knocked her to the ground and pushed her so she lay on her side. Then he stood perpendicular to her, and was able to access what he needed to that way.

So…there was a mystery solved.

Once Mr. Blurrg had officially begun the proceedings, Miss Blurrg stopped struggling. She lay there, motionless, as Mr. Blurrg did his thing—but she was breathing, and her tail flopped a couple of times, so she was clearly conscious. I began to feel uneasy, even if they were only animals. Had she resigned herself to her fate? Or had she only been playing coy, to ensure her mate was worthy? I hoped she was okay.

Well, the actual sex part turned out not to be as interesting as I thought it would be—nor did it take long. My blurrg finished his business in under a minute, withdrew, and stumbled backward in a daze. I yawned, distracted by thoughts of what I hoped to have for lunch—

And that was when it happened.

Suddenly, Miss Bluurg shifted all her weight up, and rolled herself upright. Then she bared her jaws so that her sharp teeth came into view, aimed for Blurrgy Boy’s tail—and chomped.

Blood.

Mr. Blurrg screeched.

My mouth fell open.

She sunk her teeth deep into his flesh, and swung him around. Now he was on the ground, belly-up, and in a vulnerable position for a guy—I suddenly got a very bad feeling about this—

She chomped hard again.

I’ll let you guess where.

Blurrgy Boy wailed.

I slammed my knees shut.

And she tore it right off.

She chewed. She gulped. And then she went to work on the rest of Mr. Blurrg, recently un-mistered, ravenously tearing huge chunks of flesh off of him like he was a rotisserie tipyip from the grocery store. She quite literally had my blurrg for breakfast.

As for me—well, I got the hell outta there on foot.

The other boys were getting ready to head out when I burst into the stables, wild-eyed, blurrgless, and looking how someone who’d witnessed the absolute worst way to go would. They gathered around me with curious amusement as I collapsed to my knees and hunched over, trying to catch my breath.

“You’re back—but where are your trophies, Ben Solo?” Hakiiro asked, sounding smug that I had returned empty-handed.

“Never mind that,” interrupted Nabohri, hopping down from his mount. “Where is your blurrg?”

I didn’t know how to answer him.

“I-it’s gone,” I stammered.

“Gone?” repeated Mikal. “You lost your blurrg?”

“I lost him all right,” I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve and flopping clumsily down on a bale of straw. “And he’s not just gone. He’s a goner.”

“Killed?” Nabohri asked, surprised.

“Oh, yeah.”

“By a gutkurr?”

I didn’t know what a gutkurr was, but I shook my head. “No—by another blurrg!”

There was silence for a moment.

And then…everyone started snickering. I looked around, confused.

“Ah…I see what happened here,” Nabohri said, with a knowing look toward the entire group, and the snickers turned to laughter. “Ben Solo wanted to watch!”

“Well, yeah—I couldn’t really look away,” I stammered. “There was just so much blood. I mean, sure, I cut open half a dozen senshiils the other day, but that was after they were already dead—kriff, it was horrible—the poor guy just kept on screaming—”

“No, not that,” Nabohri grinned. “You wanted to watch them mate, Ben Solo.”

I blinked.

I had forgotten about that.

“...Oh. Uh. Yeah,” I said awkwardly, wiping sweat from my brow. “That…may have been a thing that happened.”

The guys laughed even harder, and I glanced around sheepishly.

“Feeling hot, are you, Ben Solo?”

“Do you need a moment to yourself, Solo? Shall we leave you alone?”

“There are better things to watch, nerra! Things that will not cost you your blurrg.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes, trying to ignore my burning face. “Sorry about the blurrg.”

“It’s not your fault, Ben Solo,” said Mikal, coming to my rescue. “You are unfamiliar with our beasts. After blurrgs mate, the female always eats the male. It is the way of things. The female does not wish the male to father any other offspring but her own.”

“Jealous creatures, they are,” Nabohri remarked, unsheathing his pocket knife and wiping it with a rag.

“...Oh,” I said. “So…it’s normal. They…always do that?”

“In the wild, yes,” said Mikal. “We do not allow domesticated blurrgs to mate the normal way. We would lose too many blurrgs.”

“Okay. Another question, then,” I coughed. “Do the female blurrgs always, uh—bite it off? Or…did I just stumble upon a particularly egregious man-eater?”

Everyone snickered again, and Nabohri grinned. “Have you not heard of a ‘blurrg’s kiss,’ Ben Solo?” he asked.

“No…” I said slowly, not sure if I wanted him to elaborate.

