“Leave it,” I said aloud to myself.
When I had turned the lights on, the flash of them had washed over her: navy eyes, pouty lips, fear in her expression, defiance held up against me like a shield. I could still smell her on my fingers.
I turned right.
Chapter Three
Natalie
At the end of Brighton Avenue, you’re back in the suburbs. The road gets narrower and narrower until it hits a T at a gated community. I’d never been this far east before.
The cabbie stopped at the intersection. “Left or right?”
The cab ride had been $72.50 so far.
I looked to the left and saw one of those strip malls with the same set of restaurants and stores in them: Chili’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Chapters. I slipped the hundred at him. “I’ll get out here,” I said.
It seemed like nothing could go wrong in a strip mall like that.
The cabbie shrugged.
I got out and walked across the street toward the strip mall. Nothing was open, but I walked like I had somewhere to go. The cabbie had been starting to give me the creeps, and I just needed to be alone to have some time to think.
I didn’t look back. I was in the middle of a part of town I never went to, and I didn’t belong here; this was a place for soccer moms and people with regular jobs. It was where I wanted to be, but I was keenly aware that with my strip-club eye shadow and tight sequined shirt, jeans and shoes, and the bag full of money at my side, I was going to get into some kind of trouble if I ran into anyone.
I walked around the Chapters and to the back of the building, which was still well-lit, and pretty clean; there was a dumpster but it wasn’t a dumpster from my part of town. This was not the kind of dumpster bodies ended up in.
I looked around, and seeing nothing and no one, slid down the side of the wall and listlessly opened my bag.
My bottom burned, reminding me of what had just happened.
That guy.Fuck. What thefuckwas he about?
And why did I hate him so much, for obvious reasons, but have the feelings I did when I thought about him?
“You are so fucked in the head,” I told myself, as a micro-fantasy flitted through my mind. What would it be like to have a man like that inside of you? And the way he hadtouchedme.
