Her gaze slowly shifted from her phone to my face, the bewilderment was obvious. “I’m no mother or anything, but back in my day, they had these fancy pieces of paper with various information on it…such as mother’s name. I’m pretty sure that would suffice in the unlikely chance a cop would ask you to show proof.”
I waved her sarcasm off. “Seriously, Stevie. What if I’m at the store and someone thinks she’s not mine? It’s not like I carry her birth certificate with me. Would they follow me home so I could get it? Would they take her and not give her back until I got it? What would happen?”
“I think the more important question is…why are you even asking this?”
“She looks nothing like me.”
Stevie stared at me with wide, unblinking eyes, her mouth hung open. “You’re kidding, right? She looks just like you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then who does she resemble? Certainly not her father. So who?”
I shrugged, not having a clue whose features Aria had gotten. “You know how you can look at a kid and be like, ‘I know who your mom is’? I just don’t feel like people say that when they see us together.”
“Honey, no one says that. We may think it, but unless we know the person, we keep our thoughts to ourselves. Not to mention, we don’t ever call the cops unless the little kid is screaming or mouthing ‘help me.’” She dramatically acted out the last part, which made me laugh and forget all about my irrational fear—for the time being.
“Whatever. What’s new in the world of bookface?”
Stevie was my source for all the latest gossip. It was almost unheard of for someone not to own a smartphone in this day and age, but here I was, twenty-two, and the not-so-proud owner of a prepaid flip phone. Texting was a drawn-out affair due to how long it took, and forget about checking email or keeping up with social media—not that I really had a reason to have an account. It wasn’t like I had friends outside of Stevie and the group she hung out with.
She unlocked her phone and began to scroll—exactly what she had been doing before my completely valid question sidetracked her. “Jade…” she tsked and shook her head without glancing at me. “If you keep calling it that, people will start to take you seriously. But in the world of Facebook, there’s some guy looking for a roommate.”
I hated it when she paraphrased. “What’s the big deal about that?”
“He’s only seeking a female roommate. Says he’s divorced and lonely. He sounds like a creep. Not to mention, there’s no picture attached to his profile, and anytime he’s been asked about it, he just comments and says they’re not what he’s looking for. I bet he’s a serial killer or something.”
“Or horribly hideous and can’t get laid. Where did you say he lives?”
“The Gulf Coast. Looks like it’s straight across the state. Says he has a house on the beach that’s paid for, so either he’s a millionaire, or it’s a scam. My money’s on scam. Although, you have a good point…he could be like that gross slug creature on Star Wars.”
I shivered at that mental picture. A boy I’d gone to middle school with had some disgusting fascination with Princess Leia and Jabba the Hutt. Puberty did weird things to boys. “Does it say how old he is?”
She scrolled with her thumb, her dark eyebrows knitted together in concentration. “No, just a generalization. It’s listed as twenty-five to thirty-two.” Her top lip curled like she’d just tasted something putrid. “I bet he’s old, fat, and gross. Eww—” She gagged dramatically. “He’s probably one of those sick fucks who likes to stick his wrinkled dick in young pussy.”
I leaned to the side, checking on Aria. She was still too young to understand what Stevie was saying, but regardless, she didn’t need to hear it. With her curious nature, she’d ask someone what it meant, and there was no way I’d be able to explain that. If the cops weren’t called for her not looking like me, they’d definitely be called for a toddler going around talking like Stevie.
“Here, check it out for yourself. I have to go get dressed for class.” She handed me her phone before taking her coffee and leaving the room.
The apartment was small, consisting of a living room that fit one couch and a TV that had to be mounted on the wall to conserve space, a kitchen only two adults could comfortably fit in, a tiny corner big enough for one table with four chairs crammed around the top, and a bedroom. Even the bathroom wasn’t accessible from the rest of the place, proving this apartment was not meant for entertaining guests.
I checked on Aria again before reading the ad that had been shared on someone’s wall. It was from a guy named Cash Nickelson—probably a fake name—who claimed to live on Geneva Key, an island off the Gulf Coast of Florida near Sarasota. I’d heard of the town, but had never been there before. From what I’d been told, it was a ritzy place, full of rich people with more money than God. However, there wasn’t an address or picture, so he could’ve very well been lying about the whole thing. Stevie was right—this had to be a scam, a way to take advantage of women or find his next victim.
Just before locking the phone, an idea struck. So I jotted down his name, and any other information I’d been able to gather from the ad and comments attached, and waited for Stevie to leave for school.
If he could play games, then so could I.
It wasn’t like I had anything else going on. There was only so much I could do with a two-year-old. I was pretty sure I’d crossed over into insanity about five episodes of Blue’s Clues ago. So if this Cash Nickelson character was in fact crazy and believed women were easy targets, he’d clearly never met a mother of a toddler.
As soon as the front door closed behind my best friend, I grabbed the laptop off the kitchen table. I couldn’t live with Stevie and Derek forever, but in order to move out, I needed a paycheck. And I couldn’t get one of those without childcare. Knowing I had no connection to the outside world with my outdated cell, Stevie was nice enough to let me use her computer to apply for jobs—which I had done. Every day for the last three weeks since I’d moved out of my mom’s house. But today, I decided I needed a break from reality, and chose to focus on this scandal instead of my own.
I searched his name in the area he claimed the house was in, but I came up empty-handed. I even tried to find a profile for him on every social media site I could think of—including MySpace—but he didn’t appear to exist. My stalking abilities weren’t the best, so my last-ditch effort to learn something about him was to look up property records. Just to be thorough, I included every county in a fifty-mile radius of Geneva Key, but I couldn’t find a single deed or tax record with his name on it. Granted, I didn’t have any social media accounts, and if anyone tried to find property information with my name on it, they’d come up empty, as well. The difference was…I wasn’t seeking a roommate for a house I claimed to own.