“Flo.” I settled my hands on her shoulders, squeezing through the fabric of her jacket, and spun her around on the shallow stoop at the front of my house. “Go.”
“Okay, okay,” she grumbled, jogging down my steps to the front gate where Desmond was waiting for her. Even in the dark, I could see how he held the gate open for her to slip though, how his hand reached out to engulf hers. He sent me a quick wave as he dragged his pouting girlfriend to their hatchback.
Once they were gone, I locked up and leaned back against the front door. It felt blessedly solid under my spine, a marked change from everything else in my life. The very ground beneath my feet felt shaky, as though at any moment I’d take one wrong step and the earth would crumble, sending me into a plummeting free fall.
It had been a long day.
I snorted, pressing my eyes closed.
Understatement of the century.
After our blowout, Graham had driven me home in utter silence. He didn’t speak to me, didn’t touch me, didn’t even look at me. I knew this new wedge between us was partly my fault — okay,mostlymy fault — but I wasn’t willing to bridge the gap. Neither was Graham, seeing as he remained silent even as he pulled to a stop outside my house, climbed out, went inside (usinghiskey, I might add, probably just to piss me off), checked the house for threats, and left without so much as athanks for the orgasms, locking up soundly behind him as he went. Then, with the roar of the Bronco’s engine, he was gone.
I waited an appropriate amount of time to burst into tears. (Read: approximately zero-point-two seconds after his engine faded from earshot.) Then, because I was GwendolynFreakingGoode, not a lame crybaby loser brought to her knees by a guy, even when that guy was Graham, I forced myself to get it together. I took a shower (trying really, really hard not to remember the last shower I’d taken), dried my hair into shiny, bouncing waves, dabbed on enough makeup to feel human, then donned my outfit armor. (Outfit Armor: Home Editionthough, which meant sheepskin L.L. Bean moccasins instead of heels, a silk lounge set in a pale ivory shade instead of a dress, and an extra cozy, extra long, open-faced cardigan with a deep hood I could pull up over my head when I felt like going full couch-potato mode instead of a stylish cropped moto jacket.)
I looked in the mirror and nodded at my reflection in approval. I looked like me. Cool, calm, in control. Unfortunately, I didn’tfeellike me. The poised woman reflected in the mirror was just that — a reflection. A mirage. Beneath the surface, my emotions were a scattered mess. My heart physically hurt, panging painfully with every beat.
It was late, well past dinnertime, but I’d called Flo anyway and illuminated theemergency girl’s nightbeacon. Fifteen minutes later, she was waving Desmond off from the front stoop as I held the door open for her. She took one look at my face, reached into her bag, and yanked out a bottle of tequila. Patrón. The good stuff. I took one look at the tequila in my best friend’s hands and promptly burst into tears yet again, shattering all my efforts at looking cool and composed and unaffected in an instant.
It must be said, Florence Lambert had a lot of great traits. She was an excellent parallel parker. She never quibbled over splitting the check exactly in half to avoid doing math, even if one of our entrees cost slightly more. She was a great teacher, the kind who genuinely cared about her students and painstakingly nurtured their progress. She laughed at my dumb jokes even when they weren’t funny. And she was always up for pretty much anything, be it last minute tickets to a Fleetwood Mac reunion concert or a spa weekend in the Berkshires or a stakeout at the home of a psychic employee on the run from a local Irish crime family.
But her best trait of all was that she never judged. She never had, not from the first moment we met, back before I learned how to dress in a way that flattered my body type and didn’t yet know the difference between CheezWhiz and charcuterie. Sure, she made her opinions known, she spoke her mind, she never pandered to me… but she was unfailingly in my corner, no matter what, even when our mindsets clashed.
Which is why I walked her straight into the kitchen, located two shot glasses, and poured us each a healthy dose of Patrón without preamble. By the time I slid a brimming shot in front of her, Flo was already settled on her stool, sprinkling salt from my sleek glass shaker on the side of her fist. Once I’d done the same, we salt-licked, lifted our glasses high, clinked them together, and said, as was our custom, in perfect unison, “Down the hatch!”
The tequila was still burning a fiery path down my esophagus when I blurted out, “Graham and I slept together.”
Flo stared at me for a beat, her throat still working to swallow the shot. Nodding, she reached for the bottle, doled out another round, and threw it back without waiting long enough for me to even lift mine from the counter.
“Hoo-bah!” She blinked hard, then focused fully on me. “Okay. I’m ready. Hit me with it.”
I threw back my own shot, relishing the burn. Then I did as she commanded. I unloaded everything on her. The whole, devastating drama, start to finish, from finding my neighbor very, very dead in a graveyard to getting very, very naked with Graham in his loft afterwards, resulting in four of the best orgasms of my life. I didn’t skimp over the details. (Though, admittedly, some of the details required us to pause for another round of tequila shots, such was their nature.)
By the time I was done, we were both crying, the bottle was well on its way to empty, and my broken heart, though still broken, felt marginally less burdened. I wasn’t sure if this was a result of venting or consuming six mind-numbing shots of tequila. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t about to quibble.
Flo, being Flo, did not judge harshly or foist upon me any unsolicited advice. She did, however, gather me into her arms and hug me until the sobs that were closing off my airway stopped posing a threat to my longevity. We sat for a long time, both a little bit drunk, swaying lightly on our stools with our hands clasped tight.
“I just can’t believe it’s over before it really even had a chance to start,” I whispered eventually, trying very hard not to start crying again now that the tears were finally under control.
“Gwennie,” she said eventually, hiccuping lightly. “It’s not over until opera.”
“Opera?”
“You know. Fat lady, singing.” She shrugged. Her chocolate brown eyes were a hazy mix of intoxication and unconditional love as they peered into mine. “I might not know how all this is going to shake out, but I know you and I know Graham. You are the two stubbornest individuals to ever walk the earth — especially when you care about something. And you both care about this too much to let it fall apart over one disagreement. This isn’t the end for the two of you. Not if you don’tletit be.”
I clung to the fragile thread of hope in those words now that she was gone and I was once again alone in my big, drafty, empty house. She’d wanted to stay, but it was nearly midnight she had to haul her hungover ass into a classroom bright and early the next day. I, thankfully, could sleep in, since The Gallows was closed on Mondays. I planned to shut off my phone, lock my doors, and stay in bed all day, not moving a muscle except to tap my index finger against the Kindle screen.
Proving Graham right, an annoying voice whispered from the back of my mind.
I ignored the voice, gritting my teeth as I walked into the kitchen to turn off the lights and shove the cork back in the nearly empty tequila bottle. I was weaving a bit, the effects of the alcohol still pounding through my bloodstream as I made my way upstairs to my bedroom. Halfway up the staircase, a familiar sound from the front door made me freeze with one foot poised mid-step.
The deadbolt.
It slid open with a low clunk as someone turned a key in the lock. Swallowing hard, I spun around — a bit too quickly, given my tequila-drenched senses. My hand clutched the bannister so I wouldn’t fall down the stairs as I watched the door swing open into the dark entryway. A shadowy figure walked through it, moving in total silence. Seeing as there was only one person, myself not included, who had that key in his possession, it wasn’t difficult to guess the identity of my unexpected nocturnal visitor.
As to why he was here?
I had no earthly idea.