“What?”
I was too stunned to respond at first. He hadn’t answered my calls in days. In his defense, I asked for money a lot. He’d felt sorry for me for a good solid two weeks after we broke up, but that deep well of tens and twenties had dried up quickly. I got a meal or two out of him the following week. After that, I couldn’t even get him to answer the phone when I called.
“The store got broken into,” I said. “Can I come over?” He knew I lived here now. I’d made that perfectly clear the last time he took me out for a pity lunch. I’d been angling for an overnight—or two, or three, or permanently—but all I’d gotten was a to-go box full of both our uneaten entrees. And I’d eaten both of them—mine for dinner that night and his for lunch the following day.
He sighed long and low into the phone. “Angie, we can’t keep doing this.”
“I don’t feel safe here tonight, Chris. They kicked the door open. I can’t lock it.”
He stayed quiet for a long time. I could hear a television on in the background. Must be nice to have a TV. I wondered what he was wearing. As I waited for him to answer, I started picking up the shit all over the floor. It didn’t look like anything had been stolen. Someone just decided to come in here and fuck this place over. Well two birds, one stone, right? Because it had royally fucked me over at the same time.
“I have someone over here right now,” he said finally, and sounded kind of ashamed about it. He clearly hadn’t wanted me to know.
My eyes burned and I swiped at them angrily before my tears started. We weren’t dating anymore. He could do whatever—or whoever—he wanted. So could I, come to think of it. Maybe I shouldn’t have let Officer Tall, Dark, and Dangerous leave earlier.
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t trust myself to say anything else. A solid lump had lodged itself into the back of my throat and I was still too close to bawling my eyes out. I didn’t want him to hear me break down. Again. I focused on getting the books off the floor, taking them one by one to the counter. Whoever had broken in had thrown everything behind the counter all over the ground too, probably searching for cash. Too bad I didn’t keep money in the store anymore. Most customers paid with a credit card, and I used a Square Card reader for that. If they paid cash, the minute they walked out of the door, I closed the store and walked my happy ass down to the bank three streets over. I wasn’t going to risk losing another damned dollar after getting robbed blind seven weeks ago. Losing that five hundred bucks had dropped my life into such a deep hole, I was still falling to the bottom of it.
“Maybe we can get lunch or something tomorrow,” Chris said.
“Sure,” I replied. The threat of tears was over. So many shitty things had happened to me. What was one more? And, besides, if he felt sorry for me, he might take me someplace nice. I could turn up the pathetic—not that I’d need to turn it up very far—and get some cash out of the deal. I was under no illusions about getting back together with Chris, but I was all for riding the fuck out of that gravy train while I still had a viable ticket.
“Okay.” He sounded relieved. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
I hung up and dropped the phone onto the counter so I could gather up the rest of the books. By the time I swept the glass from the floor and put all the books away, it was nearly one in the morning. I was deadbeat tired. I turned off the lights up front and dragged my sorry ass back to my makeshift bedroom. I stripped off my jeans and shirt, dropped my cellphone onto the cardboard box I’d repurposed into a bedside table, and got into the cot in just my bra and panties, pulling the blanket and sheets up to my chin. I closed my eyes, laying there for a long time, my thoughts turning in the racetrack of my mind, roaring so loud I couldn’t fall asleep. After a few more minutes of trying to plunge into the sweet forgetfulness of dreams, I gave up. Groaning, I reached for my phone. I still had Chris’s Netflix password, so I could finish the movie I’d started last night. The nail shop next door had unsecured Wi-Fi. If they’d had an unsecured refrigerator, that would have been great. But I’d take what I could get.
I was about to click on my Netflix app but went for the browser instead. I ran a search on Officer Scott and was rewarded with way too many hits. I narrowed it down by adding the city name, and clicked on the first article which was dated from January of this year, just over seven months ago.
Detective Brandon Scott Put on Administrative Leave Pending Investigation in East Park Slaying.
His official headshot was right below the headline. It was definitely him. Intrigued, I read on. There’d been some kind of high profile arrest of a drug kingpin late last fall. A few confidential informants were willing to turn state’s evidence, but the prosecution’s real jewel had been the kingpin’s sister, who was ready to snitch on her powerful brother. She’d been placed under protective custody and hidden in a safe house until the trial. Apparently, our dear Officer, then Detective, Scott started fucking her on the side at some point in the investigation. I could believe it. I’d seen how smoking hot he was and I swore the air sizzled around him. If he’d leaned in to kiss me, I’m not sure I’d have pushed him away. Well, maybe at first…
I shook my head, dislodging the thoughts about doing nasty things to Officer Scott back into the ether so I could read the rest of the article.
One of the kingpin’s loyal thugs followed Officer, then Detective, Scott as he drove to the safe house for a little late night booty call. Said thug waited patiently while the sister and the detective fucked each other’s brains out. As soon as the detective left, the thug called in some reinforcements. They went upstairs, kicked the door to the place open, blew away the officer on guard duty, and beat the kingpin’s sister to death for daring to testify against her brother. But the officer on guard managed to live through the attack. As soon as he regained consciousness, he relayed his sorry tale about Scott’s visit to the sister and the ambush that followed shortly after. Without the sister’s testimony, the case fell apart.
