The question sinks in my stomach like a rock, unease worming through my gut. I swallow and straighten, pushing back from the counter. “Fine.”
I scoop up my keys and catch Vin’s eye. He gives me a look like he’s going to keep an eye on me.
As I head back out, followed by Vin, Maestro calls after us, “Stay safe out there, boys. You’re my pride and joy.”
14
Lacey
“I’m surprised it still works after all that,” Adrianna frowns, handing my phone back to me while touching it as little as possible.
Even in the dim fluorescent light of her basement office, it’s clear my phone has been through a lot. The screen protector and glass underneath are cracked in a couple places they weren’t before, but letting it sit in a bowl of dry rice has let it live another day. The case, however, is gross, no matter the amount of damp paper towels I rub on it.
Adrianna’s face while examining it became slowly more disgusted as I relayed the events of last night’s chase to her. I stuff it back inside my coat pocket. Despite being indoors, I’m still wrapped up in my winter coat, hat, gloves—the works.
“Sooooooo,” Adrianna croons, and then wiggles her eyebrows cartoonishly. “You left off at the part where hench-guy flew you back to your apartment. And theeen, you were late to work today.”
My cheeks scald, and I glance away. “I do want to tell you about that, but there was another reason—”
“Did he have six nipples?” she interrupts, pulling a weak smile from me.
I shake my head. “Two.”
“Oh, that is disappointing,” Adrianna sighs, sounding genuinely let down. “Are you sure you counted right?”
“I suppose I was distracted by everything else.” I sigh. I wish I could enthusiastically gush about last night to her, that there was nothing more important in the world than telling my best friend about the weird and yet really satisfying dicking I’d received.
Some naive, girlish part of me had hoped Ellis would stick around the morning after, thread his fingers through my hair, hold me in his arms, kiss my forehead, all that meaningless nonsense that I’ve been aching for. Ugh, I’m probably just feeling clingy because I’m about to get my period or something.
I’m getting too attached, just because the gentle way he carried me to bed, curled up with me and rubbed his hands up and down my thigh until I fell asleep felt like a dream, made me feel incandescent—it feels impossibly selfish to want that for every night. It couldn’t be like that.
It’s probably better that he wasn’t there when I woke up.
“Everything else?” Adrianna repeats, and I’m trying to think of what I could even begin to tell her, when a text from Ellis pops up on the screen:Meet you on the corner in ten?
Adrianna’s eyes catch it before I lock the screen, and her expression just barely contains her interest.
“Is that hench-guy? With the—” She mimes wings for me like she can’t contain her excitement. “Are you going to meet him? Now?”
“Oh, no, Adri, I love you, but you are not coming with me,” I warn as soon as she catches it, and she shakes her head quickly in response. “It’s a lunch date.”
“No, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
There’s a strange look in her eyes, pleading and cautious and hopeful.
“You’re scaring me, a little,” I say, only partially joking. I don’t really know how to react to this kind of enthusiasm for a guy I’m kind of seeing. It’s honestly a little weird to experience.
“No, no, I just...you seem happier lately. I just wanted to give some positive reinforcement.”
Something tightens in my throat. What am I, some kind of experiment? I slide the phone back into the plastic bag and zip it shut.
She takes my silence as permission to keep going, offering gently, “I want you to be happy, but...I don’t know, Lace. You stopped talking to a lot of our old friends when they were critical of your relationships. I didn’t want you to stop talking to me.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
We stand there for a moment, just staring at each other before she shrugs and says, “I’ll walk you out, I have to go upstairs anyway.”
I nod and she gets up from her desk, plucking up her company lanyard with about a dozen keys and things attached. I stuff my plastic-baggie phone back in my pocket, reminded of what I originally came here for.
