“The fucking nozzle won’t fit in the fucking hole,” I mutter to her while I demonstrate. “It’s too big.”
She looks me dead in the eye. “Bet that’s the first time you’ve heard that in your life.”
Is she?—
Dammit.
I walked right into that.
My molars grind together as she grins and takes the stick from me.
“This particular nozzle,” she says, “is for diesel. Your car takes regular unleaded. This nozzle. This one over here on the other side of the pump.”
The guy across from us lifts his eyes to look at us as my face heats even hotter.
I knew that.
I fucking knew that, but today is going so wrong that my brain is malfunctioning.
Daphne—standing there in her cocktail dress with her bedhead somewhat tamed but not enough to look normal, especially with the blue and green streaks making her look like a goth mermaid—smiles at the guy who’s now watching us and gives him a little finger wave.
“We’re getting into character to audition for a reality TV show.Bros and Hoes. Have you heard of it? It’s awful. Like, truly awful. But don’t we look like we belong? We’re going to do this bit so my friend Spencer here looks like a complete idiot who doesn’t know how to pump gas. Do you think they’ll buy it?”
The guy ducks his head and mutters something while he goes back to his own business.
“Bros and Hoes?” I hiss at her.
“I know. I hate that word. It’s so demeaning to women and their sexual experience. That’s why I didn’t tell you sooner where we’re going. But if the producers want to give me that much money to call me names, whatever. It’ll pay for my astrophysics degree.”
The screen on the pump cycles back to the same story about my father being released from prison and the party my mother threw him last night.
Daphne stares at the screen, then grimaces. “I hate dresses,” she mutters.
I look at the screen too.
They’re showing a picture that includes her as one of the many partygoers on my parents’ packed patio at their Hamptons house. It’s taken from the balcony, but you can see Daphne holding her head high, blonde wig on, martini glass in hand, mid-stride like she’s on a mission.
Like she fits in there.
Wonder who she paid off to get in. She wasn’t on the guest list. Probably why she wore a disguise too. Security would’ve let someone’s girlfriend in.
They likely wouldnothave let Daphne in, and I get the impression she didn’t want to be there anyway.
The guy on the other side of the pump starts his engine.
“Also, you have to pay for the gas inside first if you’re not paying by credit card or phone tap,” Daphne murmurs.
Fucking fuck on a fuck-bucket. I knew that too.
Daphne has made half my brain cells scatter and refuse to work together, and now I look like an even bigger dumbass.
“So do you have phone tapping set up on your phone?” she asks.
Not a chance.
I don’t even like being here when I know there are likely security cameras on the premises. Eventually, my family will hire investigators to track me. It won’t matter that they’ll get a letter informing them that I’m willingly opting to remove myself from life in Manhattan and I don’t want them to contact me. It won’t matter that I’m divesting myself of all of my shares in M2G after I use them to vote for my choice of my own successor. It won’t matter that I’m not leaving a digital trail. They’ll find ways to track me.
That’s half of why I’m taking a circuitous route to get to wherever I decide my final destination is and the only phone in my possession—other than Daphne’s—is a phone with exactlyone phone number in it, to exactly one person that I trust with my life.
