Trisha grabbed her shoulders. “Look, he’s been here two days.”
“So why haven’t you called the cops yet?” Betty asked.
Trisha’s lips quirked. “Why haven’t you?”
Betty rubbed her nose. Not like she hadn’t threatened it, many times. So why hadn’t she?
Trisha looked over her shoulder and sighed. “He’s not on private property.”
Betty shook her head and stepped away from Trish to go grab her purse and rain coat. “He’s loitering. Probably homeless.”
She was shrugging on her jacket when Trisha flipped the lights off. “Nope,” she said, “not. Have you seen his teeth? Too clean.”
When had Trisha seen his teeth? Betty huffed, she so didn’t care and if she kept telling herself that, maybe she’d eventually believe it.
“But he’s obviously not from here. French accent, crazy clothes... I’ve got it!” Trisha snapped her fingers, her grin huge. “He’s been shanghaied.”
Betty laughed, grabbed her tube of pearl pink lip gloss and refused to analyze why she was primping when she was getting ready to run through rain. “And dropped in the middle of a landlocked state. Makes perfect sense, Trish.”
Trisha snorted. “S’all I got. But whatever he is, or wherever he’s from, he needs help.”
A man dressed in jeans and a gray sweater knocked on the glass. He smiled and waved, exposing a big dimple in his left cheek. Betty jerked her thumb at him. “One of yours?”
Trisha sighed and buttoned up her lime green pea coat. “Young and dumb, just how I like ‘em.” She winked and blew an air kiss at him. “Look,” she turned back toward Betty, “I know men, trust me, he’s a cad. But he’s not dangerous. At least take him to a hospital before he croaks on us.”
Betty shook her head. “I’m not driving that man anywhere. Not alone.”
The guy knocked harder.
“Really?” Betty turned and scowled at him. He jerked as if slapped and pointed to his watch.
“Yes. Yes.” Trisha waved him off and fluffed her hair, applying a quick coat of mascara. “Waterproof, gotta love it.” She winked. “Anyway, he needs a doctor. Call Kelly, he’ll come.”
“Can’t,” Betty shook her head, “he just finished a forty-eight hour rotation at the clinic. He’s sleeps harder than the dead.”
“Trishelle,” the guy’s voice blared through the doors, “movies. Gonna be late.”
Trisha smirked and rolled her eyes, ignoring him. “Call a million times, that’s what big brothers are for, to come to their baby sister’s aid,” she grabbed Betty’s hand, “just please... don’t call the cops. At least give him his dignity.”
Betty bit her bottom lip. Her heart raced at the thought of letting that guy in her car-- that big powerful body cramped into her small sedan. Breathing the same air.
She gulped.
“He’s just a harmless bastard sitting in the rain.” Trisha tapped Betty’s chin. “Have mercy on him. You know where the shelter’s at right?”
Betty lifted a brow. “You know I do. Do you?”
Trisha giggled. “Nope. That’s why you’re the perfect person to go drop him off!” With a wink and a wave, Trisha joined her impatient date. Betty licked her lips.
All day she’d pretended he wasn’t out there, and it was easy to do with work to be done. But now she was going to walk past him and there would be no ignoring him then.
Then don’t look, can’t miss what ya don’t see-- her grandma Nani’s sage words suddenly sprang to mind. Advice she’d given Betty the night she’d wept on her fragile shoulder’s about James dumping her and spotting him shopping for groceries at her grocery store. The last bit of advice her grandmother had given her, she’d died in her sleep two nights later. Betty sighed.
“Yeah. Won’t look. Totally.” She gripped the strap of her purse like a shield and exited the library, locking the door behind her.
The blast of chilly air up her jacket broke her out in a wash of goose bumps. This morning it’d been sunny without a cloud in the sky. Now, the weather was downright nasty. The unofficial slogan of Missouri: Wait around long enough, it’ll change. And boy had it, it now felt like ten degrees shy of freezing.
Her skin tingled, but not from the cold. He was looking at her. She felt the heated press of his eyes like a hot brand.
“Don’t look.” She kept her eyes down and her head low as she ran down the sidewalk, rain smacked her in the face like tiny needles and she winced. This was a miserable night to be out. Where would he sleep this time?
Betty bit her lip and all her plans went to pot when she glanced over her shoulder. He wasn’t looking at her as she’d expected, instead, he was looking at the old tree and wearing the fiercest scowl she’d ever seen.