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Preston just flings the bag aside.
It hits the wall, then drops to the carpet with a thud.
Bet that Nokia would’ve done some damage if she managed to get him on the head at least once. That thought shows in her seething glower and her hands fisting at her sides.
Preston pushes from the door and, in two steps, is towering over her. “What the fuck,” he enunciates each word through his gritted teeth, “is your problem?”
“My problem?” Billie shrieks a bitter laugh, a sound of utter disbelief. “My fucking problem? Are you high?I just got a damn good look at Gigi’s dead body!”
“With me!” he hollers and smacks his hand to his chest. “What is your problem with me!”
Her head lolls back with a longhaaa!
The grin she wears is wide and awful. “Poor Preston,” she laughs, but the sound is empty. Hollow, like the eternal feeling in her chest.
She steps back once before turning for the kitchen. Her boots hitting the linoleum the moment she’s off-carpet is a loud, stomping sound that rattles the floor.
Billie snatches out for the coffee tin beside the sink and drags it over the bench towards her. Using her nails, she pops the lid—and reveals a stash of three mini bottles of liquor. All vodkas that she stole from Mo’s a while back when Gigi was working.
It’s not enough, the three of them, since they’re so small, but they sure are better than nothing.
“Poor Preston,” she repeats with a murmur as she unscrews the lids of each of the three bottles, then tips them one by one into a coffee mug. “Can’t handle a little break up,” she adds, then cups the mug in her hands. “Can’t take that I don’t want to be with you—so you thinkeverythingis about you. Classic rich boy.”
She brings the rim to her mouth and tips.
The drink burns down her throat in the most blessed way, and she has the fleeting wonder if the true blood of Christ is actually vodka, not wine, because this shit is heavenly. How it burns, how it hurts, but how it starts to work on those knots of pain with magic hands, how it starts to soothe her twisted heart.
How it helps…
Blood of the devil, maybe.
It’s not until Preston speaks and his voice is so close behind her that she realizes he followed her to the kitchen—
He stands at the entrance, the small space between the bench and the door to her mom’s room, and has one hand on the wall as though to stop her from passing. Or to keep her trapped.
“Lie to yourself all you want, Billie,” he says, his voice deep and dangerously dark, like those fucking eyes of his, eyes she wants to scratch right out of his perfect face. “I know you don’t want this break up anymore than you want your mom around. Yes, other concerns are on your mind. I understand that…I respect that,” he adds with a smack of his hand on the wall, as if to hit the wall will punch his point. “But you won’t let me help you, you won’t let me near you unless it’s to pick you up from the goddamn station—and you won’t let me keep you safe.”
Billie tosses the now-empty mug aside. It hits the metal sink. The shattering sound so clearly tells her it smashed to pieces, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t so much as look at the sink or the broken mug.
She just falls back against the refrigerator and looks at him. “Keep me safe?” she echoes numbly. “From what? Fromyou? Who’ll keep me safe from you, El?”
His jaw tenses, tight. He turns his cheek to her and looks over at the shattered ceramic in the sink. “Push me away, that’s fine,” he says, then looks back at her. “But you owe me an explanation.”
“I already told you why—”
Preston steps forward with a shout, his hand leaving the wall to aim at her, “Your bullshit about not fitting in with the people at the party?” His voice booms through the small kitchen, and only two paces away from her now, it slams against her eardrums. “If you think for a fucking second that I buy that shit, you’re more out of your mind than either of us know.So…” he adds and takes a determined step closer.
His lashes lower over coal-black eyes. His pink upper lip curls as he rounds on her.
Billie just watches him.
Her eyes are dead… or they should be, because that’s how she feels inside… but then she feels the warmth of a tear run down her cheek.
She doesn’t so much as swat at the tear.
It’s too late to try and hide it. He’s seen it—his gaze shifts to her cheek for a mere millisecond before he comes to a stop in front of her.
Her back presses a tad harder against the refrigerator as his hand presses against it, right next to her head. “So,” he repeats, towering over her, “why don’t you start telling me the truth, Billie? You owe me that.”
