Page 10 of Ruthless Consequences

I bit into my candy bar, and the sweetness of the chocolate matched what I was imagining I could do with all that extra money. And I’d do it withouthimknowing, because if he did, he would somehow return the money, or hire guys to do it himself.

Fix the air conditioner. Get a new roof. Clean up the yard. Get all the things to help Minnie plant a small garden out back. An electric scooter to get around town would be nice. Buy whatever we wanted at the grocery store…

The scent of smoke drifted past my nose. I blinked, pulled from my dream, and turned to find a woman standing across from me. We had matching uniforms, and I’d seen her inside. She kept glancing at me, especially when I only smiled and didn’t joke back with the men, but I didn’t make eye contact with her. I wasn’t there to make friends. Besides, she didn’t seem all that friendly.

Her waist-length wavy hair was almost purple in the darkness. I guessed it was close to an eggplant shade in the daylight. Her green eyes were dark pools staring at me, but her lids glittered with makeup. So did her light-pink lips. Inside, with the soft light, she was striking.

“Never seen you before,” she said, blowing smoke my way.

“Never seen you either,” I said.

She cracked a smile and pointed her cigarette at me. “That looks good.” She licked her lips, and I could tell she was looking seriously at the bite I had left. Like maybe she wanted it.

I was planning on licking my fingers for the leftover chocolate when I was done. That was how much I was enjoying it. “I get low blood sugar.” I rammed the last little piece in, trying to feel the euphoria while she stared at me. In a way, it was kind of like having sex, and it was between me and the candy bar. She was making my dirty little secret awkward.

As awful as it was for me to admit, I didn’t want to share. Sometimes, at home, when the house was quiet, I locked myself in the bathroom, ran a bath, and ate something sweet. Especially when the day had been really hard. Like when memories slammed into me with the weight they carried in my world. And if I was going to be working here until I was fifty and wearing Spanx to fit into this costume created for men, I wanted my entire candy barandthe chocolate left over on my fingers, too. She could have brought one, just as well as I could have brought a cigarette.

Okay, andtechnically, I didn’t have hypoglycemia. I would, maybe, feel weak if I didn’t eat, though. Which I hadn’t. It was my first night, and nerves had me on edge. Everything Ava had told me was on a continual loop in my head, while the unknown upped my anxiety. My stomach had felt like it had shrunk to nothing when I even thought about food earlier.

She lifted her hands. “Chill,” she said. “I wasn’t going to attack you for it.Damn.No wonder you’re so skinny. You got an eating disorder? So poor you can’t afford food? So you get territorial over it? I knew a girl like that once. She was just like an animal out in the wild, fighting for a piece of meat. Couldn’t go near her food or she’d turn into a completely different person. She had the potential to slash.”

“That’s why the Snicker’s commercials make so much sense. Hunger can make you wild.”

Her face took on this look, like maybe she was concentrating, before she exploded with laughter. “What’s your name?” She sighed as she wiped her eyes with the hand holding the cigarette. Smoke drifted in front of her face. “Mo didn’t tell us.”

“Does he usually?”

She shrugged. “Depends.”

We stared at each other. That “depends” lingered. I didn’t want to ask “On?” But what if there was something I should know?

“You’re a beautiful girl, so don’t take this the wrong way. Because I have no idea why you decided to start working here. Desperation? That’s usually it, but it’s none of my business. I have enough issues of my own. But…you’re not the type who fits in here. You shouldn’t be working here, maybe I should say. You seem too good for this place. For this crowd. So if this is some ploy to get back at daddy, or to try to be independent to move out of your parents’ place because they’re trying to tell you what to do—be thankful that they care, and tell Mo you’ve had a change of heart and have to split.”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “Any of it.”

She took a deep inhale and blew it out slowly. Studying me. “What’s your name?

I wasn’t out to make friends, but if I was going to be here for a while...and there was no telling how long she was in for too...

“Luci,” I said.

“With an “I” or with a “Y?”

“Does it matter?”

She nodded. “With an ‘I’ means there’s more. It’s settled with a ‘Y.’ Luci can be short for so many names. Lucy can’t. It’s ‘I’ for you, that’s what I’m betting on.”

I nodded, neither confirming nor denying. I wondered if her betting was what landed her here in the first place. She owed Mo. “What’s your name?”

“Shawna.” She reached out for my hand, and we shook. “Ends with an ‘A’.” She wiped chocolate on her uniform after we broke apart.

I felt the leftover grit on my fingers and made a mental note to wash my hands once inside. “Settled,” I said, smiling.

“What else can I be? Or I’d be like one of those snow globes. Always getting turned upside down.”

“That’s a really good analogy,” I said, meaning it. “Or would it be a metaphor? It’s like we all have our little worlds, and occasionally some kid in a store thinks it would be fun to watch everything swirl around. But the swirl only means chaos to the ones trapped inside.”

Silence stretched between us, then a smile came slow to her face. “You get me.”

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