Trigger

by Julia Derek

  I gave Ricki a sharp look. “Exactly—for now. Don’t think for a second I won’t pay back Dylan every cent he’s spending on my therapy.”

  “Oh my, you’re such a noble person… I’m sure Dylan doesn’t mind paying for it. It’s not like he’s poor like you and me.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s a matter of principle.”

  Ricki nodded, looking pensive. “I guess you’re right about that. Maybe I’d feel the same way if I were in your shoes.”

  “I’m sure you would. I’m glad Leslie is as cool as she is, though.”

  “Yeah, it would suck if you couldn’t stand her, huh… When’s your next appointment?”

  “Saturday. Hey, do you think I should invite Dylan to Nixon’s birthday party?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “So you don’t think it’s too early?”

  Ricki shook her head. “No. You might as well introduce him to the rest of the crew. So they get to see who has finally made Nina Tyler believe in love and relationships.”

  “Hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Just because I’m seeing him again doesn’t mean I now believe in relationships. Besides, for all I know it might be over next week the way things have been going.”

  Ricki chuckled. “I seriously doubt that. If you could see yourself when you mention his name, you’d agree with me. And considering that he’s going out of his way to help you get better, it’s fair to say that he’s not about to dump you any time soon, either. No, the only way the two of you won’t last is if you accidentally kill him.” Ricki pulled in her breath, her red lips turning into an O. The hand that was reaching for another of my tresses flew up to her mouth to cover it. “Oops! Sorry.”

  I cracked up. “Don’t worry about it. So I guess I’ll invite him then.”

  Dylan

  Feeling heavy, I climbed the stairs that led to Nina’s second-level apartment. All the way over to her house I had rehashed my talk with Laura earlier in my head, telling myself that just because Laura caught Hugo crying when reading about Emma didn’t mean he was innocent. Guilt, a bad conscience over what he had done, might have triggered those tears. Not sorrow. The man had after all thrown out Emma from his apartment a day before her death, callously dumping her, according to Emma. Would a man who loved a woman ever do such a thing? I didn’t think so. And not when it was so uncharacteristic of the man in question.

  I also didn’t think Hugo had ever imagined that Emma would not only run into me at the Blue Moon, but then—more importantly—break apart in front of me. That she would tell me all about how poorly her new boyfriend had treated her at the night of her planned murder. By now, I simply assumed Hugo knew Emma had been my girlfriend right before they became an item. This fact had to have come up at some point during their several months together, at the very least during their last fight. The way Emma had needed to talk to me, practically begged me to take her back—save her—suggested I must have been on Emma’s mind for days. It also suggested that Emma must have discovered that Hugo was someone completely different than the persona he presented publicly. Someone who had something to hide and knew the woman he was dating was about to uncover it.

  But just because Hugo had seen the need to take out Emma didn’t mean he didn’t have feelings. I had seen with my own eyes that not all criminals were cold-hearted psychopaths. Some committed crimes out of sheer desperation, only to be plagued by a harrowing conscience afterward. Hugo was likely one of those individuals.

  So why am I dreading seeing Nina again? She had nothing to do with Emma’s murder.

  Right?

  I had reached her front door and rang the doorbell. Soon she was standing before me, looking gorgeous in a snug purple dress that plunged low, enhancing the creamy skin on her soft breasts. Her long dark hair was curlier than normal as it flowed down her shoulders and back. A suggestive little smile appeared on her pouty lips as she wrapped her arms around my neck. Despite the conflicting emotions flowing through me ever since I’d left the office, I felt myself harden.

  “Hi handsome,” she said in a husky voice. “I’ve been waiting for you. Have you missed me? I’ve missed you.”

  Oh, God, yes, had I missed her, I realized as I gazed down at her. Whatever may be wrong with her, I knew I needed to have her, be with her. There was no point trying to fight it. She’d captured my heart like no other woman ever had. I pulled her close and bent down to kiss her. Hovering over her lips for a few seconds, I inhaled her scent, got lost in the liquidity of her dark eyes.

