Page 112 of Life To My Flight

Cleo must’ve just let her right on in and not even thought twice.

Hell, I wouldn’t have questioned her wanting to see me either.

While I watched her pace back and forth across the room, I focused on raising my arm.

Just a little bit.

There was a glass jar of marbles on the side table.

The jar wouldn’t shatter if it hit the floor, but it would make a hell of a noise.

Maybe if I could just knock it off, Cleo would come in here.

“I mean, how many ways did I have to tell you to stop?” The young girl hissed without looking at me or what I was trying to do.

My hand rose in slow degrees.

A millimeter at a time until finally I had it resting against the base of the jar.

It was heavy. Really heavy.

“Then daddy wouldn’t let me drop the case, and my poor boyfriend was just hung out there to dry,” she whined.

If I could lift my arm right now, I’d have smacked her.

My fingers inched closer and closer. All the while I prayed I’d make it.

It took another ten minutes of her ranting and raving before I finally got my hand in place.

I pushed with all my strength.

And nothing happened.

My hand didn’t even move a single inch.

“All I wanted was to be a wife to my ex-boyfriend. Then everything was screwed up royally when Brendan went all the way instead of my ex finding him. I’d have gone with it, too, but then my supposed best friend caught us and then told Scooter,” Vanessa spat.

Scooter must be the ex-boyfriend. I hadn’t heard his name before now.

I still couldn’t fathom how this little teenage girl was able to get past the entire room of men, and then drug me.

Why hadn’t Cleo come to check on us yet?

The glass I was pushing against slipped minutely, giving me hope.

“Anyway,” she said waving her hand. “I just needed you to know that there were consequences. You should’ve listened when I had daddy’s friend come to scare you. This all would’ve been avoided, but now I have to prove a point. It’ll be ugly. It’ll probably hurt, too. But it can’t be avoided.”

The girl was fucking cuckoo. What did she think she was going to do with a room full of men on the other side of this wall?

“Anyway, I hate to tell you this, but you’re about to burn, baby,” she said cheerfully as she pulled a bottle of liquor out of her purse, twisted off the top, took a swig, and then stuffed the ugly pink scarf she wore around her neck down the neck of the bottle.

My heart started to pound.

But she surprised me.

She didn’t do what I thought she was going to, which was smash the bottle against the wall once she lit it.

Instead, she walked up to the door, opened it and started walking out.

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