Spencer sits back and watches me for a moment. “You know, I don’t think I can remember the reasons we hated each other so much.”
“Trust me, I remember them all. Do you need a refresher course?”
“No, I’m good,” he laughs holding his hands up. “I was a bit of a douche back then, huh?”
“A bit?” I scoff. “You were the king of all the douches. Though, to be fair, you started alright until you had to go and run your mouth and exaggerate what happened between us.”
“I know. Your boyfriend taught me that lesson the hard way.”
“He sure did,” I say, grinning at the memory. “I’m glad you’re not such a dipshit anymore. I don’t think I could handle you hanging around if you were still like that.”
“Um…thanks,” he laughs. “Though, do you really think Tully would let me that close if I was still pulling that kind of shit?”
“Good point.”
“What’s going on?” Tully says, putting the biggest chocolate milkshake down in front of Spencer before dropping down into her seat and grabbing hers.
“Spencer was just trying to remember why we never got along for most of senior year and I was just about to remind him of all those great reasons.”
Spencer rolls his eyes as Tully howls with laughter. “Oh, God. You were such a douche.”
“That’s what I said.”
Just like that, Tully and I start rambling off every tiny little thing we can remember of Spencer’s senior year that points out exactly how much of a douche he was and it’s not long before he’s hanging his head and trying his best to tune us out.
Before we know it, Spencer turns the tables on us and reminds us of everything we regret doing over the past year, so we come to a truce, promising to never bring it up again.
My stomach hurts from laughing and it takes all of two seconds for my milkshake to disappear. We get up and Spencer takes our trash to the garbage before we start filing out of the café.
As we step out into the sunshine, I can’t help but breathe it in. We’re already halfway through our summer and I can’t believe how fast it’s going. Before I know it, I’ll be living in a creepy, old mansion with my criminal father, forgetting what it was like to have this kind of freedom.
I shake off the thought. I shouldn’t be thinking about that crap. Noah has spent the last two days at the police station, giving them every tiny little detail he recalls, Anton’s warehouses, his connections, all the way down to his suppliers and who he believes could be the dirty cops.
There’s so much to cover and something tells me he still has a few days worth of information to give. After all, he’s worked with the guy since he was eleven. He’s probably managed to piece together information that Anton doesn’t even realize he knows.
My gut is telling me that this is going to be good. I hate that it’s dangerous waters. If Noah treads carefully, this should go down smoothly, but one slip up could cost us dearly. All it would take is one murmured conversation from those cops in the hallway to be overheard and we’d be screwed.
We start heading down the street, both of us groaning about the decision we made to walk. My feet are aching and I’m silently hating on Spencer when he tells us that he walked here too. I mean, between the three of us, we have three cars yet here we are, stranded and forced to walk in this heat.
With plenty of daylight left, we start heading down to the beach to take advantage of the sun with the intention to sit on our asses, doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. Maybe I could convince Noah to come and get us after he’s finished at the police station, but I doubt he’s going to be in a great mood after having to recap all that Anton bullshit.
We zigzag through all the bodies coming up from the beach and pass by the ice creamery. I’m more than happy to walk on by as my milkshake sits happily in my stomach, but that doesn’t stop Tully looking through the window. “Hey look,” she says, grabbing my elbow and yanking me to a hard stop. “There’s Ari and your dad.”
At the mention of Ari’s name, my eyes automatically fly her way and travel over her body, starting at her head, going down to her toes before heading right back up. She has a big goofy grin on her face, her swimsuit, and a massive ice cream cone in her hands, one I know that within the next few minutes is going to end up melted and running down her arm, leaving a sticky trail behind.