  There was no way this beautiful creature could be guilty of murder. Impossible. God could not be that cruel.

  I could hear her gasp as I, very lightly, brushed my lips against hers. I moved my hands up to her head and, running my fingers through her silky tresses, I brought her mouth toward mine with a force that surprised even me. I parted her lips with my own, finding her tongue that I circled with my own so deeply and fiercely I thought I might actually be hurting her. But when I pulled back finally and seeing the way she was looking at me, I knew I had accomplished the opposite effect. Her pupils had widened so much her normally hazel eyes had become black.

  Emboldened by her reaction, I pushed her into the apartment, gripped the front of her dress and pulled it down so hard the material almost broke. I stared at her braless breasts for a moment, admiring their beauty, before I grabbed them and squeezed them hard, bending down to suckle her nipples, nibble them. She moaned with pleasure, spurring me to bite a little harder. As I kept working her breasts, filling my mouth with as much as I could of them, I pulled up her dress over her ass and found her panties. I ripped them off in one smooth move.

  “Lie down on the floor,” I ordered her. Without a word, she did what I wanted, watching me from the rug as I undid my pants. The way she was breathing, biting her lower lip in anticipation, told me my actions was just what she wanted in that moment. I found a condom in my back pocket that I opened and slid over my big erection.

  “Spread your legs wide,” I said. As she did so, I enjoyed the sight of her, seeing how aroused she was by my commands. Placing my hands on the insides of her knees, I spread her even wider. Then I entered her wet heaven with the full length of my erection.

  Nina

  “How did it all start?” Leslie asked me, having a sip of the iced tea she’d brought us both. We had been talking more about the bullying when I was in high school. Leslie had managed to convince me it was important for me to work through it, talk about it, in order to truly put it behind me. That it might be the key to why I was having these strange outbursts with Dylan. No matter how much I hated talking about it and doubted it would make a difference, I had decided I’d give it a go. I’d try whatever this therapist wanted once. I’d try it for Dylan. He deserved as much.

  “When I was fourteen,” I said. “Pretty much as soon as I was transferred to Harvard Westlake and became friends with Hannah. Like a couple of weeks after those girls realized we were friends.”

  “So Hannah was already a student there then. Was she on a scholarship like you?”

  “Yes, but she was on a different kind that enabled her to transfer years earlier than I did. She had gone to Westlake since middle school.”

  “I see. And was she always an outsider?”

  “Not at all. She told me that when she was in fifth grade she and Chrissy were friends even. That friendship ended in seventh grade when the guy both of them had a crush on said he thought Chrissy was ugly and Hannah gorgeous. Ever since then Chrissy strived to become the most popular girl at school, the one all the guys wanted to date. And that meant she needed to make them hate Hannah.” I had a sip of iced tea. “The funny thing was that, physically speaking, Chrissy was better-looking than Hannah… But there was something about Hannah that just made her incredibly appealing. She was very vivacious. So alive.” My throat tightened and I needed to take a moment before continuing. “Anyway, so it was really when I started at the school and we became friends that it began. The girl
basketball players coming after Hannah, and me, for being her friend. By that time, Chrissy had become the captain of the basketball team.”

  Leslie nodded. “Was it mainly the girls in the basketball team that were after you?”

  “Yes. It was as if Chrissy thought that by Hannah having a friend now, she was even more of a threat to her… That’s what it was all about—Chrissy being threatened by Hannah. She was a truly special person and Chrissy was just a dime a dozen kind of a girl. Pretty, but vapid. Deep inside, Chrissy knew it and she couldn’t handle it.” My throat felt thick again and my eyes began to burn. I swallowed, forcing back the threat of tears. To my relief, it didn’t take too much effort.

  “Was the bullying always physical?” Leslie asked.

  “No, only toward the end. They were mostly just spreading nasty rumors about us at first. Chrissy and her friend Tara came up with most of them, the girls in the basketball team taking their cues from them. They said we were lesbians because no guys would ever touch us. That we were prostitutes, pimping ourselves out to old men. That we were having sex with animals and were part of a sect that worshipped snakes. None of it was true, of course, but people seemed to believe it, because they stayed as far away from us as they could.”