I went back to the search results and read a few more articles about my friendly neighborhood policeman. After the worst of the shit storm died down a little, Brandon Scott managed to avoid being fired outright, but he was demoted considerably, going from detective to uniformed beat cop. Apparently, this hadn’t been the first time his dick and an informant crossed paths. There were other incidents too. A local reporter had written an awful lot about this cop. He was a bad boy, and he just couldn’t keep it in his pants.
I smiled in the dark. It was nice to see someone else whose life sucked as hard as mine.
I curled up with my phone and found that, finally, I was able to sleep.
Chapter Two
I didn’t open the shop in the morning. Not that anyone was waiting to beat the doors down or anything. I spent the time getting the place back in order. In the light of day, the damage didn’t look that bad. I decided to forgo calling the insurance company to make a claim. I got a locksmith out to fix the door and put it on the only one of my credit cards that wasn’t maxed out. Things were looking slightly better by the time lunch rolled around.
My phone chirped as I was admiring my handy work. It was a text from Chris.
I can’t make lunch today, but if you stop by the office, I’ll give you some cash to fix your door.
“Fucker,” I muttered. But damn right I’d take his money. He didn’t need to know that the locksmith had felt sorry for little old me and significantly slashed his normal rate. I might have made it seem like I was open to the idea of him taking me out sometime. Whatever. It had only cost me fifty bucks. Chris was likely to give me more than a hundred.
I shot a message back to him.
I’ll be by in an hour.
I left the shop, locking the door behind me, and strode up the street. I’d open after lunch if I felt like it. I found I had less and less motivation each day. That was something else Chris had blasted me for. Getting held at gunpoint had zapped the rest of my flagging excitement for owning the shop. But I couldn’t walk away f
rom it. I was going down with that ship eventually. I just couldn’t decide how quickly I wanted to steer myself into the iceberg on the horizon.
Chris worked for an ad agency uptown. I hadn’t showered since last night and was a little funky from running around the store all morning, so I shot him a text when I got to his building.
Here. Could you come down? I’ve been working all morning. I don’t smell great.
I loitered on the sidewalk, waiting for his reply.
Be down in a second.
I paced the sidewalk, always a little nervy to see my ex. He’d kept going, his life on the same upward trajectory as when we’d met. But mine had gone straight into the toilet. He didn’t like his job but he was good at it. I’d loved the bookstore when I first opened it, before I began to understand that it was a vortex of shit that would quickly suck away every good thing in my life. Before that, I’d worked tirelessly to find the space, get the small business loan, sink my savings into renovations and inventory.
I leaned back against the glossy front of the building, just casually watching the activity on the street. My eyes fell on a face I knew. Officer Scott was across the road, staring at me, his dark eyes sending their sizzling bolts of lightning over to where I stood.
I closed my open mouth and frowned at him. Had he followed me here? I wanted to run across the street and confront him, but Chris would be down any minute. I watched him watching me. I didn’t like thinking about him following me, but it thrilled me too. I’d felt something between us last night. Something hot. Something I might like to explore if he caught me in the right daring, needy mood.
Officer Scott reached and grabbed a handful of his own crotch, right there on the street. My body seized, the heat running through me and stoking the itch between my legs. He liked me watching him. Did he want to do something about what I’d felt between us? Before I could find out, he strolled off. I watched the fine sight of his uniformed ass until he disappeared from view. My body relaxed. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been.
Chris came out several minutes later, dressed in a dark gray suit and blue paisley tie. I’d given him that tie for his last promotion. We’d gone out for drinks and dinner, coming in late at night and fucking like crazy, both of us giggling at his good fortune. He knew he was seeing me today, and he put on that tie. I didn’t know if he was trying to make me feel better or worse.
He kept an awkward distance between us—close enough for us to talk but far enough away that I wouldn’t try to hug him or anything. I hadn’t seen him in a week and a half. His light hair was trimmed a little shorter, very tidy around his ears and the back of his neck and longer on the top of his head, slicked back so it looked professional. At home, he let it do whatever it wanted after getting out of the shower.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I parroted, grinning a little, like none of this bothered me. Because it didn’t. The more I told myself that, the easier it would be to actually believe it one day. My sorry dating life was the least of my worries. I had a crippling business loan to pay off. Maxed out credit cards. A shop that sold physical books when everyone wanted to read using an app on their phones. Holy shit, I could go on and on.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few folded bills. “I’m sorry about your shop.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I hope this helps repair some of the damage.”
I took the money and pocketed it without counting, my heart going pitter-patter at the sight of the twenty on top. The folded stack felt heavy. I’d count it as soon as Chris went back inside.
“Thanks,” I said. “It wasn’t too bad. Just the door.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds more, like a couple of bashful kids. It was hard to believe that, just last month, I’d had Chris to lean on. Now I was alone. I mean, he’d been drifting away those last few months, but I at least had the semblance of a relationship.
“I have to go back in,” Chris said. “Shoot me a message and let me know how things are going.”