“A ‘blurrg’s kiss,’” Nabohri replied with a wicked kind of smile, “is what you call it when a woman is not mindful of her teeth.”

I understood. I winced as the boys laughed raucously.

“Well, I’m sure glad I’m not a blurrg,” I muttered, rising to my feet and putting away my borrowed blaster.

“Yes,” Nabohri agreed. “Male blurrgs are weak, and let their females destroy them. Twi’lek men are not so.” He resheathed his knife, and mounted his blurrg again in one fluid motion—he had to lift his long legs pretty high to clear the creature’s back. “Ah, well. It is a shame you didn’t bring anything back, Ben Solo—but we will forgive you for it due to the circumstance. I will, at least. I cannot speak for the others.”

He turned to the group. “What do you say, nerras?”

The other guys all clapped me on the back and teased me jokingly—all except for Hakiiro, who hung back and glowered with his skinny arms crossed. I ignored him.

“It is a pity, too, that we will miss your company on our own hunt,” Nabohri went on. “But—Pentarra is hosting the gentlemen’s banquet tonight. You will be there, Ben Solo?” He smirked mischievously. “It is certainly a better way to blow off steam than watching blurrgs mate.”

I flushed.

“Does he have an invitation?” Hakiiro asked irritably. “Pentarra will not let him in, if he has not invited him.”

“Never mind if Pentarra has invited him,” said Nabohri, waggling his head in a self-important way. “I am inviting him.”

“You can’t invite him,” Hakiiro protested. “Pentarra needs to invite him.”

“Hakiiro is right,” Mikal agreed, but without Hakiiro’s nastiness. “Pentarra must invite him.”

Fascinating, I thought. Hakiiro and Mikal shared the same affinity for following rules…but only one of them seemed to do so out of malice.

I did wonder, though, that Nabohri seemed so ready to assume equal authority with his father. Had he already forgotten about the snorlii shell incident? Maybe filling in for Vataash had filled Nabohri’s head with pride.

…Wait. Where was Vataash? I knew he’d been held after dinner last night, but that didn’t explain why he was still missing from the group this morning.

“Vataash isn’t going to hunt with you?” I asked, interrupting Nabohri’s and Hakiiro’s bickering. Mikal had resumed his usual silence.

“Vataash, unfortunately, has fallen ill,” said Nabohri, sounding a little too pleased about it. “So I am in charge of the hunt today, Ben Solo. And I am inviting you to Pentarra’s banquet tonight.” He threw Hakiiro a haughty little look.

Sure, I could’ve told Nabohri that his father had already invited me. But given how proud of himself Nabohri looked in that moment, I didn’t think that was such a good idea. As for Vataash…I had a hard time believing he was simply sick.

All the same, I wasn’t interested in trying to solve that mystery right now. I had to go rinse off so I could meet Fannie at eleven.

“Well, Fa’nakhra and I are planning to spend the entire day together,” I told Nabohri, “so…I don’t think I’m gonna make it to the banquet. Sorry. Appreciate it, though.”

This response was met with jeers in the following vein:

“He is whipped!”

“He is like a blurrg—his female keeps him all to herself.”

“She has bitten him off!” (This was the most heinous comment of them all—and of course it was Hakiiro who uttered it.)

I was sure these remarks were made mostly in jest (except, perhaps, Hakiiro’s). But they stung and mingled with the other doubts and insecurities that swirled in the deep unspoken part of my mind.

I shrugged and laughed and waved at the guys as I left the stables—

—but my smile only lasted for as long as I was in their presence.

It was November, then, so it wasn’t the best season for me to go shirtless. I looked kind of white and pasty. The Pentarra boys with their deep-hued skin all teased me and gave me flak for it—all except for Mikal, that is. But I took it good-naturedly, and laughed about it, too.

When we got tired of running around, we unrolled some blankets and lay down around the fire and looked at the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud, so when you looked up, all you could see was a huge expanse of blue that almost made you dizzy. It would have been a great setup for stargazing, had it not been the middle of the afternoon.

Despite it being the middle of the afternoon, one of the guys had brought a couple of jugs of whiskey, which he produced amidst a great deal of cheers. They passed the jugs around, and drank straight out of the bottles—and even though most of them were teenagers, they sure could put away a lot.

It made me feel weird. Part of me felt like I was supposed to be setting an example for them, or something—not taking peer pressure from guys who were two-thirds my age.

Still, I ignored their goading, and took only what I approximated to be a normal-sized shot.

“I’m not in college anymore,” I said, as my excuse. (As if I had even been a heavy drinker in college to begin with.)

