Best mistake of my life.
Groaning, I sink onto Liev’s saggy sofa.
The music shuts off. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks. Got a phone I can use?” I stand.
With an eyebrow lift, he points at the landline plugged into the kitchen area.
“Seriously, Liev? A landline?”
He grabs the beer I opened for him and shakes his head with a smirk.
“What?” I ask him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You know why.”
“No. Why don’t you tell me?”
“You got her number memorized?”
I huff out a breath. “No.”
Another head shake from him sends me back to the old sofa, where I flop down, exhausted and boneless, feeling foolish. I finish off my beer and, as if by magic, he’s got another one out and open and in my hand.
“She’s here. Was here. Is here? I don’t know.”
Liev’s dust-coated eyebrows fly up almost to his hairline. “At camp?”
“Yeah.” I shut my eyes. “Why was she here?”
“She gone?”
“I don’t fucking know. She ran away.”
“What happened?”
I give him the short version. Or the long version. A version. By the time I’m done, he’s pulled out the half-full case of beer and plunked it on the table in front of me, then sunk into an armchair.
“It was good.” It’s more a statement than a question, but I answer anyway.
“Fucking spectacular.”
“You usually do the Black Hole?”
I shake my head with a low, pained laugh. “No. No, man, never. I just wanted to…” I can’t finish the sentence. Some things I’m not quite ready to admit, even to Liev. “I’m so fucked.”
“Eh.” Liev grimaces. The big metal door opens. “Won’t kill you.”
“Who’s getting killed?” Grace walks in and grabs a can of her own, watching us with those dark, smiling eyes.
“We’re discussing his chances of surviving tonight’s accidental glory hole session with the fake wife.”
Grace’s mouth drops open. “You’re what with who?”
Liev grins. “Maybe you and I should try the Hole sometime, babe. You up for it?” He grabs her thigh and hauls her onto his lap.
I look away from all the tickling and giggling. “I need to call her.”