  I gave a humorless laugh. “Don’t ask me where these girls got all those warped ideas from… Anyway, when it came to physical bullying, they mostly just pushed us when they got a chance. The real bad stuff only started when Chrissy started to suspect her boyfriend liked Hannah. Which he did.”

  “Did you girls ever tell the principal or a teacher what was going on?”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t do anything about it. We told them a few times, but they didn’t care. I now know it was because Tara’s parents and a couple of the other girls’ parents were big donors to the school. And, after all, we were only scholarship kids. Expendable.”

  “How many girls were part of that basketball team?”

  “About twelve.”

  “And they all took active part in the bullying?”

  “Yes.”

  Leslie shook her head in disbelief. “Please tell me exactly what happened that last time. When it finally ended.”

  I swallowed. “Okay.” I took a deep breath to steel myself, reminding myself they were just words. I could say them. All I needed to do was pretend like I was talking about someone else. It would be okay.

  “So Hannah and I were sitting at our usual table outside the cafeteria having lunch. It was the first school day after she’d gone on a date with Justin. That’s Chrissy’s boyfriend and he’d dumped Chrissy a few days before. Anyway, he’d promised Hannah he’d talk to Chrissy, make sure she and her band stayed away from us. But either he didn’t or whatever he told her didn’t help because Chrissy and Tara and all the other girls came up to us. They harassed us so much we couldn’t eat, so we took our food and started to leave. But they wouldn’t let us. When Tara slapped my tray out of my hands, I got so mad I pushed her and told all of them what I thought of them. Hannah must have gotten inspired by my action because she pushed Chrissy. Then both of us started running. All the girls followed us and somehow we all ended up in a deserted hangar at the Santa Monica Airport. Hannah thought there was a way to get out of there, at the end of it. But there wasn’t. Someone had already fixed the walls that used to be broken, so we were trapped. Half of them went after Hannah and half after me.”

  My throat tightened and I couldn’t talk. Pretending like I was talking about someone else no longer worked.

  “Then what happened, Nina?” Leslie said in a soft, beckoning voice, her razor-sharp eyes pinning me down.

  My heart sped up and my breathing quickened. I was suddenly back there in that dark, cool hangar, the furious girls closing in on me. Smelling the wet metal, the rust. Feeling the panic rushing through me. Their screams getting louder and louder. Why was talking about this so damn hard? I’d already told Ricki about it, hadn’t I? Yes, I had. Well, not all of it… And I definitely hadn’t told Ricki what bothered me the most about this still. Why I felt that, if I’d just kept my mouth shut, Hannah would still be alive today. If only I’d kept my mouth shut. I barely dared thinking about this. But this time, I had to not only think about it, but also get out the words describing what I felt, what had happened. Every little thing.

  I owed it to Dylan to give Leslie all that I had. Even if I really didn’t think it would make a difference.

  “Nina. What happened after those girls separated into groups?”

  Dylan

  I stared at the TV, not sure whether I was actually awake and not dreaming at first it felt so unreal. I pushed myself up from the couch where I had been sitting next to my sister. She had come for a visit to watch some afternoon college football with me. The female news anchor on channel one had suddenly appeared in the middle of the game with the breaking news, informing the viewers the authorities had arrested the person who had strangled Emma Patterson at the Blue Moon. A photo of the dowdy brunette friend who had been standing next to Emma that night filled the screen.

  “Can you turn up the volume?” I said to Elisa. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her reach for the remote control and do just that. The anchor’s clear voice boomed out from the huge flat-screen TV’s speakers: “… last night when Jackie Rhodes appeared at the Santa Monica Police Station. The thirty-two-year-old psychologist asked to speak to a police officer. As soon as one appeared, Rhodes broke apart and confessed that she had strangled her friend Emma Patterson at the Blue Moon October third of this year. Smith claims her anger issues got the best of her that night and she felt compelled to strangle her friend with the handbag chain shoulder strap of a passed-out woman who lay in a dark corner close by. Rhodes is currently being held at the Santa Monica station. Bail is set to $100,000.”

