Page 44 of Pin-up Girl

She let my silence go until we were on the other side of the pond, entering public land. It was peaceful here. I’d been back here a time or two. There was a small creek feeding through the land right between two small foothills. Insane to think we were only a twenty-minute walk from the Shack. She pulled me to the grassy banks of the creek, then plopped down and looked up at me expectantly.

I sprawled out beside her, calm and anxiety both fighting to surface. She wanted to know me, I wanted her to know me, but I didn’t trust her fully. Even with what happened at Chao’s.

There were different kinds of trust, different levels of vulnerability. Trusting her to take our backs was easy, but I couldn’t trust her with my secrets. It would give her too much power over me—my downfall in the making.

“Okay, you clearly have boundaries on your personal life. How about this? What’s your favorite movie?”

My entire body relaxed, and the calm won out.

ProbablyDeparted.

“I love Leonardo Dicaprio movies! My favorites by him areInceptionandShutter Island. ButDepartedis a fantastic movie.” She stretched out on her back, using her backpack as a pillow.

I haven’t seen either of those.

“What the hell? When everything settles down, we’re having a movie night. Milo and Emmett can take turns picking the movie next time. My turn first, double-feature.” She included both the guys in our movie night. I liked that.

I’m game. What about the movies made you love them so much?

She looked up to the sky, leaving me in suspense for several long seconds. “They’re both psychological thrillers where as the watcher, you never really know what’s real, what isn’t, what’s right, or what’s wrong. Life is just like that, one giant psychological thriller. Also a reason why I’m an Edgar Allen Poe fan. There’s no special key to tell you who you can trust and who you can’t, you just have to wait until you get bitch-slapped by reality.”

There was only one thought running through my head.What kind of life have you lived, Pin-up?

Everything about what she just said was gospel for kids like Milo, Emmett, and me. What a childish fantasy to think all the other kids outside of Infinity grew up in normal loving homes. Elise was the furthest thing from an Infinity brat, and her life seemed to be just as bad as ours. Maybe even worse.

I wanted to ask her about her past, about why she made that comment before we entered Chao’s, but I didn’t want to open up that two-way street.

Agreed, life’s a fickle bitch. Why watch these, though? Isn’t it too depressing?

She shook her head. “No, they’re good and entertaining reminders not to fuck up again. I’ll always be cautious, careful not to ever make the same mistakes as before.”

She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask for more details.

“What’s your favorite kind of music?”

That was a little harder. Milo liked the mainstream shit, Emmett was firmly in the camp of R&B and rap, but I was all over the place.

All kinds, although easy listening rock is on my playlist the most.

“I’m more of a romantic. Weird I know, to be this badass bitch who has a thing for love songs.” She smirked.

Another hour passed by while we traded answers to completely mundane questions. Nothing too personal, but each answer gave a critical piece of our puzzle. At some point, we were going to have this vivid picture, just missing the tiny details. Maybe they weren’t important.

“Jules, don’t look now, but a black Maserati just drove down the street to our left. I know you guys are pretty close to the vest on that whole thing, but this seems like a big deal.” Elise turned her face into my shoulder, her voice low.

I wanted to remain neutral, hoping they weren’t onto our asses, while being cautious enough to save said asses. Three Maserati sightings in less than two days had to mean something, we just needed to figure out what that was.

Did you see the plate?

“No, it passed too quickly to catch the front plate.”

We had a wide network, building power in our own right, we could figure this out. I hustled her back to the Shack, this time going straight to my room. Elise had been in and out of the frat house with us so much lately, none of the guys gave her a second glance.

Inside my room, Elise locked the door. I had no idea if other frat guys kept their shit locked as tight as we did, but with Milo, Emmett, and me, it was a second nature, and Elise was adopting our habits.

Throwing my backpack on the couch, I fell back on the bed, then texted Milo and Emmett about what happened. The bed depressed as Elise climbed up next to me, and a thought occurred to me while I watched her.

We didn’t talk about it at lunch. You okay with what happened with the slut stains?

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