“College?” asked Vataash. “You went to university?”

Multiple guys looked at me with curiosity, and I looked back at them. Apparently my having been to college was something odd to them.

“...Yeah,” I said. “Is that…weird?”

“We’ve never been to school at all,” Mikal said.

“Oh,” I said. “Do you guys…know how to do math? And write? And stuff?”

“Enough,” said Mikal. And everyone laughed.

“Is college like in the holofilms?” asked Nabohri (who, after last night’s events, seemed quieter than usual—but certainly not by much).

“Well…I guess it depends if you want it to be,” I said with a shrug.

My own college experience had been pretty tame. I’d gone to a few parties with Treeso, but mostly only to be his chaperone, his wingman, or his ride home. I had spent most of my time in college either studying or putting off studying…but that wasn’t gonna win me any points with the boys.

“Did you meet a lot of women?” Vataash asked me, and I tried not to roll my eyes.

“Oh, yeah—lots of ‘em,” I said.

I was telling the truth. UNaboo has a pretty equal gender enrollment ratio. I’d met a lot of girls at school.

I had also done everything in my power to fend them off. In fact, I had often invented fake girlfriends when I was at parties with Treeso…not because I was ashamed of being single, but because I wanted to stay that way. Pretending I had a girlfriend was a quick and easy way to shut down most romantic advances.

“How many women have you slept with?” asked another of the boys—a short guy with green-brown skin, who’d obviously had enough to drink. Even so, I found myself shocked by the audacity of the question.

“Well—how many have you?” I retorted, because I didn’t know what else to say.

“Ten,” he boasted.

Ten! Bro looked ten. Ten years old, I mean.

I figured he was at least fourteen or fifteen. But he had a noticeable baby face…which was maybe why he felt the need to project so much machismo.

“He lies,” said another guy. “He has not slept with anyone!”

“Ten,” the kid said again.

“Well—I’ve slept with five times as many women as you have, then,” I said to him.

And once again, I was telling the truth. Because I was pretty confident that this kid’s brothers were also telling the truth—and as you know, five times zero is zero.

I don’t think everyone would have known that, though.

“What is five times ten?” someone asked, revealing the consequences of never having gone to school.

“Five hundred,” I said with a straight face, to see if I could get away with it—and much to my surprise, I could. The group of guys all gasped and cheered and got worked up—either everyone was that dumb, that drunk, or both. Only Mikal raised a brow.

“Five hundred!” Nabohri crowed. “Then tell us, Ben Solo: who was the best of these five hundred?”

I laughed, embarrassed. Like I said, I’d made up dozens of fake girlfriends before. But I had never tried to fabricate a sexual encounter—and I knew better than to try now, when I had so little research to go off of.

“Come now,” I said, trying to play off my unease as modesty, “surely you don’t expect me to remember all their names!”

This response was witty enough to make everyone laugh—and luckily, fail to notice what I thought was a pretty obvious evasion.

“Fair enough,” chuckled Vataash, his chin in his hand. “Then at least tell us, Solo: where does Fa’nakhra rank in your many experiences?”

I stared at him for a moment to see if this was a joke. Fannie was his sister, after all. Was he actually expecting a response?

I looked around at all the guys. They all seemed exceedingly interested.

“...Why is this something you’d want to know?” I asked warily, the whiskey suddenly not sitting well. “She’s…y’know…your sister.”

“Our half-sister,” someone corrected.

“Why wouldn’t we want to know?” asked Nabohri loudly. “We will certainly never find out otherwise.”

“...What do you mean?” I asked, eyeing him cautiously. “You don’t see your sisters that way…do you?”

“Relax, Solo—we are not interested in our sisters,” someone else called out, which made me feel better—but only for about the span of a second. “But even if we were…we’d certainly choose one of the prettier ones.”

A shudder ran through me as everyone laughed. This was all very messed up.

“Hey, hey!” Vataash chastised, and I turned to look at him. “Don’t speak ill of Fa’nakhra. That is Ben Solo’s woman you’re talking about.”

“Well, he can have her,” said the other guy, and everyone laughed.

And I began to think something that, perhaps, I should have been thinking a long time ago:

…That I probably shouldn’t be hanging out with these guys.

I looked around at all of them, the throng of drunken teenagers and young twenty-somethings. And then I looked at my hands, and my body, and saw myself with them, and saw myself as one of them…and began to perceive the first signs of a panic attack. My fingertips started to tingle, and everything sounded like it was underwater. The scents of smoke and alcohol slowly began to choke me, and a scream simmered in my stomach. I began to feel sick inside.

