Wicked Me

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  Holy hell, that tongue.

  But he’d acted distant these last two weeks, not toward me exactly but like something was bothering him and he didn’t want me to know. Every time he and Riley were in the same room together, they spoke in low voices until I came in and they both snapped their mouths closed.

  Not before I heard the name Rose, though. The Cleary kid sister who always had a smile on her face as brilliant as her sunshine-colored pigtails, who often wanted to play yellow bird tag, and who was mysteriously absent from all conversations with me. Curious, yes, but hardly political career ending.

  On Friday afternoon when I had just about completed my second full week of my internship, I checked my phone in the staff break room to discover a text from Sam. It was a picture of a house on tall stilts in the middle of the ocean with the words Zombie Apocalypse Genius across the top. He’d likely sent it to all his contacts, not just me, but a fuzzy ball of warmth still swelled inside my chest.

  Because I had a real, honest-to-goodness question to ask him, I texted him back.

  Geniuses unite! Do you have cowboy boots?

  I dropped my phone in my purse, but a soft, muffled ding indicated another text. According to the clock on the wall, I still had four minutes until I had to continue digitizing and translating a beautiful old Spanish photo album, so I checked my phone again.

  Are these two thoughts related? his text read.

  A ridiculous grin blossomed across my face. HA! No. Going to a cowboy bar tonight with some interns.

  Does size matter?

  I frowned. Are we still talking about cowboy boots?

  Yes. And a second later: Pervert.

  I burst into laughter.

  “My, my,” Charlotte said, shutting her locker. One side of her head had been freshly buzzed while the other, longer side of her hair spiraled over one shoulder, the purple tips flirting with her sleeved-tattoo. She arched her eyebrows quizzically. “Someone’s making you blush more than Nicole does, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Hey, I resemble that remark.” Nicole was darkening the numbered ink on the backs of her hands with a Spongebob pen wrapped around her neck with a cord. The red tint to her cheeks hadn’t faded any since an unfortunate conservation incident a few days ago involving too much bleach and a nineteenth century cartoon.

  I shrugged, trying, and probably failing, to be nonchalant about my own facial color. “His name is Sam, and he’s...” I had no idea how to finish that thought, so I shook my head down at his next text.

  I don’t have any cowboy boots.

  Me: Then why did you ask about size?

  Charlotte slammed her locker. “Sam, huh? Why don’t you invite him along tonight?”

  “Uh...” I didn’t really have a good reason not to. “Maybe I will.”

  “Well, come on.” She nodded toward the door. “We don’t want Janice to give us her evil eye for being late, now do we?”

  I quickly stashed my phone in my locker, but glanced at Sam’s last text.

  You asked about boots so I thought we were getting personal. ;)

  Getting personal with Sam. A rush of heat zipped to my center, and I bit my lip on a breathy chuckle. I was pretty sure we had ventured far past getting personal already.

  SAM DIDN’T GO WITH us. He wasn’t home when I got there, so I texted him an invitation. His reply back disappointed me even though it had no reason to.

  Not my scene. Have fun.

  So I was home with Riley, contemplating what to do with myself during the hour I had before I was to meet Nicole and Charlotte at the cowboy bar.

  Riley knocked back the rest of his beer in the kitchen while he tapped out a text on his phone then laid it on the island. “You sure you don’t want to come hang out with me on U Street?”

  If I didn’t have other plans, I might have considered it, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hang out with him again after the way he’d acted at the restaurant. I was seriously beginning to wonder if too many years in D.C. rotted people from the inside out. Riley, like Rick, wasn’t who I thought he was. I wanted to give him a chance to prove me wrong, but not tonight.

  “No offense, but you’re the wrong chromosome,” I said from my perch on the stool at the island. “My fellow interns have insisted since we couldn’t do this last weekend.” Nicole had had some emergency with her turtle, Jimmy, and I was too afraid to ask about details.

  “Well...” He came closer, his beer breath leading the way, and patted my hip on his way past. “You know my number if you change your mind, sweetheart.”

