“What’s this?” Low takes the phone from me and scrolls down a notch. “Who’s ChiwawaMama91, and why is she saying you’re this crazy woman with a green face androllers?”
“What?” I snatch the phone back, and sure enough, the caption under the vile video readsmy nasty neighbor Alexa Maxfield, food critic at Food Crack Nation, disparaging a disabled person in an explosive psychotic rant. Mrs. Gale is a vet who served this country as a photographer and lost her hearing in a roadside explosion while covering our troops. #fireElphaba“Judas Priest.” I bury the phone in my chest and give a caustic look around as if Stumpy might actually appear and I can promptly beat the shit out of her. That word!Gah!,
“Is that really you?” Raven takes the phone from me and the video plays again on a loop. “Yup, I can see fifty shades of wicked under that green flesh. How long does it take to apply your foundation in the morning,anyway?”
“Would you stop!” Low snatches the phone from her and shakes her head at the screen. “Oh no. It gets worse! Food Crack Nation was one of the first torespond.”
I snatch the phone back and read it. “Not to worry, we fired the wicked witch weeks ago for equally disparaging behavior.” I growl at the phone because I happen to know that Dan Rodgers is at the social media helm at my old place of employment. The next time I see that half car he folds himself into parked around town, I’m going to spit on hiswindshield.
Low pulls me back by the elbow as if we were about to brawl. “Is thistrue?”
Both she and Raven wear matching looks ofhorror.
“Yes, it’s true.” I give a quick glance into the crowd just as Levi comes over and burrows his face into Low’sneck.
Raven audibly gags. “Get a room.” She takes off for the bar proper and leaves me amidst the dry humping and thegiggling.
“Come on.” Levi hitches his head toward the band. “I want to dance. I can feel a slow song coming on—one that might just be dedicated to you.” He glances up. “Oh, hey, Lex. Good to see you.” He waggles his brows. “Ax has been asking about you allnight.”
“Stop being so terrible!” Low giggles as he steals her away. She does her best to look back. “Don’t you dare leave! I’m tackling you again in about fiveminutes!”
The music shifts to something softer and slower, a cover of “Key Largo” by Bertie Higgins. I know the song well because for the brief time Low was living with me she played it on an endless mind-numbing loop. Apparently, it’s her song, her father’s song, and now it’s their song. I groan at the idea of a couple’s song in general. It’s all so codependent I canvomit.
Shockingly, my high heels scuttle me deeper into the restaurant and not toward the exit like I demanded. Ax and his buddies decided to keep the old miner décor when they took it over, and I will admit I love the old world feel, the rustic cracked plank floors, the distressed picnic tables, and reclaimed wood lining the walls. The Mason jars they serve their drinks in and the cutlery that looks as if it’s hand-hewn from silver tree branches add to the charm. It’s cozy and the food is terrific, or at least it is now that Low revamped the menu. Honestly, after hearing the horror stories of the previous menu, they’re pretty lucky I never gave them that first critique a few months back. That’s the night I walked into this place and right back out once I saw Axel standing smug at the helm of the bar. He took my breath away in that business attire he’s known to sport at all hours of the day. Axel in a well-tailored Italian suit has always been my weakness. That’s pretty much when everything went to hell in a Low-shaped handbasket. I take a few steps deeper into the lively establishment, trying my best to shake Axel Collins right out of my head and bump into a body—Axel Collinshimself.
“Lexy,” he says it so soft, his brows dipped into a hard V with a level of concern on his face that I’ve never seen before, and just like that my next breath is knocked right out of me. It’s almost unfair the way my body demands to react to his. My blood pressure spikes, my cheeks slap with heat, and my thighs—they are the biggest traitors of them all the way they quiver for him. It all amounts to an unspoken invitation that my body gifts his without my permission. “Raven just told me about thevideo.”
The man standing next to him that looks like an overgrown frat boy shakes his head. “Dude, it’s goingviral.”
Ax smacks him in the gut without breaking eye contact with me. “Is that why you requested the material on refinancing? I’ll help you, Lexy. I wantto.”
Lexy?Throttle him, I tell myself. I swallow hard, trying to fight the instinct. Ax knows better than to call me that. It’s as if he’s purposefully trying to incite a homicide. And if I’ve learned anything from Low’s fiasco, it’s that Ax isn’t opposed to throwing an innocent woman into the pokey for thenight.
“Wait”—my mind screeches to a halt before I actually go nuclear on him for purposefully calling me a name that I feel genuine disdain for—“how did you know I requested the material onrefinancing?”
He gives a quick grimace, and if he’s smart he’ll run for the hills. “My father just bought out Mortgage Makers. Half the employees quit, so I volunteered to drop a few documents off. I swear I didn’t know it was foryou.”
A breath gets locked in my throat as I glance around like a caged cat plotting my escape. The song comes to an abrupt end, and I beeline over to Low and her perky friend Raven who can’t seem to drift two feet from eachother.
“Look, Low—I’d better get going.” No sooner do I get the words out than she accosts me with another lung crushingembrace.
“You’ll do no such thing. What are you going to do for work?” Low looks as if it’s her world that’s dissolving before her veryeyes.
“Nothing.” Raven taps those overblown lips of hers with her hand. “Sorry, but you’re like a pariah. You’re trending on Twitter and not in a goodway.”
“Trending? I’ve spent my entire life sidestepping anything that remotely smelled like a trend.” I’m dying. I’m dead. I’ll never work again. I’ll be the new cart lady in front of Hallowed Grounds that everyone buys coffee for just to pat their own backs as if they’ve truly contributed to the world. I’ll be Hollow Brook’s token psychotic bag lady who screams at the top of her lungs all day long, but little will they know I’ll lucidly be cursing a small majority of the very people under this roof for this collision course my life ison.
Low shakes her head as a single tear glides down her rosy cheek, and it’s all for me. “I’ll help you get a job. I swear I’ll do whatever it takes to get your life back on track. You’re a good person. I’m sure that veteran who lost her ability to hear in a roadside bombing had it coming.” She clamps down on her lips so hard they turn white aspaper.
Raven scoffs at her bestie because, obviously, she’s not feeling nearly as hormonal or human this evening. “Where are you possibly going to find her gainful employment in the entire tri-city area? Social media suicide is a contagion in this day and age. She’ll be unemployable for at least a decade. Maybe longer. The Internet has a way of keeping this kind of thing fresh and alive.” She shifts her dead eyes to mine. “You’ll be a meme bymorning.”
I suck in a sharp breath at thethought.
“She has a job,” a deep voice strums from behind and I spin on my heels, ready to stab the overgrown frat boy at the other end of those deep vocal cords once he makes a crack about me working on my knees. But it’s not an overgrown frat boy. It’s Axel. “Here. At the bar. You can waitress. Prime hours. Tips are good, Ipromise.”
My heart thumps once as if it were trying to kick-start back to life. Just hearing him make yet another promise makes me numb on the inside for an entirely differentreason.
“The hell she’ll work here.” Low scoffs. “Lex has too much pride to sit under the thumb of her ex.” She does her best to shoo him away like some obnoxiously oversized horsefly, but my eyes remain locked over his. There has always been something unfairly hypnotic about those gray lenses of his. Such a rare, complex color, and that about sums up our entire relationship, complex and rare and in the end very muchover.
“I’ll do it.” I hear the words stream from my lips before my brain can process what’s justhappened.
“What?” both Raven and Low cry out atonce.
“You heard me.” I force the words to eject from my lips as I openly scowl at the budding elation in Axel Collins’ eyes. “I’ll takeit.”