…I decided that I wasn’t drunk enough. So I grabbed the whiskey jug as it was being passed, and set out to remedy the problem.

“Stop stalling and answer the question, Ben Solo!” Vataash called to me as I took a swig. “How does Fa’nakhra compare to your other mates?”

I thought for a second as I passed off the jug again—and then I knew how to respond.

I stood to my feet, and watched everyone snap to attention.

“With your forgiveness, good sirs, I decline to answer,” I said loudly, mimicking the way men speak on Ryloth: with one’s voice deep in the chest, and each word separated out from its neighbors. “I find this question incredibly disrespectful to Fa’nakhra. She is very important to me. I love her—really, I do. I don’t wish to humiliate her.”

I paused, scanning my audience, who looked disappointed.

…And then I allowed myself a slight smirk.

“Because, if I were to tell the truth, it would humiliate her,” I finished, and sat back down again—and everyone burst into raucous laughter.

Okay. Now I was drunk enough.

And I knew I shouldn’t have said that—but I was sleep-deprived and dehydrated and intoxicated with Rylothian whiskey and male approval. My critical thinking skills were quickly slipping away.

Boy, did it feel good to be funny! Everyone was laughing and laughing and laughing.

…Everyone, that is, but my little buddy Mr. Ten Girls.

“I think he is lying,” the boy said with measured suspicion. “I doubt he has been with any women at all.”

“Oh, you’re more than welcome to believe me a liar,” I retorted brazenly. My mouth felt like it was full of cotton, and I was losing the ability to judge how loud my voice was. “I won’t argue my five hundred, the way you feel the need to argue your ten. See—Ben Solo has no need to argue. Because Ben Solo does not lie.”

This, of course, was another funny thing for me to say.

But I was the only one who knew why.

Mr. Ten turned red in the face, and let himself fade into the background.

“Oh, pay Hakiiro no mind, Ben Solo—he is only jealous of you,” said Vataash, waving his flask. He had filled it from the last remaining whiskey jug, which was now being passed around on the other side of the bonfire. “Were you in a, what is it called—a fraternity?”

I wasn’t in a fraternity, but…that didn’t mean I had to say I wasn’t.

“Oh, yeah, totally,” I said, really getting into it now. “In fact, I was the sole human in a Gungan fraternity. Non-Gungans are not usually accepted, but they asked me to join—”

I paused, trying to make it sound like I was pausing for dramatic effect…but really, it was because I had no idea what I was about to say next.

“—because I am the only human ever to eat five Nabooian slug-beetles in the span of a minute,” I finished, pushing pride into my voice.

The actual event I was referencing was certainly less than my moment of triumph…but they didn’t need to know that.

“Gungans?” asked Vataash. “Are they not the clumsy, ugly ones, with the hideous snouts and stupid manner of speaking?”

I bristled at first. I didn’t like him talking about my friend’s species like that. For a second, I was about to climb onto a soapbox.

But: then I thought of something really funny to say instead.

“No, no,” I corrected loudly. “You are thinking of Nabohri.” I gestured to Nabohri, who was nursing the empty whiskey jug, sticking his tongue into the neck and trying to lick off whatever was left. The timing literally couldn’t have been any better.

Everyone roared with laughter (even Nabohri, who seemed to enjoy the attention), and I sat back, satisfied. Another zinger from Ben Solo—this one was my best yet, and it took almost three minutes for all the guys to calm down.

“No—Gungans are mighty warriors!” I exclaimed, once the hubbub had settled down. “Haven’t you heard of the Battle of Naboo?”

They hadn’t.

“Have you heard of the Clone Wars?”

They had kind of heard of the Clone Wars.

I frowned.

“...Have you heard of the Galactic Civil War?”

“That…is just another name for the Clone Wars, no?” asked Mikal.

I blinked. Mikal seemed like the smartest one out of all of them, and yet even he didn’t seem to have a basic knowledge of history.

True, none of them had been alive during the Galactic Civil War. But if none of them were even aware that it had happened…

“...Have you heard of the Death Star?” I asked, looking around at them. “It was kind of a big deal. It was a military space station with the ability to destroy entire planets.”

“Was?” Vataash cut in, rising to his feet. “Pentarra said that the star-killer had not been built yet. How do you know about it?”

I stared at him, not sure what to make of this bizarre outburst.

“...What does Pentarra have to do with the Death Star?” I asked.

Vataash began to look odd.

“...Nothing,” he said shiftily, sinking back down into place. “Forget I spoke.”

