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“If I’m Eliza, you’re definitely Debbi.”
“Who?”
“The worthless, bitchy older sister,” I replied cheerfully. “I choose truth, by the way.”
I refused to let the evil wench dare me into a fucked-up situation. Everyone knows you can’t recant on a dare.
If she told me to drink lighter fluid, I would have to do it. Then, I’d spit it in her face and happily light her ass on fire.
She grinned wickedly and leaned forward. Too close, the stench of alcohol on her breath blew right into my face. I tried not to wrinkle my nose. “Is it true you watched your parents die and didn’t try to save them?”
“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Vicky objected angrily before I could respond.
It was official. Julie was the absolute dumbest c-u-next Tuesday I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing. A blonde with giant tits and zero brain cells. I stared blankly, waiting for her to realize how stupid that question was. Of course, she didn’t budge because she wasn’t bright enough to have a light-bulb moment.
What happened to my parents wasn’t a secret in Ashridge.
This was my father’s hometown and he’d been beloved by many. News of his passing had spread like wildfire. As for what she was asking…
Did I watch him and my mother die? Not exactly, but I was right there when it happened wishing I’d been taken with them. It wasn’t an uncommon death by any means. My mother managed to wrap her Range Rover around a tree, a last-ditch effort to avoid a head-on collision with a drunk driver.
Accidents happened all the time. I knew that. Only everything that could have gone wrong in this scenario did. Mom’s shoulder restraint didn’t lock up like it was supposed to. She was launched face-first through the windshield. My father—bless his heart--died on impact. His head took a fatal hit, and he just slumped in his seat. I remember crying for him to do something, stuck in the backseat, not yet realizing he was gone.
Three hours.
That’s how long I sat with their dead bodies until a passerby finally noticed us. The other driver never stopped.
He never came to check on us, and he didn’t get any help. I later found out he died shortly after that night, so justice was never served. My mother lived through a full thirty minutes of pure agonizing hell, fading in and out of consciousness.
I could see her blood dribbling down the windshield and tiny bits of glass embedded in her skin. I tried to comfort her as best I could. I soothed her with lies, for both her benefit and mine, knowing she wasn’t going to be okay. I’d sat stuck in that seat, doing my best to muffle my sobs as my heart crumbled in my chest.
I felt those same tears burning behind my eyelids now. What kind of asshole asked a question like that?
It was so hard living without them that I hardly mentioned their names and it infuriated me when that’s what people remember them by. Acheron. As if they weren’t individual human beings.
“Please ignore her. She’s a stupid slut.” Vicky reached across the coffee table and squeezed my hand, a genuine apology in her brown eyes.
“I’ll ask you something different,” Julie followed up in a cheery tone, trying to lighten the mood with no apology in tow.
“Okay.” I forced a smile, burying the pain like I always did, desperate to move away from the topic and not completely lose my shit in front of everyone.
When her next question came, I was once again caught off guard. I really should have expected this one. Vicky had been hinting at it for the last two months and had never received an answer.
“So, Rose,” Julie began, dragging out the syllables in my name. “Do you or don’t you have a thing for Constantine?”
They all stared at me, eagerly waiting for my answer. Even Molina had lifted her head. I hadn’t told a soul what he and I had done.
He hadn’t sought me out since then, and his Hummer had been gone for days on end. That didn’t lessen how I thought or felt. Knowing exactly what it was like to feel his lips against mine and have his fingers inside me had taken my thoughts of him to new levels. It wasn’t purely sexual.
That night had shown me how easy it was to talk to him; how comfortable he made me feel without trying. I didn’t feel the need to hide as much, and I’d deduced this in sixty minutes. I never opened up like that for people. I was careful who I let see me for fear of being ousted or heavily judged.
No one knew how painfully obsessed I was with him. Even Darionne was under the assumption it was nothing but a crush.
Shifting on my knees where I knelt on the floor, I gave a simple answer. “He’s cute.”
