I did as he said, and he slid a friendship bracelet on my wrist. Addie had made it with elastic, using both colored beads and white ones with black letters. My bracelet saidA N T I - H E R O.
As if Little Miss Petty would be anything but.
Then my eyes caught Malone’s bracelet, one he’d put on his wrist, no doubt without thinking twice about whether it was manly or not. His saidK I N G O F M Y H E A R T.
I sucked in a breath, dizzy at the memory of how flippant I had been while standing in the Waffle House parking lot saying that wearing a friendship bracelet unironically would be a sign that—
Oh, what did the universe know about anything?
“Really sweet of her, don’t you think?” Malone was saying.
“Yeah, she’s a good kid.”
“Okay, I hate to leave you, but I need to take care of this. Then I’m going to turn off my phone when we reconvene this evening.”
“Yeah, same,” I said, even though I knew I was prolonging the inevitable.
“I’ll get new champagne,” he said. “I’m afraid the bottle I opened last night went flat.”
There would be no need for champagne, but I didn’t say so.
Going to the bank felt like such a 1990s thing to do. While almost all my clients had paid me through Cash App (yes, my username was $LittleMissPetty), a few paid me in cash. I also had the hundy from Jackie and what Havisham had loaned me.
If the teller thought I had obtained the cash through nefarious means, she didn’t mention it. I made a deposit and then went home to log on to the portal for my student loans and pay off everything I could. I took care of fees, got current with my payments, and then frowned at the principal. How could I possibly still owe so much?
I shook my head, then made sure my rent was paid for the month. That left me with ... not a lot.
But, hey, the car was mine. More jobs were headed my way. On the whole, I’d done a good job of making something out of nothing.At least, as the Beatles once sang, I’d done some with some help from my friends.
I felt both heavy and light. Light because I’d somehow managed to pay off my late fees but heavy because I knew I needed to talk to Malone. I’d give him a chance to say it first. If he could say it first, then I would reciprocate. If he couldn’t say it first, then I would know he’d never looked at our arrangement as anything other than temporary.
That decided, I could check my mail without fearing another form letter threatening me with some kind of penalty. Outside I went, smiling at the memory of running into Malone and then pretending to look at that Lands’ End catalog.
As if it would ever be cold enough to wear flannel pajamas in Georgia.
The mailbox creaked open, and I took out a stack. Some was actually addressed to me, but much of it was marked “Current Resident” or had the name of a previous tenant. Then there was a white envelope addressed to me.
From the Georgia Board of Private Detectives and Security Agencies.
What the heck could they be sending me? I was up to date on my license.
I hadn’t even made it back into my apartment before the phrases “reviewed a complaint” and “non-disciplinary private admonition” had me sitting on the second-to-the-bottom step. My heart pounded. My mouth ran dry.
Up until that moment, I don’t think I had realized how much I enjoyed my job. For a while it had been too intertwined with my relationship and carried all those negative associations. Now that I had even more freedom to pursue the jobs I wanted to pursue, I had begun to enjoy it.
Well, other than the camping.
But the threat of having my license suspended made me rethink crickets and flamingos and sewing the flaps shut on tighty-whities.
Someone—and I had a pretty good idea who—had submitted an anonymous complaint to the board suggesting that I had been trespassing on Dobbs’s lawn and harassing him with the flamingos. Based on the timing of this letter, the Douchecanoe had tattled on me immediately.
And he knew he had when we spoke.
Fortunately, the board had a sense of humor and had chalked the entire incident up to “poor judgment,” but it all added up to “unprofessional conduct” nonetheless.
Ken had to have been the one to have submitted the complaint because he was the only one who knew about my day job. Also, Trista’s delight that day had been genuine. Well, best I could tell. But even Trista probably didn’t have the first clue that Georgia had a regulation board for private investigators. Nor would she think to connect the flamingos to being a private investigator.
Once again, Ken had proven himself far pettier than I’d ever been.