“Sure thing.”
He hesitated and I thought he might step into a hug, but he backed off, smiling shyly—that same grin that had reeled me in on the night we met—and went inside. I watched him walk back to bank of elevators on the far wall and step into one. Once it had swallowed him, I pulled the cash out of my pocket and counted it. Two hundred twenty bucks. Only the top bill had been a twenty. The other four were fifties.
“Thank you, Chris,” I whispered. I stuffed the money into my bra, not willing to chance having my purse snatched on the way to the bank, and strode off down the street.
*
To celebrate my unexpected windfall, I decided to watch the sunrise at the park. When the weather was nice, like it was today, Chris and I used to pack a picnic dinner—sandwiches, wine, some froufrou dessert from the corner market, the whole nine yards—and a blanket and head to the park down the street from his apartment. I didn’t go to that park now. I went to one closer to the shop. And I didn’t pack a picnic lunch. But I did bring a bottle of wine, the cheapest I could find at the neighborhood bodega.
I parked it on a bench near the water, looking across the river. After scanning my surroundings for cops, I opened the paper bag, unscrewed the top, and took a good long pull on the bottle. It tasted like cheap shit, but I was sure I’d stop caring once it started working its magic. I hadn’t been drunk in a long time. Not since I lost my apartment and Chris in the same week. Good times.
I took another few gulps and rested the butt of the bottle on my leg. Leaning back against the bench, I watched the sun drop slowly out of the sky, the light blinding on the fast moving water. To my right, cars were streaming over the bridge from one side of the river to the other. Not for the first time, I considered climbing to the top of that bridge and swan diving to the shallow water below. But I didn’t really want to die, I just wanted the fuck out of this mess.
I put the bottle to my lips, tilted my head back, and drank until I’d drained more than half of it away. That was nice. I could feel the buzz moving through me now. I needed to enjoy this as it wouldn’t happen again for a while. I’d skipped dinner tonight to justify buying the bottle.
I watched the rest of the sunrise, not really impressed by the colors—I sat out here a lot, usually sober—usually happy to be somewhere other than the bookstore. As the light drained from the sky, I sipped on the wine. It still tasted terrible, but I was starting to care a lot less.
“First code violations, now public intoxication?” A deep voice rumbled from behind me.
I turned, gasping, and nearly dropped the bottle. That would have been a true tragedy.
It was Officer Scott.
“Could you get any creepier?” I asked, trying to smile. “Did you follow me here?”
He chuckled. He was even sexier in the muted light right before twilight fell. “Don’t flatter yourself. I patrol this neighborhood.”
I tittered a hiccupy little laugh at the thought of him patrolling the streets on foot. It had to burn his ass after working so hard to become a detective.
“Aren’t you a little old to be a beat cop?” I asked. I turned to look at the river again, taking another deep swallow of my shitty wine.
He didn’t answer, just kept burning me with the intensity of his dark-eyed stare.
“What about this afternoon? Do you patrol the financial district uptown too? Because I saw you watching me from across the street.”
His shapely mouth curled into a small grin. “So what if I was?”
“After the shit you’ve done, they’ll fire your ass for stalking the victim of a robbery.” I didn’t know how I’d suddenly become so bold. I liked it and I could see he did too, even if he did seem to burn hotter at the words I spoke.
He stepped closer to the bench, staring down at me, the heat in his dark eyes setting my skin on fire. Or maybe that was the alcohol. Either way, I didn’t want the sensation to end.
“I could arrest you rig
ht now for drinking in the park.”
I leaned my head back and sucked the rest of the wine from the bottle. “Do it,” I said. When he didn’t move, I launched the bottle at the sidewalk in front of us. It shattered, the glass sparkling in the last of the sunlight. I stared up at him defiantly.
He raised his eyebrows, his smile deepening. “Public intoxication and littering.” He took me by the arm, just under the armpit, and hauled me up from the bench. He slapped handcuffs over my wrists before I could twist away, trapping my hands at the front of my body.
“Hey!” I cried, but he had an iron grip on my arm.
“I tried to warn you, Angela.”
Since when were we on a first name basis?
“Don’t take your shitty life out on me!”
“What are you talking about?” He squeezed my arm a little harder. Not enough to hurt. Yet.
“I read all about you. How you were a detective who fucked some witness and ended up getting knocked down to a patrol officer after you got her killed.” I sneered up at him, basking in the heat of his glare. The alcohol was working through my veins. I felt heedless and full of tingling power. I was miles beyond caring what happened to me.
“Is that what you thought about when you were curling into your little cot in the back of your store?” he asked, pulling me closer to him. “Me fucking some girl?”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks. I didn’t get a chance to respond before he started dragging me around the back of the bench.
“You’re going downtown,” he said, and pushed me over a little, one giant hand at the back of my neck so I had to put my hands on the back of the bench to catch myself. “Stay there so I can check you for weapons.”
“I don’t have any fucking weapons!” I snapped. We were alone in the park. No one came here after dark but me. It was dangerous. I had pepper spray in my purse and a what the fuck do I have to lose attitude.
His hands dropped onto my waist and I jumped.
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