AllFreeNovel
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I’d thought I was pretty darn secure in my body and everything else, but it was different being around her.
There was a power about her. There was also something else. A kind of chaos. Like the air before a destructive storm.
We spent the first drinks and cheese fries talking about a lot but nothing important. It wasn’t until the cheese fries were done and I was on my second drink that I got curious.
“You want to tell me what got you running all the way here?” I asked, tilting my head to regard her.
Calliope, from what I had gathered, was some kind of hotshot in New York and earned a shitload of money.
Or at least she had been, until she arrived in Jupiter, moved into Rowan’s old house, and wouldn’t tell anyone what exactly she was doing here.
No one, not even big brave Rowan, was game enough to press her on it.
“What tells you I’m running?” she replied over the top of her drink, regarding me with a penetrating gaze.
I looked at her, with the clothes, the jewelry, the purse, all worn casually, as if she were in sweats, but all expensive as fuck. I wasn’t really someone who paid attention to labels or whatever the fuck, but even I could tell it was fancy shit. Jupiter was nice. It was quaint. Quiet. Idyllic, even. But it was not full of trendy boutiques, swanky bars, or exclusive restaurants.
We were currently drinking at the only bar that was open past ten. The very same bar I had technically proposed to Kip in.
“You’re a long way from New York,” I pointed out.
Calliope swirled her olive. The bitch was drinking a martini. I didn’t think anyone actually drank those outside the movies. I’d ordered one when I first got to this country, excited to see what all the hype was about, but it tasted like rocket fuel. Pure vodka with an olive dipped in it did not a drink make.
“I’ll tell you what I’m running from if you tell me,” she countered.
My own drink froze inches from my mouth. “How do you know I’m running?”
She tilted her head to regardme.“You’re a fuck of a long way from Australia.”
I laughed. “Touché.”
People had asked me why I was in America and not in Australia, and I’d always had some cheeky reply, some half-baked story, but never the truth. I hadn’t shared that with my best friend. I’d buried it so deep I’d convinced myself it wasn’t even real.
Though I felt safe with Calliope, felt like I could tell her anything in the world without judgment or fear of her repeating it, I was not about to tell her about my past. Not just because I didn’t trust myself to dredge it up in a bar with sticky floors and dirty bathrooms. Also, because if there was one person I’d tell the truth to, it would be the woman who had been my best friend, my sister, for years.
Maybe I wouldn’t even tell her.
Maybe I’d keep it all tight inside, rotting, but only I could smell the decay.
“It’s a man,” Calliope said when I didn’t speak. “It’s always a man. Either they make a woman stay or run.” She looked at me with a knowing gaze. “And we’re both the kind of woman who runs if that man is a little too bad, or worse, just a little too good.”
“Which one are you running from?” I asked to hide my shock at how perceptive this bitch was. “The bad man or the good one?”
She sipped her martini.
“Both.”
It was around then that the trouble started.
* * *
Kip came to bail us out.
I really wanted to use my one phone call on Nora. But she’d just had a baby, and she did not need to be bailing her best friend and sister-in-law out at midnight.
Tina would come.
Tiffany would come.