  I stared at his back, my jaw in my lap, while an uneasy shiver raced across my shoulders. Sweetheart? Really? As far as I was concerned, that made me sound like more of a stranger to him than he was to me. Did he not remember the field trip to the National Air and Space Museum in sixth grade when the creeper who kept following us called me that, and I flipped out? Apparently not.

  As his footsteps tromped upstairs, I traced the marbled pattern on the granite while I cut my gaze from it to his phone and back again. He hadn’t locked it, and the screen still glowed. Curiosity flashed my hand out. I hated what I was doing, what I was about to do, because I didn’t want to be one of those people. But I guessed I was. Hide your phones, everyone.

  I zipped through his contacts until I found one for Rose, and it listed an address in Pasadena, Maryland. Not far away at all. I could Google the address, maybe find something incriminating, not for Rick but for myself, and then lie to him if I actually found some worthy information. Which I probably wouldn’t since it was just an address.

  Or I could’ve sat there and continued to examine the granite countertop. My inquisitiveness was part of what led me toward a career in libraries. Of course, it was also part of what led to a pregnancy at sixteen. I shouldn’t want to know what I might find, and yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to just let all of this go without knowing something. Maybe I could help the Clearys if they needed it. And maybe there was a special place in hell for snoopers.

  I pushed to my feet and headed to the front door where I’d left my purse. A quick run-through on the internet probably wouldn’t yield much. Might as well begin with that and suffer eternal damnation later.

  My fingers flew over the keypad, and soon several listings for a drug rehabilitation center scrolled down the page. Oh my God. Was that where Rose was? Free-spirited, sweet Rose? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine her needing help for an addiction. But I supposed it would be difficult for anyone to come to terms with something like that, especially family. Poor Riley. Poor Sam.

  My mind whirring, I wandered back into the kitchen, and because the shower sounded upstairs—and because hell could make a nice vacation if I brought some flame-proof books—I searched through the rest of Riley’s phone. There were about three thousand photos of him posing with beautiful women and almost as many texts. Most of the texts listed specific sender names, but a few read Unknown or Blocked. Interest piqued, I opened a random one.

  Abandoned warehouse

  4 miles E of city

  2 pm sharp

  Bring shovel.

  Shiny, happy, legitimate things usually didn’t go down at abandoned warehouses. I didn’t need a Lisa Montgomery book to clue me in to that. So what had Riley been doing at one? Whatever it was, it felt shady to a dark degree.

  LATER, NICOLE, CHARLOTTE, and I sat at a table near the wooden dance floor while twangy country music blasted through the speakers. The more white wine I tipped back, the faster the cowboy hats blurred and do-si-doed past. At first, the sawdust smell in the club had energized me, but the more people danced, the more the smell soured with body odor.

  The three of us didn’t wear cowboy boots. In fact, we looked far removed from the red, paisley bandanas hanging off chins, tight jeans, and belt buckles as big as my head. Charlotte wore silvery, futuristic makeup with a silver and black pin-striped dress she had poured herself into. The unshaved portion of her hair was arranged into tiny p
inned coils all over the side of her head, giving her a sophisticated dominatrix-type look. Nicole wore the same gray skirt suit she had on at the library, complete with her giant tie-dyed parachute bag. Her Spongebob pen peeked one giant eye between the buttons on her chest, as if reading the newly inked numbers all over her hands.

  I wore what I would wear to bed, shorts and my Reading is Sexy T-shirt, with my hair pulled up in a ponytail and my black hipster glasses perched on my nose. Now all I needed was a book, someone to turn down the music, and maybe one of those old-fashioned lanterns dangling from the high-beamed ceiling so I could party like it was 1899.

  If Sam had come with us, I would’ve made more of an effort. Probably. It really bothered me that he hadn’t come, but it wasn’t like I owned him or anything. He had his own life, and major spoilers ahead, but I wasn’t always a part of it.

  I numbed this feeling and all the rest with another glass of white wine.

