After Elliot and Brad left her with migraine pain that rivaled a back-alley lobotomy, Lainey spent all night—and her last two pills—recovering from it. When Lainey woke up the next day, she was in desperate need of a refill.
Rite-Drug was one of the rare stores in town that catered to both “us” and “them.” Lainey didn’t relish patronizing a pharmacy with no zany secondary offering—soft-serve ice cream or phone screen repair perhaps—but Rite-Drug was woefully essential.
“So, the thing is…” She lifted her chin, demanding she be taken seriously by Ernie, the pharmacist, even at her most unserious. “I need my prescription filled now—and Ihavethe money—but I can’t reallyuseit yet. It’s ‘pending.’ See?” Lainey held up her banking app for Ernie, who was unmoved. His eyes remained glued to the giant handheld stapler he was wielding.
“Venmo is still transferring my last woodworking sale into my checking account so it’s light gray on the app, but I have the money. I just don’t, like,haveit yet.” Lainey shifted herweight to her other foot, feeling her confidence spill onto the tile floor next to a puddle of unidentified electric-orange liquid she prayed was Powerade. “Come on, Ernie. You know I’m good for it.”
Ernie stapled a receipt to a paper bag with a haughty flourish. “I’m not a bookie who accepts IOUs beside the betting window of a greyhound racetrack. If you need to borrow against your pay, get one of those payday loans.”
“Those are for people with jobs that give you actual paychecks.”
“And the interest rates on those loans are horrendously predatory,” a familiar voice spoke behind her.
Lainey’s body went rigid. She didn’t need to look to know the voice belonged to her newest nemesis (Lainey had more than one, so it was best to specify). Slowly, she turned to find none other than Elliot Hodges.
“Elliot,” he reminded her. He was wearing some quiet luxury athleisure brand, like an off-duty celebrity running errands on location, hoping desperately to be recognized by the unwashed masses. She, on the other hand, was the aforementioned unwashed. Though both in sweats, if the casual wealth of his performance fabric whispered, her thrifted cotton was absolutely screaming.
“Yeah, I know. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I saw you last. Are you stalking me now?” she asked.
Elliot lifted an eyebrow over his glasses. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
She scoffed. “Yesterday, you came over to my house.”
“Correction: yesterday, you were squatting atmyhouse.”
Unable to address him with any words aside from expletives, Lainey turned back to the original matter at hand. “Ernie, comeon. We both know you’re no stranger to an IOU. You run a poker game out of the back room every Saturday.”
“If you’re ramping up to blackmail, one of the deputies drops in for a hand every other week.” Ernie punctuated his sentence with an assertive staple into a paper bag.
Lainey laughed airily, as though the very thought tickled her. “I’d never dream of threatening you, Ernie. But if I were, it wouldn’t be with a call to the sheriff. It would be to Barb. She still thinks those evenings are reserved for a men’s Bible study group, right?”
Her voice was pure innocence as blood drained from Ernie’s cheeks.
“Uhh…” His voice trailed off. Sweat beaded above his brow, his eyes going vacuous.
She batted her lashes sweetly as Ernie dissociated. “Perhaps we can revisit that idea of an IOU?”
A credit card slapped between them on the counter, making Lainey and her adversary jump.
Lainey’s eyes followed the card up to a hand, then the veins trailing up a bare forearm, until she was eye level with a rolled gray sweatshirt sleeve. Lainey craned her neck to side-eye the arm’s owner and inwardly cursed whoever had tipped off Elliot on the allure of forearms. Men couldn’t be trusted with that kind of information.
Something wound tight inside her, ready to snap.
“I don’t want your money,” she insisted, but Ernie, the traitor, was already swiping his card through the machine.
“You were really about to blackmail a pharmacist right in front of me? With our pending legal action?”
“I explicitly said Iwasn’tblackmailing him.”
His mouth lowered an inch, his words catching at the edge ofhis breath. “Is that how you sleep at night? You get all cozy in bed with your technicalities. Inmyhouse.”
She lifted her chin, holding her ground. Metaphorically speaking. Physically, he had her up against the counter.
“After twenty milligrams of melatonin, I usually sleep just fine.”
His eyes widened like she’d shifted into a shape he couldn’t make sense of. “That is an outrageous dosage.”
She squirmed free of his gaze. “No one asked you.”