I scrutinized him. Had Pentarra…helped to finance the Death Star, or something?

“Ben Solo!” someone else called, drawing my attention away from Vataash. “Please! If we wanted to learn history, we would have gone to school ourselves. Tell us of the slug-beetles!”

Well, I’m never one to turn down a storytelling opportunity. So…I told them.

Perhaps you’ve heard my slug-beetle story: the time I ate five blue slug-beetles in my junior year of college, in the hopes of impressing the other guests at my first-ever house party. But I guarantee that you have never heard this version. Because in this version, slug-beetles were toxic to humans (they’re not), I was frantically rushed to the medcenter (I wasn’t), and I nearly died before getting my stomach pumped (this did happen to me once, but on a much different occasion).

Everyone was thoroughly amazed.

Everyone except Mr. Ten Girls, that is.

“He’s a liar,” said Mr. Ten (whose real name, apparently, was Hakiiro). “I watched Ben Solo eat at dinner last night. He made a face at his snorlii, and did not eat. How then could he have eaten five beetles, if he could barely stomach one snorlii?”

Wow. I really didn’t like this kid.

Everyone turned to me to see how I’d respond, like children watching an after-school fight.

Okay, first of all—I had eaten the snorlii. I hadn’t liked it, but I’d eaten it. I hadn’t finished it, but I’d eaten it.

But an argument on that point, I knew, was not the best I had in my arsenal.

“Well—you, buddy, are not a liar,” I returned, rising to my feet and swaggering over to him. Now that we were face-to-face, I could see he was a full head shorter than me. “Because although you claim to lie with women—I am pretty sure you’ve never lain with any at all.”

A chorus of ohhhhhhhh! rose up from the boys. If you have ever spent any extended time around young men, you know exactly what that sounds like.

“Oh, you got him, nerra!” cried Nabohri (who didn’t seem to remember that I’d “gotten” him, too, only half an hour earlier).

…Wait.

Nerra?

“Nerra?” I echoed, looking at Nabohri. “Me? I’m—nerra?”

“Oh, you are one-hundred-percent nerra—my nerra,” answered Nabohri, laughing. And even though I knew ol’ Nabohri couldn’t do math, I figured that one-hundred-percent had to be pretty good.

I grinned.

And I thought about what Pennie had said the night before…that when no one cares about you, the next best thing is to be craved.

…Well.

When you know no one would like you for who you really are, the next best thing is to be liked for who they’d want you to be.

Once it was getting close to dinnertime (and once we had run out of alcohol), we doused the fire and started packing up so we could head back home. Hakiiro got ill from drinking too much, so Mikal volunteered to stay behind with him for a few minutes. I got to ride my own blurrg this time, so I raced Vataash and Nabohri back to the grounds.

Vataash won—but I did manage to beat Nabohri, who cursed me with a laugh and a twinkle in his eye.

When we returned, Pennie was waiting for me at the gates with a sour look on her face.

“What’s up, Pen?” I asked, dismounting my blurrg while the other guys rode past us and toward the stables. “You look…worse than normal.”

“Pentarra requests your presence at his table,” she said rigidly.

I stared at her, my blood running cold.

“Pennie,” I said. “You promised you weren’t gonna get me killed.”

“If only he did wish to kill you,” Pennie sniffed. “No. He wants to dine with you, Ben Solo. When I told him that I find you interesting, he only laughed and told me that he finds you interesting, too. He sent me to inform you that you are to be his guest tonight at supper.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised.

I hadn’t thought I would meet Ruut Pentarra on this trip. In fact, I hadn’t been sure he even knew I existed. He was my girlfriend’s father…but it wasn’t like he was her dad. (Actually, I suspected that Pentarra’s lack of parental interaction with his children was why Pennie was so willing to have a romantic relationship with him.)

“‘Oh?’ Is that all you have to say?” Pennie snapped. “Pentarra does not often invite people to his table, Ben Solo. It is a great honor.”

“So…I’m gonna sit up there with you?”

“Not with me,” Pennie said, her voice clipped. “In my place.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. “Why wouldn’t he want you there?”

“I don’t know,” Pennie huffed. “He did not tell me.”

“Well…okay,” I said.

Pennie waved her hand in front of her nose, and made a face. “You should wash,” she scoffed. “You reek of smoke and liquor.”

“What?” I teased, leaning in so she could smell me better. “You don’t think it’s sexy?”

Pennie bristled—which was exactly the reaction I’d hoped to get out of her.

“Not on you,” she spat.