“Yeah.” I folded my arms across my chest. For a run I almost said. But that felt like an excuse, an explanation, and I have enough of that with Derek. I didn’t owe Jeremy that. Didn’t need to ask permission from him.
“So… why can’t you go to my sister’s?” He looked up. “I mean, you’re obviously doing everything else.”
When the fury came, it was hot and red. I lunged without thinking, my palms hard on his chest, catching him off guard, and he stumbled back, his eyes meeting mine, leftover irritation turning wary as he raised his hands and scowled at me. “Deanna…,” he warned.
“Get out.” I growled the words, my hands in fists, and wanted to tilt back my chin and scream at the heavens. He stood before me, the kitchen too far, the butter knives in it useless anyway. The safe behind him, behind a stack of boxes that would take minutes to wade through. Nothing useful. Everything planned for moments of weakness like this.
“No.” He said the word with force, and I took a deep breath in, flexed my hands and regripped them. “We need to talk, Deanna, you can’t just go fuckin’ crazy on me whenev—”
“Get OOOUUUUTTT!” I closed my eyes and screamed the final word, my entire body shaking, the blissful black of the moment one I didn’t want to let go of. Not seeing his face. Not hearing his voice. Not hearing words like crazy or talk or no. I didn’t need this shit. I didn’t need a fucking parent pushing me, wanting things, asking for explanations. I needed my four walls. My prison. My solitude. My online world where I was fuckin’ prom queen and perfect. The world where my word was God, and they were all parishioners. The world where there was no black; there was only the pink of my bedding and the green of my cash. There was no blood, there was no dark, only 10,000 watts of warm light. The world where Mike understood me and everyone else worshiped me. The world that I could turn on and off. The world that wasn’t right here and now, confronting me and pushing my buttons and refusing to leave. I opened my mouth to scream again, my eyes still shut, my world still black, when the force of the door shook the floor, the whoosh of air giving me one blissful breeze of finality.
When I opened my eyes, I was alone.
CHAPTER 29
Past
WHEN JEREMY SLAMMED the door, the force of impact shook the whole floor. Why did she have such a heavy door? To keep her scrawny ass in? What a joke. Especially when she then proceeded to drive around. Walk outside. Do whatever she freakin’ pleased, except the one thing that he asked of her. One family dinner. So easy. Ridiculous.
He took a minute, pressing his palms against the filthy wallpaper and dropping his head, inhaling deeply. Rolled his neck to the side. Contemplated and discarded the notion of going back in. Pushing her further. Demanding an answer for once. He deserved that. After all that he’d—they’d—been through… one answer needed to be given. Hell. A hundred answers needed to be given. He should sit down and write a list. When he groaned, lifting his head up and turning, the girl was there. She, the blonde, was a freakin’ cancer. A cancer leaning against the wall, arms crossed, a friendly smile on her face.
“You okay? I think half the picture frames just fell off the walls.”
“I don’t think anyone in this building has pictures hung.”
She laughed, pushing off the wall. “You headed downstairs?”
“Yeah.” He dropped his hand from the wall.
“Me too. Come on, you can escort me. Unless, of course, you only talk to crazies.” She tilted her head toward Deanna’s apartment and laughed. She was in a soft blue sweatshirt today, one that covered her stomach and hid her curves. One that, paired with jeans, made her look more innocent. Less predatory. Yet he felt more vulnerable.
“She’s not crazy.” Part of his mind instantly argued with the words.
She clucked her tongue and tucked her hand under his bicep, squeezing the muscle there. “Easy, tiger. I’ll lay off if it gets you worked up.” She pulled gently on his arm, and he took a reluctant start down the hall. “Meant to tell you the other day. I love the uniform. Very sexy.” She gave his arm another squeeze, and he forced himself to relax the muscle.
“You do anything other than stalk the hall?”
She laughed and they came to a stop before the elevator, her finger reaching out and jabbing at the down arrow. “I just moved to town for a new job. I’m just crashing at Simon’s till I find a place. Not sure which part of town to look in.” She looked up at him. “Where do you live?”
