Part of the deal

"I hate that I had to lie." Josie was not pleased with being a part of this, but if she was going to save someone's skin, she guessed it would be Daisy's. Definitely not Derrick's.

"Fine." Derrick was only at her place to wash his clothes. Her mother let him do things like that on occasion. Josie was beginning to think he lived out of his car. Finally, he told her he was at Kyle's. But he had a duffle bag of clothes. "I didn't think they'd like it much if I just dumped a buttload of dirty clothes in their laundry." He stuffed all his clothes in the washer.

"So what really happened to Daisy?" Josie pried. She'd already lied to Daisy's parents how they were caught in the middle of some science project that was suppose to be done days ago. It even shocked Josie that they believed her. She supposed it helped that Daisy left a little voice mail about it before she vouched for her. It seemed this was a lie that might only last a few days. Daisy was back home now. Everything was back to normal. Except Derrick was here.

"She was just a little hung over. She's fine. It was just a lousy Halloween party." He sighed, but Josie wasn't sure he was telling her everything.

"And you were just helping out?" She eyeballed him.

"Yeah." He winced. "What did you do, Miss Goodie Two Shoes?" He pulled off his T-shirt and jeans then and stuffed them in the wash, as well. Finally he turned the machine on.

Josie glared at him then.

"What are you doing?" She snapped.

"Washing my clothes." He smirked as if he went around in his boxers all the time. As if there was nothing wrong with that.

Josie rolled her eyes, and went to the kitchen. He followed and got the whole wheat bread in the bread box to make him a peanut-butter sandwich.

"So how's Ian?" He questioned as if perhaps all was not well with her love life.

"He's fine." She wanted Derrick to go away.

"I saw Dylan." He bit in the sandwich, and went to get some milk to wash it down.

"When?" She wanted to know. He was suppose to leave him alone.

"I dunno. You're Mom was at Asa's. It wasn't like I was alone with him." Derrick told her as soon as he let out a belch.

She wished her Mom would have told her. It seemed her Mom neglected to tell her a lot of things. Like where was she going right now? Was she seeing her boss, or was it the neighbor? Something fishy was going on. She just knew.

"Look, you can leave, you know. If you need to be somewhere. Go call Ian, or something. I'm just washing my clothes." Derrick went to look for his phone  he'd left in the laundry room.

Josie gritted. As he texted someone.

"Who are you texting?" A part of her wanted to know just how he'd landed so flexable.

"I'm just seeing if Daisy is OK." He shrugged as if it weren't any of her business.