“Maybe if you got laid, you wouldn’t be such a bitch. You won’t go to parties, won’t go to clubs, you haven’t had a date in months. It’s school, labs, or this shithole apartment. Happy, my ass.”
As her eyes fired, Mi curled one hand into a fist. “I’m going to make some thing of myself. I didn’t die, and I’m going to make something out of my life. I am happy. Sometimes it’s almost happy, and sometimes I hit it. But I know I’m working toward something, and I’m watching my best friend pushing back at everything.”
“I go to classes, I go to work, I go to clubs. How’s that pushing back at anything, much less everything?”
“You go to classes, but you don’t care enough about any of them to do more than get by. You go to work at a job that means less than nothing to you, instead of looking for something that would.” It poured out now, a flood over a broken dam. “You go to clubs because you can’t stand being alone, being quiet for more than an hour. And you hook up with guys you have no intention of seeing again because you have no intention of seeing them again. Not letting yourself be close or involved with anything or anyone is the freaking definition of pushing everything away.”
Simone smirked, adding nasty to it. “I was damn close to the guy who just left.”
“What’s his name?”
Austin, Angel, Adam … shit, shit, shit. “Ansel,” she remembered.
“You had to dig for it. You brought some guy home, had sex with him, and have to dig for his name in less than an hour.”
“So what? So the fuck what? If I’m such a ho, why do you care what I do, what I feel?”
“Because, goddamn it, you’re my ho.”
Simone opened her mouth to rage, and laughter gurgled out. As Mi—face bright pink with temper, tears of fury sparking in her eyes—stared at her, the gurgle built into a roll.
Even as Mi let out an insulted huff, Simone toasted with her tea. “This calls for a T-shirt. Mi-Hi’s Ho.” She tapped her free hand on her chest.
While she knuckled temper tears out of her eyes, the absurdity pushed a watery laugh out of Mi. “You’d wear it proud, too.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Oh hell, Sim.” Mi set her tea aside, scrubbed her hands over her face. “I love you.”
“I know. I know.”
“You’re wasting yourself, taking classes you can basically sleep through.”
“I’m never going to be a biomedical freaking engineer, Mi. Most of us are still figuring stuff out.”
“The only courses you’ve shown any real interest in are art related. So focus there, and figure it out. You’re wasting yourself on a job you don’t like, don’t need, where you’re so stupidly overqualified you should be running the shop.”
“I don’t want to run the shop. A lot of people don’t like their jobs. And I need it because I’m going to at least pay for some of my own expenses.”
“Then find a job you like. You’re wasting yourself on sex with men you don’t care about.”
Now Simone had her own tears to knuckle away. “I don’t want to care about anybody right now. I don’t know if I ever will. I can care about you, about my family, and that’s all I’ve got.”
“I think it’s sad I value you more than you value yourself, so it’s a good thing I’m around to bitch and nag at you.”
“You’re really good at it.”
“I’m president of the Bitch and Nag Club. You barely qualify as an honorary member. Take the summer, Sim. We can hang out at the beach until I leave for London. You can spend time with CiCi, even let her take you around Europe like she wanted to after graduation. We can sublet the apartment. Don’t stay here alone.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“That’s what you say when you want me to shut up.”
“Maybe. Look, I’m tired, and I’ve got to be at the shop at eight to do the job I don’t like. I want to get some sleep.”
Mi nodded, dumped the tea neither of them had finished in the sink.
Simone knew the quality of that silence, and it read anxiety.
“Sleepover time?” she suggested.
Mi’s shoulders dropped in relief. “That’d be good.”
“We’ll use your virginal bed for obvious reasons.” She slung an arm around Mi as they walked to Mi’s bedroom. “I got Aaron’s number. Maybe he has a friend.”
“You said he name was Ansel.”
“Damn it.”
They crawled into Mi’s bed, snuggled together for comfort.
“I miss her,” Mi murmured.
“I know. Me, too.”
“I think I’d feel different about New York, just being here, if she were. If Tish were here, we’d be different.”
Everything would be, Simone thought.
She dreamed of it, of sitting with Mi, watching Tish, alive and vital, onstage. In the spotlight. Just owning it.
She dreamed of Mi working in her lab, so crisp and brilliant in her white coat.
And when the dreams turned inward, she saw herself sitting on a raft on a still and silent sea. Drifting nowhere.
She woke to the reality of serving the college crowd fancy, overpriced coffee most paid for with credit cards given to them by their parents—and they still couldn’t be bothered to tack on a decent tip.
When she found herself, for the second time that week, scrubbing out the toilet in the unisex bathroom, she took yet another good look at herself in the mirror.
She knew the fuckhead of a manager dumped the bathroom duty on her twice as often as anyone else because she wouldn’t have sex with him. (Married, at least forty, ponytail, so yuck.)
“So screw it,” she told herself.
She walked out of air that smelled like bleach and fake lemons, into the constant hum of espresso machines and conversations pontificating about politics or whining about relationships.
She pulled off the stupid red apron she had to pay to have laundered, got her purse out of the skinny locker—the rent of which also came out of her sorry excuse for a paycheck.
Manager Fuckhead sneered at her. “It’s not time for your break.”
“You’re wrong about that. It’s past time for my break. I quit.”
She strolled out into the world of noise and color, and realized she felt something she’d missed for entirely too long.
She felt happy.
*
Six months after graduating from the Academy, Reed rode patrol with Bull Stockwell. Officer Tidas Stockwell had earned the name “Bull” not only from his physicality, but from his personality. A fifteen-year vet, Bull was foulmouthed, hard-assed, and claimed to have a nose that could detect bullshit from two miles off.
He had several red flags that caused him to charge, including: anything he considered anti-American (a sliding scale), assholes (a wide range of qualifications), and motherfuckers. His top candidates for motherfuckers were anyone who harmed children, beat women, or abused animals.
He hadn’t voted for Obama—he’d never voted for a Democrat in his life, and saw no reason to deviate. But the man was president of the United States and, as such, had his respect and loyalty.
He didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body. He knew assholes and motherfuckers came in every color and creed. He might not understand the whole gay thing, but didn’t actually give a shit one way or the other. He figured if you wanted to get off with somebody built the same as you, that was your business.
He had two divorces under his Sam Browne belt—from the first, a ten-year-old daughter he unabashedly worshipped—and he owned a one-eyed, one-legged cat he’d rescued after a drug bust.
Most days he berated Reed verbally for being too stupid, too slow, a college boy, and a dumbass rookie. And in the six months since he’d been on the job, Reed had learned more about the down-and-dirty and nitty-gritty of cop work than he had in all his college courses or in his months at the Academy.
He’d sure as hell learned, when answering a domestic disturbance call, to put himself between Bull and the offending party (male) before that red flag had his partner pawing the ground and snorting.
So when they rolled up to a potential double D in a townhome they’d visited for the same reason four times before, Reed prepared to do just that.
“She’s got an RO on him now, so his ass is mine.”