  “Hey, whoa. Save some for the rest of us, Paige,” Charlotte shouted over the music and winked. “Okay, drinking game time. If you can’t answer in less than three seconds, you have to take a drink. What or who were you just thinking about?” She pointed both index fingers across the table at Nicole. “Go.”

  “Uh, curtains,” she said with a wistful smile.

  Charlotte held her double fingers on Nicole with a confused tilt to her mouth, then aimed them at me. “Sam,” she said at the same time I did.

  “Damn it, you’re good,” I said and slammed back more wine even though I’d answered in plenty of time. “What about you? What were you thinking about?”

  The first trace of worry I’d ever seen in Charlotte’s dark eyes sobered me enough to sit up and take notice. “The most efficient way to chop off a leg.”

  “What?” I asked over a sudden outburst of yee-haws on the dance floor.

  She sloshed the remaining whiskey around in her glass. “My leg hurts, is all.”

  Nicole leaned toward her, her Spongebob necklace knocking into the fancy umbrella in her strawberry daiquiri. “Don’t research what it could be on the internet because it will tell you that you’ll be dead by morning.”

  Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut for a second, then patted Nicole’s hand with a grin. “Thanks for that. Next question. If your life was a book, what would it be? Nicole.”

  “The Hunger Games?”

  I turned to stare at her. “Really? How?”

  Nicole shrugged her hair into her face and took a huge gulp of her drink.

  “Next.” Charlotte’s double guns landed on me.

  Crap. I knew the true answer easily, but saying it out loud would surely earn me some strange looks.

  Charlotte swirled her hands through the air. “One, two...”

  “Lolita,” I blurted.

  “Holy shit.” Charlotte sat back in her chair, her gaze steady. “You two went all in with two of the most banned books of all time. Nice lady balls, you two. Is it weird that I like you both even more now?”

  “Yes.” I nodded slowly, her words, the twangy music, all the alcohol flowing through me like syrup. “It’s a little weird, lady balls and all.”

  She lifted her glass to me. “I’m perfectly okay with that.”

  Nicole linked her arm through mine, either a show of support or to get ready for another trip to the bathroom, I had no idea. But there wasn’t any judgement coming from either of them, no slut-shaming, no tough questions. It made me feel more than a little euphoric, though it did make me wonder about Nicole. How could her life be anything like The Hunger Games?

  She licked the end of the umbrella in her drink and pointed it at Charlotte. “Your turn. What’s your life’s book?”

  “Me? Without the lesbianism, I’m a Batgirl comic book, baby.”

  We laughed while my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text from an unknown number, but I viewed it anyway. A picture of my face stared back, my dark hair splayed out over a pillow, my naked flesh captured from a lifetime ago. And behind the photo, a mahogany desk with the nameplate Janice McClure.

  I buried the phone’s screen against my thigh as a shiver of disgust raced down my back. Had she seen the pictures yet? Because if she had, my dreams of working at the Library of Congress were through.

  “You okay, Paige?” Nicole asked. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”

  My phone buzzed again, and I jerked my head in a nod. Angling the screen away from her, I peered at the new text.

  You’ve had plenty of time.

  She comes in on Saturdays.

  Give me something useful and this pic will vanish.

  17

  Paige

  I SENT IT. I SENT THE address for Rose’s rehabilitation center to Rick. And afterward, I felt like a big fucking coward. It wasn’t anyone’s business where Rose was, especially his. Would it even be enough to make the nude picture of me disappear from Janice’s desk?

  Soon my phone vibrated with another text from Rick. A picture of Janice’s desk, emptied, along with the words Good girl. Talk soon.

  It didn’t make me feel any better about myself, and it sure as fuck made me hate Rick even more. Good girl. That made me want to throat punch him, and I didn’t have a violent bone in my body. Maybe the address was enough for now, but there were plenty of senators with family problems. I had a feeling he would be back for more fuel to add to the fire.

