“No phone.”
“Dead like mine?”
“Yeah, something like that.” I agreed with a quick nod.
“I’m not gonna lie; I thought the weatherman was gassing this hurricane up. I’m low-key one of those people who can see a conspiracy in everything. For instance, the store owners are in the ear of the weather forecaster to instill fear in listeners, which drives them to the store to buy supplies they probably won’t even need. And who gets rich at the end of the day? The store owners.I should’ve believed it this time, though. This has to be one of the windiest freakin’ days in history. Mother Nature is going crazy outside!”
I bobbed my head in agreement. “Hell yeah. It’s wetter than a water park out there.”
“All of Jacksonville is shutting down behind this one.”
“Jacksonville?” I inquired, finally realizing that we’d made it into Florida.
“Yeah, Jacksonville. Did you hit your head and forget where you were?”
I swung my head in a no. “This is exactly why you’re single.”
She frowned before starting to clean my cuts. “Excuse me?”
“You always gotta be right, or at least you think you do.”
“There’s a difference between wanting to be right and actually always being right. I can’t help that I’m the latter,” she retorted, asserting her chest.
“All that mouth you got, your ass must be a lawyer or something.”
Her brows snapped together. “Why do you say that?”
“Am I wrong?”
“No.”
“See. I told you.”
“Shut up.”
“So, you be in a courtroom all day and shit?”
“No. I’m a legal aid, which means I provide free or low-cost legal counsel to low-income clients who typically can’t afford a high-priced attorney. Long story short, I work behind a desk, meet with clients all day, and try to save the fucking world. It’s a pretty demanding job, to say the least, so there’s no days off.”
“And you like that?” I challenged her while she was placing a couple of Band-Aids over my scrapes.
“I love it,” she admitted with a half-smile.
There it was. The perfect sliver of a smile I always knew was there.
“So, you like helping people?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“So why you got a problem with me being here if you like lending out helping hands and shit?”
Her recognizable frown returned. “Am I not helping you out right now?”
“You’re right. My bad.”
She huffed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’d been planning a girls’ trip to Miami for over six months now. And then Mother Nature just fucked all that up,” she said, glancing outside. “I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to hop on a plane and beat the hurricane, but as I said, my job is a no days off type of environment, and I really wanted that getaway.”
“What you was gon’ do when you got to Miami besides get into unnecessary trouble?”
