Good Girl, Bad Girl: A Lesbian Romance

by Mia Archer

  Dad let out another string of curses, and this time it went on so long that I thought I might’ve lost him. Mom looked up at him in shock as well. Apparently I’d finally hit one of his buttons.

  Sneaking out didn’t do anything for him. Discovering his daughter was a lesbian he took in stride. Finding out that the local PD had gotten in a little unnecessary roughness with his little girl?

  I guess that was the part where it crossed the line and really pissed him off.

  “What did they do? I want you to tell me everything. Did you catch their names?”

  I looked down at my phone and thought about everything he’d ever taught me about being in a situation like I found myself in tonight. I never thought I’d actually be in that situation. I was a good girl. I didn’t get in trouble with the police.

  Only tonight I had, and tonight I’d followed my dad’s advice and recorded everything.

  “Would it help if I told you I have the whole thing recorded on my phone?” I asked.

  Dad’s wide grin said more than any words ever could. He gestured for me to bring up the video, and the moment was only slightly ruined when I realized the phone was dead and we scrambled to find a charger.

  But find a charger we did, and if anything his grin only got bigger and bigger as he watched everything that happened just an hour ago over at the factory.

  18

  Robin

  I sighed and rolled over in my bed, thinking how nice it would be to get up and face the day again. I could go out with John and get some business done and then…

  I blinked. The sun streaming through my window in the back of the trailer was nothing new, but I thought I took care of that with some blackout curtains. I didn’t like the way it was always waking my little sister up early which meant I was waking up early too whether I liked it or not.

  I blinked a couple of times and put a hand up to my eyes to try and block out the light, but it didn’t do much. Finally I opened my eyes.

  And blinked a few more times.

  To say I was confused would be one hell of an understatement. I looked up at a fluorescent light overhead. One of them was flickering and it was really fucking irritating, but what could you do?

  I looked ahead and saw bars. Everything from last night came crashing back down around me.

  Oh. Right. I got in a bit of trouble with the local constable the night before. A bit of trouble and a bit of a beating. As I sat up my whole body groaned in protest. I was young enough that I knew my whole body wasn’t supposed to be groaning in protest when I got up. It was supposed to be a few more decades before that sort of thing started happening.

  Yeah, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck or something. A truck by the name of Jenkins. I scowled as I thought of that bitch.

  If I ever got some time alone with her I’d give her a piece of my mind. Assuming I could give her a piece of my mind without being brought up on charges for assaulting an officer which would be tough.

  I rubbed my head. I was getting the beginnings of a pounding headache there as well. Probably because of what Jenkins did to me, because I didn’t have all that much to drink the night before.

  The night before. Mari. I smiled. Jenkins might have beat the crap out of me, but she didn’t catch Mari. I could take some pleasure in that. If she had any brains she got as far away from that little wooded area as she could and she got out of there pretty damn fast.

  I just hoped she didn’t get into too much trouble when she got home to her parents. They seemed like the type who would actually care that their little girl had been out having a good time at a factory party. Care enough to ground her until she went off to college, and maybe then some.

  “Good morning,” a girl said from the other side of the room.

  I looked over and pulled back on my little cot. Surprisingly the thing was almost more comfortable than the old bed I had back home. This bed probably got replaced on the regular instead of being handed down from family member to family member over the years to save a few bucks to spend on booze or worse.

  “Good morning yourself,” I said to the girl who’d been rocking back and forth in the jail cell the night before coming down from whatever the hell it was she’d been on. Now that I was looking at her in the morning when she sat still she seemed a little younger than I’d initially thought.

  She still looked aged well beyond her years though. A lifetime of hard living and doing the hard stuff would do that to you. I knew people who’d graduated high school a few years ahead of me who already looked like they were in their fifties.

  Not that they were likely to make it to their fifties once they got into the really nasty stuff. I figured the world would be a much better place if people could just enjoy a little pot to take the edge off, but no one asked me.

  And so here I was stuck in a jail cell because one cop suspected I was dealing but couldn’t prove anything. I wondered how long they were going to keep me here without formally charging me with anything. If what I saw on TV was any indication, and I paid close attention to those sort of shows since knowing how the cops worked could save my business someday, they had to charge me with something or let me go.

  I really hoped they decided to let me go. I really hoped that not seeing John in here the night before meant he got rid of that backpack before anyone could finger him as the guy passing that stuff out.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the girl.

  “Tiffany,” she said. “You?”

  “Robin,” I said.

  She squinted at me and smiled. “I think I remember you! We had math together when I was a senior! Algebra!”

  I squinted right back at her. When I looked at her in this light she did almost look familiar, but that was impossible. I took algebra my freshman year and it was rare to have a senior in there unless she was just monumentally bad at math.

  But I did almost recognize her. She looked familiar, at least, but she was way too old to be in the same algebra class as me four years ago.