He coughed, gesturing her forward when the doors opened. “In Bethany Park.”
“Ooh… fancy,” she cooed. “Unfortunately I think that’s out of a cop’s price range.”
I’m not a cop. He started to say it, then realized that she was talking about herself. He turned his head. “You’re a cop?” It shouldn’t have put a pain in his stomach. It shouldn’t have made his palms sweat, his heartbeat increase. He had never, from the day he’d been born, broken a law. Committed a crime. Done anything to warrant a thickening in his chest. But it was there. Just like when a police car pulled up behind him. Just like when he got a letter from the IRS.
She grinned at the question. “The nerdy kind. Forensics. So… don’t bother killing anyone.” She leaned into his personal space, and he smelled the faint scent of lavender as she whispered. “’Cause I’ll catch ya.”
CHAPTER 30
Past
FETISHES ARE MY bread and butter. The freakier a kink, the more the afflicted feels the need to hide it, to explore it in the anonymity of the Internet as opposed to an actual face-to-face experience with someone who might reject them. And that’s where my alter ego, JessReilly19, comes in. I, like the thousands of camgirls online, breathe digital life into their kinks and let them blossom.
I understand my clients’ shame. Their fear of rejection. I get the glee of discovery that can only be fully celebrated in private, without judgment peeking around the corner with a giant YOU ARE A FREAK sign. My fetish isn’t sexual, but it still is that, a fetish: a course of action to which one has an excessive and irrational commitment. My course of action is killing. My commitment is excessive and irrational. So I don’t judge my clients. I don’t judge the things that bring them pleasure. It’s not my place to be the hypocrite.
A day after my blowup with Jeremy, the current client of the hour was Justin488, who jerked off to his next-door neighbor, an elderly woman who liked to prune her roses and take naps in her front porch rocking chair. Justin, from the sound of his voice in my ear, the hiccups of his orgasm, seemed to be in his twenties. A boy who took no issue with my young appearance, but who told me, at the end of the chat, that I gave “good old woman.” Awesome. Maybe this job does have some longevity.
I thanked him for the chat and hung up my cell. Logged back into free chat and watched twenty greetings fill the screen.
Freeloader22: hey sexy
BigDick4You99: hey
---ShaunUofM enters room
FinDomFreak44: hey Jessica. Up for some FinDom?
“Hey, guys. Sure, Fin. Open up that wallet and get ready to pay up.” I grinned and rolled onto my stomach. Ignored my cell when it buzzed beside me.
AlaskaPaul: hey Jess
I smiled, surprised. “Hey, Paul. Surprised to see you here.”
AlaskaPaul: got off early. Private?
“Sure. Hit me up on my site.”
I logged out of the camsite and onto my personal site, where 95 percent of Paul’s $6.99 per minute would go into my bank account, versus the pathetic cut I got on the corporately controlled camsite. Paul sat, where he always did, in one of my private rooms, and I started the chat, the pull on his credit card beginning.
A minute later, my cell rang.
“Hey, babe.” I closed my laptop and stood, walking to the lights and turning them off, the room instantly cooler. I headed to the thermostat to turn the air conditioner off.
“Hey. How’s your day going?” Paul sounded, as always, happy. He’s always happy. I’ve chatted with him at least twice a we
ek for over two years, and I’ve never heard him be anything other than cheerful. On a normal individual, in an ordinary situation, it’d be downright annoying. Like that cheery coworker that you secretly wish would trip and fall into a muddy puddle. But with Paul, it’s endearing. Even more endearing since I was earning four hundred dollars an hour to chat with his cheerful self.
“It’s good. Slow. It feels weird, talking to you this early.” Given Paul’s Alaskan time zone, I typically talk to him late in the morning, when he’s headed to work, or late at night, when he’s on his way home from the pipelines.
“Yeah. A blizzard’s coming in. We all headed in early to hunker down. I got the fire on now. Me and Oscar are warm and happy.”
