Page 55 of Wicked Me
Not my scene. Have fun.
So I was home with Riley, contemplating what to do with myself during the hour I had before I was to meet Nicole and Charlotte at the cowboy bar.
Riley knocked back the rest of his beer in the kitchen while he tapped out a text on his phone then laid it on the island. “You sure you don’t want to come hang out with me on U Street?”
If I didn’t have other plans, Imighthave considered it, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hang out with him again after the way he’d acted at the restaurant. I was seriously beginning to wonder if too many years in D.C. rotted people from the inside out. Riley, like Rick, wasn’t who I thought he was. I wanted to give him a chance to prove me wrong, but not tonight.
“No offense, but you’re the wrong chromosome,” I said from my perch on the stool at the island. “My fellow interns have insisted since we couldn’t do this last weekend.” Nicole had had some emergency with her turtle, Jimmy, and I was too afraid to ask about details.
“Well...” He came closer, his beer breath leading the way, and patted my hip on his way past. “You know my number if you change your mind, sweetheart.”
I stared at his back, my jaw in my lap, while an uneasy shiver raced across my shoulders. Sweetheart? Really? As far as I was concerned, that made me sound like more of a stranger to him than he was to me. Did he not remember the field trip to the National Air and Space Museum in sixth grade when the creeper who kept following us called me that, and I flipped out? Apparently not.
As his footsteps tromped upstairs, I traced the marbled pattern on the granite while I cut my gaze from it to his phone and back again. He hadn’t locked it, and the screen still glowed. Curiosity flashed my hand out. I hated what I was doing, what I was about to do, because I didn’t want to be one ofthosepeople. But I guessed I was. Hide your phones, everyone.
I zipped through his contacts until I found one for Rose, and it listed an address in Pasadena, Maryland. Not far away at all. I could Google the address, maybe find something incriminating, not for Rick but for myself, and then lie to him if I actually found some worthy information. Which I probably wouldn’t since it was just an address.
Or I could’ve sat there and continued to examine the granite countertop. My inquisitiveness was part of what led me toward a career in libraries. Of course, it was also part of what led to a pregnancy at sixteen. I shouldn’t want to know what I might find, and yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to just let all of this go without knowingsomething. Maybe I could help the Clearys if they needed it. And maybe there was a special place in hell for snoopers.
I pushed to my feet and headed to the front door where I’d left my purse. A quick run-through on the internet probably wouldn’t yield much. Might as well begin with that and suffer eternal damnation later.
My fingers flew over the keypad, and soon several listings for a drug rehabilitation center scrolled down the page. Oh my God. Was that where Rose was? Free-spirited, sweet Rose? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine her needing help for an addiction. But I supposed it would be difficult for anyone to come to terms with something like that, especially family. Poor Riley. Poor Sam.
My mind whirring, I wandered back into the kitchen, and because the shower sounded upstairs—and because hell could make a nice vacation if I brought some flame-proof books—I searched through the rest of Riley’s phone. There were about three thousand photos of him posing with beautiful women and almost as many texts. Most of the texts listed specific sender names, but a few read Unknown or Blocked. Interest piqued, I opened a random one.
Abandoned warehouse
4 miles E of city
2 pm sharp
Bring shovel.
Shiny, happy, legitimate things usually didn’t go down at abandoned warehouses. I didn’t need a Lisa Montgomery book to clue me in to that. So what had Riley been doing at one? Whatever it was, it felt shady to a dark degree.
* * *
LATER, NICOLE, CHARLOTTE, and I sat at a table near the wooden dance floor while twangy country music blasted through the speakers. The more white wine I tipped back, the faster the cowboy hats blurred and do-si-doed past. At first, the sawdust smell in the club had energized me, but the more people danced, the more the smell soured with body odor.
The three of us didn’t wear cowboy boots. In fact, we looked far removed from the red, paisley bandanas hanging off chins, tight jeans, and belt buckles as big as my head. Charlotte wore silvery, futuristic makeup with a silver and black pin-striped dress she had poured herself into. The unshaved portion of her hair was arranged into tiny pinned coils all over the side of her head, giving her a sophisticated dominatrix-type look. Nicole wore the same gray skirt suit she had on at the library, complete with her giant tie-dyed parachute bag. Her Spongebob pen peeked one giant eye between the buttons on her chest, as if reading the newly inked numbers all over her hands.
I wore what I would wear to bed, shorts and my Reading is Sexy T-shirt, with my hair pulled up in a ponytail and my black hipster glasses perched on my nose. Now all I needed was a book, someone to turn down the music, and maybe one of those old-fashioned lanterns dangling from the high-beamed ceiling so I could party like it was 1899.
If Sam had come with us, I would’ve made more of an effort. Probably. It really bothered me that he hadn’t come, but it wasn’t like I owned him or anything. He had his own life, and major spoilers ahead, but I wasn’t always a part of it.
I numbed this feeling and all the rest with another glass of white wine.
“Hey, whoa. Save some for the rest of us, Paige,” Charlotte shouted over the music and winked. “Okay, drinking game time. If you can’t answer in less than three seconds, you have to take a drink. What or who were you just thinking about?” She pointed both index fingers across the table at Nicole. “Go.”
“Uh, curtains,” she said with a wistful smile.
Charlotte held her double fingers on Nicole with a confused tilt to her mouth, then aimed them at me. “Sam,” she said at the same time I did.
“Damn it, you’re good,” I said and slammed back more wine even though I’d answered in plenty of time. “What about you? What were you thinking about?”
The first trace of worry I’d ever seen in Charlotte’s dark eyes sobered me enough to sit up and take notice. “The most efficient way to chop off a leg.”
“What?” I asked over a sudden outburst of yee-haws on the dance floor.
