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“Thank you. What would you like to try first?” I ask Ryleigh as Maria walks away.
“I like balls in my mouth,” she announces, picking up a meatball, “especially when they are slapping against my chin.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I’m holding your head and fucking your face, making you gag.” Her eyes change in the blink of a second, and if I wasn’t looking right into them, I wouldn’t see it. “Now eat up. You will need your strength.”
“Promises, promises,” she mutters, taking a bite of the food. “So did you win or lose?”
“I’m sitting across the table from the woman who has been driving me to the brink of jumping off the cliff of the Grand Canyon.” I smile at her. “I’m winning.”
She rolls her eyes at me, and Maria comes back, placing four pasta dishes in front of us. The two of us seem to be too nervous to eat. “So now that you have me here, what are you going to do with me?”
I pick up the glass of water in front of me. “There are a lot of things I want to do with you, but I also want to get to know you.” I take a sip of water. “What made you want to go to law school?”
“According to my parents”—she folds her arms on the table in front of her—“I started to argue with them when I was eighteen months old.” The smile on her face makes her even more beautiful, if that’s even possible. “Then, when I was three, everything became a dispute. But in reality, when you grow up in Hollywood, I made up a game to sniff out the bullshit people would feed you. Sort of like Instagram vs. reality.” I don’t interrupt because she’s getting comfortable. “Then I did a mock trial for the first time in high school for a debate team, and I just fell in love.” Her eyes light up.
“Do you work long hours?” I ask, and she nods, picking up her fork to put a piece of meatball in her mouth.
“About twelve hours a day, depending on the case. Might be more.”
“When do you let your hair down?” She just looks at me. “When do you take you time?”
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” She smirks but continues, “I knew a long time ago that if I wanted to be a district attorney, I had to give up certain things.”
“All work and no play—” I start to say, and she holds up her hands.
“Makes me a happy person,” she finishes, and then, like the lawyer she is, she turns the tables on me. “Why hockey?”
“Well, considering my grandfather holds most of the records, and my father played hockey, I was on skates before I even took my first step. There is a picture at my parents’ house of me on skates. I must have been around eleven months old, and my grandfather holds me under my arms while I move my feet.”
“It’s like you’re a product of your environment,” she points out.
“Yes,” I agree with her, “and, apparently, I was really good at hockey. But that’s because I was always on the ice. My older cousin Cooper was my idol growing up. He was the coolest kid I knew, so I wanted to be like him.” I grab a piece of meatball myself. “Then the rest is history.” She looks at me and is about to say something when Maria comes to ask if we need anything else. The rest of the conversation is about the wedding and the parts she remembers. I fill in the details she thinks she remembers but doesn’t. We get up at the end of the meal, and she doesn’t bother putting the scarf on. “It’s cold out.”
“I’m hot,” she says, tying it around the chain of her purse.
“That you are,” I mumble as we walk out. The car isn’t there, but it’s a black minibus this time.
“What’s going on?” she asks as we approach the black van with the tinted windows. A woman comes stepping down the stairs of the little bus with a smile on her face, wearing all black.
“Hello, you two,” she greets us. “I’m Brianna, and I’ll be your tour guide for this evening.”
“Tour guide?” Ryleigh repeats softly.
“If you want to head on in,” Brianna invites, “we’ll start the tour.”
“After you.” I motion to the bus as she goes up two steps where the driver sits, then up the one step to where the seats are. There are about five rows of seats, two on each side. “Take a seat.”
She steps into the second row of seats, and I sit next to her as Brianna gets on the bus, but we can’t even see her. “Hello.” Her voice comes on in the speakers of the bus. “Can you all hear me?” she asks and then laughs. “I mean, can you guys hear me?”
“Yes,” we both say at the same time. I look over at Ryleigh, who is staring at me, probably wondering what is going on.
“Good,” she says as the bus starts to move. “I’m very excited to show you the dark side to Chicago. The side they don’t tell you about. The side they keep under cover. For the next three hours, I will show you places you’ve probably walked by before and had no idea what they were.”
“Oh my God,” Ryleigh whispers, leaning over, “is this a ghost tour?”
I chuckle. “It’s not a ghost tour.” I turn toward her. “Do you like ghosts?”
“I mean, not to live with me,” she says, “but you know.”