I smiled at the thought of his husky, stretched out before the fire. In my mind it’s on a fur rug, in a cozy house filled with books and the smell of cinnamon. In real life he’s probably in a doublewide, this chat pushing his credit card debt a couple hundred bucks higher. I took the moment to bag up the kitchen trash. Propped the phone on my shoulder as I yanked the ties tight and carried it to the door, leaning it against the wall. I’ll stick it in the hall tonight and Simon will get it. Carry it down to the Dumpster when he locks me in. “How long will the blizzard last?”
“They’re saying six or seven hours. Nothing too bad. But it ruins the orgy I had planned.”
I laughed, snagging the closest cardboard box and dragging it to the table. Heavy. Used a pen to break the plastic tape and rip it off. “Damn blizzard. How dare it.”
“Exactly. What are you up to tonight?”
“Working till ten. Then I’m going out with my roommate.” My lie comes out easily. They all do.
“Where?”
I pulled the cardboard box open. Bottled water. A hundred Fijis. I opened the fridge and began stocking it. “There’s a house party she was invited to. It’s a theme party. Toga, but we’re gonna be rebels and dress cute.”
He chuckled. “Wild thing.”
“Oh, you know it. Not to mention, it’s too damn cold for togas. The party organizers should be ashamed of themselves.” Six six-packs fit on one shelf of my fridge. I stopped stocking and shut the lid. Grabbed a Sharpie and labeled the side of the box. Then I slid it back, letting it join the sea of others, this time on the bottom of the “Food” tower of boxes. My madness was nothing if not organized. I lifted over the next unclaimed box and broke it open. Did a mini-celebration when I saw the tampons. Just in time. And, with 480 applicators of different absorbencies enclosed, I should be covered for the next year, easy.
I counted out a dozen tampons and headed for the bathroom, tossing them into the basket under the sink. “You ever get toga parties in Alaska?” Paul didn’t go to college. He grew up in Oregon and was recruited out of high school for the pipeline. Stood out as a big kid. Moved to Alaska three months after graduation. That was fourteen years ago.
Another laugh. “No. But promise me, if you do decide to yield to peer pressure and dress in a toga, that you’ll take a picture for me.”
I smiled. “Promise. But I can guarantee you that I won’t.”
“Oh… never say never. You might get a few drinks in you and end up stealing some poor guy’s sheets.”
I folded the tampon box back into place and labeled it. “You know I don’t drink.”
You know I don’t drink. One truth. I think, looking back, that it was the only one I offered during that fifty-four-minute conversation.
Don’t tell Dr. Derek, but I’ve become much more comfortable with lying than I’ve ever been with telling the truth.
CHAPTER 31
Past
I WAS SEVENTEEN when I saw my first dead body. It was Summer, my sister, her head slumped over and stuck to our kitchen table, blood staining her blond strands. Maybe, had I been older, it wouldn’t have affected me so strongly. Maybe, had my eyes not moved to the right, to the lifeless form of my brother, it would have all ended differently. Maybe, had I stepped back and left the scene, I would have ended up normal.
“You gonna check out or not?” The snap of the voice jolted me out of my daze, my eyes stuck on the magazine shining out at me from beside the register, the blonde on the front bearing a slight resemblance to Summer. A not-as-cute Summer. I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my debit card. Swiped it through the reader without responding. Felt the moment the guy next in line shifted impatiently.
This was a horrible idea. I blame Paul. He’d started crunching on an apple halfway through our phone call, and I’d had the sudden urge for fruit. I could just picture a crisp green apple. Then I’d wanted grapes. And watermelon. I hadn’t had watermelon since Before. Before Summer’s dead head on that table. Before the night that had destroyed everything. A few years ago, I’d have just suffered. Ate a few extra TV dinners and ignored the cravings. But now, with Jeremy in my life, I’d gotten used to demanding. Texting him and asking for ice cream, or Olive Garden breadsticks and Alfredo, or whatever freakish thing my stomach was suddenly aware it was deprived of.