  I shrugged to myself. The hard stuff like meth and heroin that was destroying this community from the inside out as surely as all the factories leaving had destroyed it from the outside in could do that to a person.

  “Yeah, I think I remember you Tiffany,” I said.

  “So what are you in for?” she asked, her eyes darting to the cell entrance.

  I frowned. There was something about the way she was acting that set off alarm bells, and if there was one thing I’d learned since getting into the illicit substance business it was that when an alarm bell was going off it usually meant it was time for me to shut the hell up.

  She was probably hoping to get me to say something in here that would incriminate me. They never did read me my rights, but I wasn’t a lawyer and I had no idea if that even mattered if I was talking to a cellmate.

  I was an idiot to think no one was listening though. It would be easy enough for them to put a recorder around here somewhere. Maybe even in one of the cameras they had just outside the bars hanging from the ceiling on each cell, though those cameras looked ancient enough that sound might not’ve been an option when they were made.

  I sat back and closed my eyes. Didn’t say anything. The awkward silence stretched on for a moment, but I enjoyed it. Awkward silence meant I wasn’t giving anything up.

  If the cops didn’t know why they were holding me then I sure as fuck wasn’t going to start giving them reasons.

  “Fine, fuck you bitch,” Tiffany finally muttered.

  I heard something thumping. I opened one eye just a bit and saw that she’d resumed rocking back and forth, hitting her head against the wall every time she rocked. That couldn’t be comfortable.

  Since the conversation portion of the morning was over I leaned back and kept my eyes closed. Tried to calm myself down. Tried to tell myself that they couldn’t keep me in here forever.

  It didn’t do much to make me feel better though. There was so much that was up in the air. What if they found th
at backpack? What if someone out there said something? What if John said something?

  A clanging at the front of the cell brought my attention back to the real world. I looked over expecting to see someone with breakfast or something, though it occurred to me that I had no way of knowing what time it was. They didn’t have a clock anywhere in evidence.

  Probably because they’d read somewhere that it helped with breaking people or something. Well if they thought they were going to break me they had another thing coming.

  I frowned. Jenkins stood at the entrance and she didn’t look happy. Then again I’d never seen her look particularly happy when she was looking at me, but this morning she looked particularly unhappy.

  Hope rose inside me and I stomped down on it. If she wasn’t happy that could mean something happened that was going to result in me being let free, but I didn’t dare let myself hope.

  The universe hadn’t been that kind to me lately. I didn’t exactly believe in a higher power, not in the way Mari did what with going to church every weekend and talking about how her God was an awesome God or whatever they did in those churches that I hadn’t visited since a friend tricked me into going to their youth group in middle school, but right about now it seemed like there was a higher power out there somewhere that enjoyed fucking with me.

  “Come on Robin,” Jenkins said, spitting out every word like she’d just taken a bite of something she didn’t care for.

  “Why?” I asked.

  A simple question, but it seemed to piss Jenkins right off. Not that I gave a damn. There were those cameras to think of. This wasn’t like last night in the abandoned parking lot of an abandoned factory where she could do what she wanted without worrying about getting in trouble.

  People were watching now. That meant she had to play nice, and from the scowl on her face she knew it. Good.

  Jenkins rolled her eyes. “Would you please just come? You have a visitor.”

  I blinked in surprise at that. A visitor? Who on earth would want to visit me in here? For that matter who even knew I was in here? They hadn’t given me my one phone call either, though it was my understanding that wasn’t something they had to give me. More something Hollywood invented because it made for better drama.

  “Who’s visiting me?” I asked.

  My dad would either be at work or too drunk to go to work. It was amazing the man even still had a job. Mom was… well she wasn’t around anymore. The hard stuff had taken her just as surely as it was about to take the girl rocking back and forth on the other side of the jail cell.

  The only other person I could think of was the one person I really didn’t want to see in here right now. The only other person who could get in trouble if the cops realized she’d been out there the night before.

  Mari.

  John was smart enough to stay away from the cops if they were stupid enough to let him go. Mari was the only person I could think of who would march into the belly of the beast.

  That was the last thing I needed. The way she acted she’d probably say something that incriminated both of us without realizing what she was doing.

  Still, I felt a warm fluttering knowing that she was out there. Knowing that she’d come to see me. She was the first person in my life who’d ever cared that much. Other than my little sister, of course.

  “Are you coming or do you want me to leave you rotting in here?” Jenkins asked.

  I thought about that. If she left me rotting in here then Mari couldn’t say something that would incriminate both of us. Then again I’d be snubbing Mari and I really needed to see a friendly face.

  Jenkins moved as though she was going to pull me out of there whether or not I wanted her to. Whether or not there were cameras rolling. Weird. It was like she wasn’t giving me a choice even though she acted like I had a choice.