  The anchor disappeared and a beer commercial came on, a sultry Latina woman walking into a bar, all the guys in there staring at her. She walked up to the bartender and signaled for a beer. When he fumbled, searching for the opener, she sighed and grabbed the beer bottle from his hands. Sticking it under her very short top, she snapped it open with something hidden in her cleavage. Turns out she had a beer opener there attached from her long necklace. She winked at the gaping bartender and chugged her beer.

  “…Dylan. Are you okay?” Somewhere behind me, Elisa’s voice reached my ears. “You don’t know that woman, do you?”

  “Huh?” I turned to face my sister.

  “The woman who was arrested—do you know her?”

  “No. I’ve never seen her before, but I remember her face. It’s the friend that was with Emma at the Blue Moon, just like they reported. Definitely that broad. Same puss on her face as she had that night.”

  Victor wasn’t the only one who’d been concerned about how I had taken Emma’s sudden death; Elle, too, had called me up as soon as she found out to make sure I was okay.

  “Well, good thing they found the murderer at least, right?” Elisa said.

  A big grin stretched my lips now. “Good thing” was an understatement. It was a fucking fantastic thing! I buried my face in my hands. “There is a God. There is a God…”

  I had spent the night at Nina’s yesterday tossing and turning in her bed, unable to relax. Falling asleep had been impossible. The more I pondered the idea that Hugo was behind Emma’s death somehow, the less convinced I felt. I doubted the cops hadn’t checked out Hugo thoroughly already, Emma having lived with the man only days prior to the murder. I knew from professional acquaintances that lovers and family members were prime suspects in a murder case. This fact together with Hugo’s sincere grief was just too much to fit the picture I wanted to paint. The LAPD couldn’t be so bad they’d missed any potential shenanigans on Hugo’s part, nor Hugo that good at covering his tracks. Who did I think I was, thinking I’d solve this case so easily when seasoned cops with their extensive resources and access to all the forensic evidence couldn’t? No, I was just grasping for straws because I wanted the woman
beside me to be innocent. Not the raging psycho she might very well be.

  Now that I knew Nina was innocent after all, I was definitely going to her friend’s birthday party, something I’d been reluctant to agree to when Nina had first invited me.

  “Wow,” I heard Elisa say, “you sure are happy that woman’s arrested, aren’t you?”

  I removed my hands from my face, still grinning like a fool as I faced my sister, who was smiling big herself now.

  “Happy? Yeah, you could say that again!” I was about to add that it sure wasn’t only because Emma’s killer had been found, but decided against it before the words could slip out of my mouth. It would only complicate matters. I better wait to bring up Nina. Wait until all the drama had faded some more, so Elle and Nina didn’t start off on the wrong foot.

  “I’m so happy for you, bro,” Elisa said, having gotten to her feet as well. “I can see why it must feel good to you, knowing who did this to Emma.”

  “Thanks, Elle,” I said and gave her a hug. “It does feel good. It sure does.” And it would feel even better when I could introduce Nina to Elisa and Mom. I was confident they’d like her a lot better than they’d liked Emma. Neither of them had ever been crazy about my ex, at least not Elisa. Yes, the day they met Nina finally would be one to remember.

  Nina

  The girls had surrounded me. I backed up against the corner, hoping to find some form of opening in the metal walls behind me. If only I pressed hard enough against them, they would miraculously open and let me escape. But all I got was an overpowering solidity that refused to budge. Still, I kept pressing, pressing. I had to get away.

  They came closer, the six of them staring at me with fury on their faces, such fury. My stomach churned with terror as I considered making a run for it, pushing myself through the ever-enclosing human fence. But I was too frozen with fear to move. I felt myself folding, praying for the ground to swallow me, make me disappear. They were only a few yards away now. They were so big, all of them towering over me.