  To drown my self-loathing, I made sure we played about a thousand more rounds of Charlotte’s drinking game, while the back of my mind spun a wobbly circle around what to do next. I could call Her Number, beg her parents to have a paternity test performed, and then drag Rick’s career down with mine. But that wouldn’t solve anything. Not yet anyway, but I was too drunk for any more rational braining tonight.

  I came home feeling like my back teeth were floating and swayed up the steps through the quiet, dark house with a finger pressed to my lips as a reminder to not fall down and go boom.

  Riley’s car was gone but Sam’s wasn’t, so he was probably asleep. The thought of him sleeping magnetized me toward his closed door. What did he look like while he slept? What if he wasn’t sleeping?

  We had the entire house to ourselves. To talk. To apologize for my text to Rick about Rose’s whereabouts. Through a closed door. Like adults. While one of them was drunk off my ass. Yep, this plan had zero holes in it.

  Oh, who was I kidding? My entire body buzzed with possibilities, which made it difficult to form a fist with a shaking hand. I rapped on the door softly.

  He was probably asleep. Maybe I should go back to my room and play with Slave. Maybe I should knock a little harder.

  Still no answer.

  I could talk to him tomorrow. That way, I wouldn’t disturb him. I would just have to redirect the guilt I felt over becoming a traitorous spy, crumple it up into a more manageable size, and toss it on top of the mountainous pile of shame called the rest of my life. I’d learned to forget before; I could do it again.

  Yet standing outside his door in an otherwise empty house excited me so much, it nearly buckled my knees with want. The ache between my legs drew me even closer to his door. My face grew hotter as I lifted a hand to the doorknob.

  Just a peek to see if he was okay. As I pushed inward, slivers of moonlight angled across my knuckles from the window. A man with a bow and arrow I recognized from Sam’s zombie show squinted from a poster above the dresser in the corner, judging me, or maybe urging me on. Jeans and T-shirts lay in heaps all over the floor. A fan spun lazily overhead, pushing his leather and oak scent all around the room. He lay on his bed in the dark with only a thin sheet covering his lower half. His chest, carved with muscle and shadows, rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

  I stood there staring, my lips pushed together to hold back a moan. Even sleep looked good on him. I should’ve left instead of ogling him like some kind of voyeur, but he was too gorgeous to look away from. My fingers twitched to touch him, to slide my hands down that beautiful body, to taste him. To make
him come. To make me forget my betrayal.

  A flush bloomed across my skin, and my breaths became pants. I gripped the doorknob tighter to keep myself upright. My blood sizzled with a kind of longing I’d never felt before. There was no turning back, not even if I tried.

  Every step inside his bedroom charged the air with an electrical intensity that peppered my arms with goose bumps despite the heat. Just a taste, a way to make what I’d done up to him. Wow, was I the master of talking myself into something, or what?

  I stopped at the foot of his bed while struggling to contain my nervous breaths. His full lips turned down at the corners in a frown, and I licked my own at the thought of his mouth all over me. They had been all over me. Devouring and claiming me like no one else had.

  The memory ignited my body once again. My hips rocked forward into the wooden post of the footboard, and I grasped it to keep from flipping over onto the bed like some crazy person.

  God, what was wrong with me? I’d been sloppy drunk before, but was it normal to be so goddamned horny? Or was I under some kind of sexual spell Sam had concocted?

  Just a taste. Just until he comes.

  With slick hands, I reached for the sheet covering the lower half of his body. The sheet slid down, down, revealing a very naked, and a very hard, Sam Cleary.

  I swallowed at the sight of his impressive length, at the way the moonlight glinted off the patch of blond curls, the long, lean columns of his legs. The man was gorgeous.

  I didn’t need him. But fuck if I didn’t want him.

  Slowly, carefully, I hoisted a leg over the footboard and hoped the mattress didn’t squeak under the press of my knee. I followed with my other leg and waited with breath held for any sign of movement from him. If he woke up now, I had no idea what I would do. Bend over and start sucking? No, I wanted to wake him gradually, make him think he was still dreaming, then when he realized he wasn’t, I wanted to see that realization dawn all over his face, just like the smiles he reserved for me.