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“The neighbor?” I asked, finally finding a silver lining.
“Yes. How’d you know that?” she asked.
“That’s good. That’s really good. You sound like you’re doing well.” The sun had set, and there wasn’t the telltale sign of a slur. She was sober and had found someone. As much as it killed me to lose my life, in the process, I’d been able to help her find hers. It wasn’t all a loss.
“I don’t want to hold you up,” I said. “I hope you have a good time.”
“Will do! Nice talking to you again. Good luck with…whatever.”
She ended the call. I didn’t have a mother anymore. I couldn’t move or speak. I sat with my phone in my hand, realizing I was truly in this world now. There was no going back.
The TV played some mundane thing I’d thrown on an hour ago, but my mind was off, too busy drifting through thecould’ve beensto pay attention.
It wasn’t until someone was pounding on the door that I jerked back into reality.
“Billie? You awake in there?” Cookie yelled, making certain I was awake even if I had been sleeping. The locked door rattled.
“Yeah, I’m here.” I got up and let her in before she broke the door to my suite.
She stood there, hands on hips. “I need you to referee something. I don’t trust these jerks to keep the bets straight. Dice is trying to tell me I wrote a three in the book, but it’s clearly a two with a long, messy loop, which is my nature. I need an impartial judge.” She narrowed her eyes as she took a long look at me. “What’s up with you? You look like someone took a dump in your Cheerios.”
“I’m fine. Just a little tired today.”
“Tired, huh? Heard the rumors floating around, you and Kaden getting a little touchy-feely at The Deep.” She laughed.
Antionette had heard that night, so there wasn’t anything surprising about this.
Connor poked his head in and asked, “Did you sleep with Kaden? We were all discussing it, and we’re mostly thinking no, but”—he shrugged, his face scrunching up like a bulldog’s—“word is you left The Deep looking like you were going to go get it in.”
“I did notget it inwith Kaden.” I thought I’d outgrown blushing until I came to this place.
Dice’s laughter rang out from the hall, and then his hand was palm up, in front of Connor. Connor reached into his back pocket, counted off several hundreds, and handed over the wad of cash to Dice, who handed half to Cookie.
“You bet on whether I’d slept with him?” I asked. Nothing was sacred with these people. “Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt that I didn’t do it,” I said to Cookie and Dice, who’d poked his head in enough that I could see him.
Cookie grimaced. “Uh, that wasn’t the bet. We bet on whether you’dsayyou did or didn’t.”
“We tried to bet onwhenyou’d sleep with him, but we couldn’t nail down a date anyone was willing to agree upon,” Dice said, and then walked back toward the lounge.
“I’m not going to sleep with him.” I made sure I was loud enough that Dice heard.
“You sure about that?” Cookie asked.
“I’m positive. You said he didn’t sleep with people he worked with,” I said to her. Was I the only one here that was thinking logically?
“If that’s the only thing stopping you then it’s definitely happening.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not. I don’t want to sleep with him, and he certainly doesn’t want to sleep with me.” Although we both might’ve been on the brink of losing our senses last night.
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that,” Connor added.
“Either way, we need you to come look at the book,” Cookie said.
I knew they kept a book with their bets. This was what my birthday had come down to.
I was about to tell them to fuck off, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. Plus, anything that would get them off my situation with Kaden was welcome.
I followed her down the hall to the lounge and stopped cold. There was a cake. Abirthdaycake. The icing was chocolate, and it had my name written in pink with twenty-five candles burning. I hadn’t even told them it was my birthday.
