“You are not the favorite,” Kimber calls, and as I walk into the apartment I realize that Anita’s standing with her in the kitchen, and they appear to be studying one of her cabinets.
It takes all of two seconds to realize why. There’s a lot of bottles of alcohol in there, and I can see how packed it is as the front door closes. A glass sits on the counter, and Anita’s slowly destroying her lip as she chews on it and looks between the cabinet and Kimber.
For her part, Kim seems to be glaring down at the glass. I’m kind of surprised she opened the cabinet up at all with company over, and it takes her several moments before she finally looks over at me.
Blowing out a breath, she sounds more tired than angry when she speaks. “This is all your fault.”
“Yes it is,” Russell agrees, moving to stand beside me. He’s grinning, and I think he’s having way too fun with this. “Good job inviting a bunch of people to your girlfriend's apartment without her knowledge. What an ice breaker for your relationship.”
“We’re not dating,” Kim snaps.
He chuckles, and when I shoot him a glare he’s busy wiggling his eyebrows. I think things would be fine if he and Emilio hadn’t shown up and the girls had stayed. “Yet.”
She groans, turning back to Anita. “I appreciate your concern and everything about my health,Doc, but this is my house. My rules. I’ve had a really weird afternoon and I need something to take the edge off.”
Anita uncomfortably looks at the counter. She’s someone else I don’t know well, and really, this whole thing happened because Russell and Tyson are pretty much friends with everyone. I knew Anita was a doctor, because things just kind of become common knowledge when people are open with their professions at a place like Sins. “It’s just… it looks like you take the edge off a lot.”
Eyeing the mostly empty bottles, and the one I can see sitting in her trash, I have to agree. These aren’t little bottles like the ones I saw her slam at the cabin. Some of them are handles, most of the contents gone, and she has everything from cheap to expensive liquors lining the shelves.
“Rich is here now, Lifeline,” Russell says, bending to put the cat down. “Let these two fight it out. Seems like they have all sorts of things to talk about.”
Anita takes the que, holding up her hands. “Yeah, sure. It was… interesting spending time with you, Kimber.”
She scowls. “Let’s not do this again anytime soon.”
The two of them leave, the cat nearly chasing Russell as they go. The doors barely closed before she’s fisting the neck ofa bottle and pulling it from the shelf, prepared to pour herself something strong but cheap. I can smell it when she twists off the top.
I move quickly, placing my hand over the top of the glass before she can pour. Kimber hisses, her blue eyes darting to me as she snarls. “Move. Your. Fucking. Hand.”
Instead, I hold up the yellow envelope. Turning it over, I show her theMurdereracross the front and set it on the counter in front of her.
Her eyes widen, and she stares down like it might bite her. Tossing the lid away, she tips the bottle bag and takes two big chugs of the thing before I can wrestle it out of her grip. That’s the opposite of what I was going for.
She lets the bottle go easier than I expect, turning to open the envelope. It tears in her haste, and she rips out the papers before dropping it altogether. I didn’t remove the stack the first time, and now that it’s free I notice something about the pages.
There’s black sharpie across the court documents, like someone circled everything that mattered to them. The first thing my eyes lock on is the wordwhorescrawled across the first page, and as she begins to rapidly flip through that seems to be the trend. There’s little jabs and slurs all over the court paperwork that someone spent the time to add to every page.
Her eyes mist as she flips, dropping one stapled stack of papers as she moves to the next. She’s flipping quicker, and I don’t know if she’s even paying attention to what she’s looking at anymore. Frantic eyes dart across every page, and I bend down to collect the papers she dropped as she keeps fanning through.
“Don’t read that!” she cries, ripping the pages away when I stand. My eyebrows lift as she tucks all of the papers tight to her chest, hugging them as she pivots away. “Don’t look.”
I frown. “I’m not reading it, Kim. I’m just trying to help-”
“You can’t,” she hisses, and for the first time her head pivots towards the window. “Did you find this outside?”
“Emilio and Laci found it in the hall. They handed it over for me to give to you when I arrived.”
Her eyes shift back to me, wide and terrified. “Did… did they read it?”
“I think they checked for your name, but no, they had no idea what was in the pages.”
Kim nods, her head bobbing several times before she shifts back from me. Her eyes watch me warily, and I can’t figure out what she’s thinking right now. “And you didn’t read them?”
“I brought it to you,” I tell her truthfully, though part of me really regrets not looking deeper. I was more concerned about coming upstairs to see her after Laci and Anita group-texted me that Kim passed out.
There’s something else we should be talking about, but when my eyes meet hers again she looks so incredibly tired. It’s like the relaxation from Euphoria is gone, and there’s a hollowness in her eyes.
She sniffles, gripping the pages too tight. “It’s nothing to worry about anyway. Just… words. It’s not from my attorney so it doesn’t matter.”