But I couldn’t exactly scream Jeremy out of my apartment, then ask him to run to the grocery store for a snack. Even relationship-impaired me knew that. Plus, his obsession over his sister’s dinner seemed to cause any outing of mine to be cause for debate. So it was out of principle that I put the tennis shoes—the same ones that started our damn fight—back on, grabbed my keys, and jogged down to my car.
Dr. Derek will flip out when I tell him, his controlled exhales audible through the phone receiver. He’ll be upset at me. Yell in the only way that he does: calm, controlled sentences laced with sexual intent, his hand unbuckling and drawing out his black leather belt, his eyes darkening as he orders me to bend over and pull up my skirt. At least that’s how I picture it. And maybe the threat of a Dr. Derek lecture had been another catalyst for my grocery run. It was apples and oranges for God’s sake. I could handle it. Of course, I had said that before to disastrous results. I waited for the receipt and vowed to not leave the apartment again. Not for at least two weeks.
Two weeks. It seemed an eternity, but a year ago, it would have been nothing. Fourteen days out of a thousand.
Yes. I’d carry my eight apples, two pears, three oranges, and two mangoes into my apartment and then stop. Stay. Return to the plan that works. Me: inside. Everyone else: outside. With Jeremy the lone exception.
I took a final, wistful breath of grocery store freedom, and pocketed the receipt. “Thanks.” I smiled at the cashier.
“Have a nice day and come back soon.”
“I will.” Not. I will not. I will behave.
CHAPTER 32
Past
THE PHONE RANG and I reached for it blindly, my hand thumping along the bed until I felt it.
“What,” I mumbled into the receiver, the word muffled by a down pillow wrapped in a thousand-thread-count pillowcase.
“Hey, baby.”
“Mike.”
“You don’t sound happy to hear from me.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s ten fifteen. You should have been online an hour ago. Get your ass up.”
I rolled over. Ten fifteen? That was weird. I never slept past eight. I lifted the phone from my ear and checked the display. Damn. He was right.
“What?” I repeated, my limbs loose and relaxed, going right back to sleep a serious consideration depending on the rate at which I could wrap up this call.
“Just wanted to let you know the final deposit just hit your Cayman account. You are officially paid back in full.”
“With interest?” I rolled back onto my stomach.
“My finger was the interest. I just wanted to give you the good news so that you could gush your thanks verbally.”
“Thanks.”
“Your gushing sucks.”
“Your timing sucks. Let me go back to sleep.”
“Come on… you should be up and working. This isn’t like you. What’s wrong?”
Sometimes I would have preferr
ed he didn’t have such a finger on my temperature. “I’m tired. Sleepy. You’re annoying me. I’d hang up on you and turn off my phone if I thought there was any way of avoiding you.”
He laughed. “No. It’s something else. Talk to me. Normally I’d have at least got a halfhearted slap on the back for replenishing your accounts.”
I said nothing. Closed my eyes and tried to sink further into the bed.
“Is it Jeremy?”
I didn’t respond.
“What, you guys get in a fight?”
I frowned. “Try not to sound so excited at the possibility.”
“That’s not excitement, it’s shock. About time the idiot wised up and ran away from you.”
“He didn’t ‘run away.’” I spit out the words. “And I’ll have you know I’m an excellent girlfriend.”
“In what way?” There was a flirtatious challenge in the words. “Please, you beautiful vixen. Tell me exactly what you do to him. Let me turn green with envy.”
I evaded the easy bait. “I didn’t have to buy him a house. There’s not a line in the girlfriend manual that says if you blow up his house that you have to replace it. So there. That counts for something. I am an awesome girlfriend.”
“Did you listen to what you just said?” He laughed. “The blowing up of his house cancels out any replacement. WAY cancels it out. Try again, princess.”
“I’m really done talking.” And I was. The phone call had only gone downhill after his update of money.
“Aww… don’t be like that. I’m sorry, babe. I’ll behave. Hey, you know I love you regardless. You can come over here and chop me to bits anytime. Just be naked when you do it.”