Page 41 of The Score We Never Settled

I look down at three blue-beaded bracelets lying in Layla Jean’s palm, then back into pretty hazel eyes that appear nervous but slightly excited to give them to me anyway.

I don’t know if she’s giving them to me because she made them at her youth group for church. After all, they’re trying to save lost souls, or if she made them specificallyforme.

Two weeks ago, Pastor Denis tried to convince me to attend Sunday mass because he was going to do a sermon with baseball references and wanted my opinion. When, really, I just got done terrorizing Thomas Redding’s farm and let all his chickens out, his cow, and tried to sell his tractor on Craigslist.

We tried to sell him candy for baseball season, told him he could save it for Halloween because he’s cheap as fuck, but he flatly refused and said he didn’t have the money.

So I helped.

Putting his shit up for sale to help his bank account.

“Do you like them?”

I blink several times before asking, “Are these supposed to save me or somethin’?”

Her brows furrow like she’s confused and doesn’t go to youth group at church for that reason. I mean, why else would you go?

“What?”

“From hell,” I elaborate. “Did you make that in your youth group?”

“No…”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“Statement,” she says without hesitation, not ever bothered by my off-putting questions. “I made ’em at home.”

My eyes bug out because, my God. “They make you do shit at home, too?”

Layla glances down at the bracelets, then back at me. “Briggs Kerrigan, what part of this transaction aren’t you understandin’?”

I blink. “The whole damn thing.”

“I made these bracelets foryou.” She lifts them a bit to throw them on display again. “Of my own accord. No one asked me to do it. They’re yours.”

She couldn’t have.

“For me?”

I’m still questioning because I can’t get past the part where she said she did it for me without any assignment or church thing behind it.

Her brows hike upward, and now she’s looking at me like I’m slow. “That’s what I said.”

“For what?”

Her eyes narrow in on me. “Did you not hear me the first two times, Briggs Kerrigan, or did you blow your eardrums out when you were too busy lighting M-80s at Willowmere’s Pond this weekend?”

I heard her.

I just want her to elaborate.

More.

“Color me confused, Layla Jean,” I coax because, well, this girl has never come up to me like this just to give me something. We’ve been in the same circles with mutual friends, but never alone. Layla isn’t a girl who gets herself into any trouble, and I run this town crazy with my antics. “Why would you be makin’ me bracelets out of the goodness of your heart?”

This has to be a prank.

One that Cruz put her up to. It’s not a confirmed fact around the boys that I’ve hardcore crushed on Layla Jean, but I have.