  “Get your ass out here now,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  And it was that more than anything else that drew my attention. That got me to stand and walk over to the cop who’d beat the shit out of me the night before with some unnecessary roughness.

  “They” were waiting for me? More than one person? I didn’t know who would come in a group to visit me, but this I had to see.

  19

  Robin

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I walked through the door. Maybe Mari. Maybe some of the other cops who’d been out there the night before. Maybe even John with the backpack full of illicit materials that weren’t quite legal in this state yet.

  What I did see was one hell of a surprise. Mari sat at one end of a table with an older guy who had a strong resemblance to her.

  Great. She was here with someone from her family. They were probably going to chew me out before they sent me back to that cell to rot for a little while longer. That was the only thing I could think of that would explain why the guy was sitting there looking so stern.

  He was done up in a suit and tie as well. Which was weird because no one else in the room was done up that formally.

  And there were a lot of other people in the room. There was an older guy who wore a uniform that was pretty elaborate sitting on the long part of the table, and there was the younger guy who’d been with Jenkins the night before sitting next to the old guy and not looking happy about being there.

  Not that I could blame him. There was a clock on the wall here and it told me that it was pretty early in the morning. Early enough that Jenkins and this other guy were either coming off their shift or they’d gone home and then been called back.

  Which made me wonder who the heck this old guy was. He had the look of a guy who was totally in charge of the situation and he knew it. He also didn’t look happy to be here this early in the morning on a Saturday.

  “Right. Well I’m glad we’re all here this morning,” the older guy said.

  “Glad to see you Chief,” the man sitting next to Mari said.

  Then he turned to face me. Kept that smile on his face. Okay then. Not what I was expecting. I figured he’d bitch me out for tempting his little girl or something, but there was none of that.

  “Are you okay Robin?” he asked. “I understand you had a bit of trouble the night before.”

  “Yeah, well you’ll understand if I don’t want to say much about that,” I said.

  Jenkins took a seat and from the way she glared at me it looked like I’d said the right thing. This guy might be acting like he was my friend or something, but I knew how the world worked. He was going to leave soon enough and when that happened I’d be back in Jenkins’ world, and something told me there was going to be a world of hurt if I made her look bad.

  I was still sore from everything she’d done last night. I wasn’t going to risk pissing her off. Hell no!

  “Right, well I want to talk about last night. I’d also like to offer my services to you if you’d like,” the guy said. “I’m Dan, by the way. Mari’s dad.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. Who was this guy that he was acting so friendly to me? Things like this didn’t happen to people like me. I was trash from the trailer park on the outskirts of town. People in suits weren’t supposed to care about what happened to me.

  Then I looked at Mari. She nodded slightly when she saw me looking at her. I had a feeling she had something to do with this. It was the only explanation.

  I thought back to last night. Thought to all the times I’d assumed she was going to judge me because that’s what people from her side of town did. Thought to all the times she’d called me out on that bullshit because it was just that. Bullshit.

  I’d had to learn not to judge her before she had a chance to prove me wrong about what she thought of me. Maybe I should do the same with this guy.

  “What sort of services are we talking about?” I asked.

  “I’m a lawyer. I do a bit of criminal defense and family law. You have to do a little bit of everything to keep a business running in a small town like this.”

  He grinned as though h
e’d just made a fabulous joke. Maybe that one killed at lawyer conferences or wherever the heck else he used it, but I wasn’t in a very joking mood right about now.

  “I can’t afford…”

  Dan held up a hand and looked down at Mari who beamed up at him. And in that moment I knew this guy would do just about anything to make his daughter happy. He looked at her like she was the light of his world.

  It filled me with a pang of regret looking at him looking at Mari like that. I’d never seen my dad looking at me like that. He was always too tired from working his two jobs to do much of anything other than grunt and sit down in front of the TV with a couple of beers to take the edge off.

  Seeing how it could be on the other side was a stark reminder of what I didn’t have in my life. It made me wish that I had a relationship with my dad like what I saw with Mari and her dad, but of course that wasn’t in the cards for me.

  “I can assure you that any work I do for you will be completely free,” he said. “Besides, with a case like yours I’d be more than happy to take it on for free because of how fun it’s going to be.”

  “Now hold on a minute there Dan,” the Chief said. “I know what you told me over the phone to get me down here, but those accusations are pretty serious.”

  The smile disappeared from Dan’s face and he reached out to pat the chief on an aged hand. I wondered how I could ever hope to get a fair representation out of this guy if he was chummy with the chief of police, but he was also the only hope I had right about now.

  “I know Harold,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have called you out here if I didn’t feel like I had a good reason. I know how much you cherish your days off.”

  “Yes,” the Chief said, and he turned an angry eye to the two officers sitting beside him. The younger guy, I’d forgotten his name, squirmed uncomfortably under that look.

  Jenkins didn’t react quite as visibly. She took his glare in stride, and as soon as he’d turned away she turned and was glaring right at me.