In a way, they couldn’t be blamed. They were loyal to this life to a fault, and they followed the rules. The issue was, I had no clue who made the rules for them, when it came to me, or why. Which brought me to the blame part. They were a bunch of catty bitches who made me feel like shit on many occasions. It wasn’t like Cilla hurt them, either, but I knew they’d never forget it.
She took a sip of water, and her smile came slow. “I don’t suppose I did, but who cares? Anyone who doesn’t love you sucks. How long do we have until class starts?”
“A few minutes,” I said, pulling up my high-waisted leggings and pulling down my crisscross top. Then I made sure my sneakers were tied tight.
“Good,” she said, flopping down on the floor. She set her water bottle down and dug in her tote. She pulled out her cellphone and a bag of chips. “Even though I was messin’ around, that shit wore me out.”
“You’re going to get potato chip hips if you don’t do it more often. Maybe you should patent it. It was good stuff.”
She smiled big. “It totally was.” Then she put a chip in her mouth and crunched down. Her eyes lit up as she scanned the screen on her phone.
“You’re not talking to Joey, right?”
She’d told me she had said goodbye, which was why she’d been so late coming home that night. But I wasn’t sure if she was telling me the truth or not.
Cilla had convinced herself that Joey was her first love and would be her last. Taking that into consideration, it almost seemed like she was too chipper to have severed those ties. I was going to talk to Aniello about it whenever I saw him again. He hadn’t been to Club D in two days. It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone for stretches of time, but it was hard to put into words how much I missed his…presence when he wasn’t there.
He was my oxygen, and when he was gone, I felt more entombed than ever behind those walls. If he ever left Club D, I wasn’t sure I could survive it. Creeping on him and finding lost memories had become my reason to stay.
“No,mom,” she said in an exaggerated way. She held her phone up. “I’m reading the local news.”
“That should be off limits, too,” I said. “It’s too depressing. Stick with romance novels.”
“I’m in a book slump,” she said almost to herself as her eyes scanned the words on the screen. “Some f’d up shit is going down in Queens lately. Four guys were killed outside of a bar. All shot. One found with his pants down.”
“With his pants down?”
She lifted the phone and showed it to me. Four boxes filled the screen. Inside of each one was a picture of a young guy. I narrowed my eyes. They seemed familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. As Cilla took the phone back, Aniello’s moniker being mentioned in conversation made my ears perk up.
“Did you see the blonde in Candle’s car at Club D?”
“Pants down is not even the worst part. They were responsible for a string of assault cases. Two of the guys responsible wrote a few of the victim’s names on the bar’s wall—using the other two guys’ blood as paint.”
“One of them, or two, killed the other two?” I said, still listening for more information about the blonde. Probably Dr. Sharon.
Cilla’s eyes scanned the screen even quicker. “Dunno. The police are asking for any information that might lead to an arrest, or arrests. Other than that, they only give a few details. Maybe two of them grew consciences and got into it with the other two? When the other two didn’t agree, the consciences decided to act? Then take themselves out?”
“She’s gorgeous.”
“Why would one of their pants be down?”Had to be Sharon.
“Maybe the consciences were trying to talk him out of it while he was in the act?”
“Why would the police be looking for someone, or people, to arrest if they ruled their deaths as murder-suicides, though?”Bambina was going to have to deal with a new vet!
She thought about this for a moment. “True. Or maybe it was a parent or lover out for justice? If so, I’d say they got it.”
“She never got out of the car, though. I guess he doesn’t want her associating with anyone at the club. She looked really high class.”
Is that why he hadn’t been to Club D? And where was I when he came in andshewas out in the car? Okay. I had to get ahold of myself. He wasn’t mine. I had no right to fuel the flames of jealously burning a hole in my heart. But how did I stop it? It was so…fucking irrational.
If anyone even suspected the way I felt about him, it would be over for me. That fact should have doused the flames in cold water, but it didn’t.
“Rosalia?”
It took me a minute to really focus on Cilla. She nodded at Alec, the spin instructor, who was standing nearby, smiling at me. I smiled back.
“Glad to see you, Rosalia,” he said. “The class is always better with you in it.”
