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case you forgot, practice is at three fifteen,” Tiffany said.
    “Isn’t it actually three?” Anne asked.
    “Yes, Anne,” Attie said. “It is three. I’m glad you said something, or Tiffany would have been late.”
    “It’s the leader in me looking out for the squad.” Anne’s voice was laced with a bit of sarcasm and tainted with just a smidge of vile, which caused Tammy to give her an approving nod. She loved it when Anne showed her nonholy side. It was usually the highlight of her day.
    Tiffany crept away without saying good-bye, and her two drones, otherwise known as Wes and Rick, waddled along behind her.
    “Hey, Tiffany,” Kent shouted toward her, “you ever need help getting that corncob outta your butt, just let me know. I’ll get my pliers. Wes and Rick can take care of their own.”

chapter 5
    Attie propped up the hanger that held the very small uniform. “I don’t know, Riley; it looks a little skimpy. A heck of a lot smaller than the uniforms we wore up north. Is skimpy a southern thing?”
    “I thought skimpy was a universal thing,” I admitted.
    “Not this skimpy. Are you sure it isn’t missing some fabric? I don’t even know if it’ll cover the parts it’s supposed to cover, let alone the parts I was hoping it would.”
    “Maybe it’s just an optical illusion. Go in the bathroom and try it on.”
    She disappeared for a few minutes, and I listened through the door as she talked to herself about the lack of fabric and how there was no way she would go in public looking like a Hooters girl. Her dramatic distress was cracking me up.
    “Well?”
    “Good grief, I look like a stripper … or an NFL cheerleader, which is just about as bad.”
    “Get out here and let me be the judge of that.” The thought of my girlfriend momentarily looking like a stripper sounded extremely promising, and I couldn’t wait to see for myself.
    “I’m not leaving this bathroom.”
    “Oh, come on. Is it really that bad?”
    “Yes!”
    “Get out here and let me see.”
    “I don’t know, Riley.”
    “Get out here already!”
    After several seconds, the door slowly opened; and when I saw her delicate body in the tiny uniform, I’m pretty sure my jaw slammed to the floor. “You’re right. You can’t walk out of this house wearing that.”
    “I knew it.” Attie grabbed a hold of the bottom of the skirt and started tugging it toward her knees as she danced nervously around the hallway. It wasn’t helping. The skirt didn’t budge.
    I dropped into the beanbag chair, and Baby immediately made herself at home on my lap as Boomer lay in a clump next to my feet. “Now, wearing it in the house is another thing altogether. You can wear it around here all you want. I won’t complain a bit.”
    She kicked me in the shin. “Dial down the perv factor, will ya?”
    “I’ll try, but you walk around in something like that and what am I supposed to say?”
    “It really is that bad, isn’t it?”
    “Well, babe, that depends on your definition of bad.”
    “Bad as in if I bend over, everyone’s going to see my lady parts.”
    “Turn around and give it a try.”
    “Gross!” She crossed her legs at the knee and threw her arms across her bare stomach. “Riley Bennett, cut it out.”
    “I’m just having some fun.”
    “What the heck am I going to do?”
    “I can’t be the judge of this. In all seriousness, it covers more than a bathing suit, so it’s not like you’re naked or anything. I just think it’s a little short for a uniform.”
    “I feel naked.”
    “You don’t look naked. You just look … uncomfortable. And totally amazing. I’m in heaven right now.”
    “Riley!”
    “Maybe we need another opinion.”
    “Well, go down and get your mother and bring her up here. Let’s see what she thinks.”
    Without getting out of the beanbag chair, I leaned back and yelled over the stair railing for my mother to get upstairs.
    “I could have done that. I meant go down and get her.”
    “Why?