14 Weeks (Investigators #2)
Author: Jessica Gadziala
PROLOGUE
Kenzi- 5 years ago
"Kenz, you know this is not how you should be handling this." Reese was sitting on top of my bed watching me as I tried on my fifteenth outfit that was still not quite right. I might have been up to my throat in heartbreak and betrayal, but in my personal opinion, that was no reason I couldn't look hot as hell. In fact, it was even more reason to put the utmost effort into my outfit.
Body armor.
Maybe that was what I liked best about fashion- I could turn into a new person with a change of outfit. Did I want to be left alone at the bar, but still look good? I could take on a sexy school teacher vibe with a pencil skirt and tucked-in button-up with non-prescription glasses and tied back hair. Did I want to chill with the boys, but still be womanly? I could put on tight, ripped skinny jeans and a plain tee, but put extra glam into my makeup and hair.
That night, my heart a shattered thing, my trust something that had taken on sharp edges, hurt but also prideful, yeah, that called for something special.
I just couldn't figure out what that was yet.
Reese, having dealt with my stupidly long prep time since we were both kids, had long since gotten over trying to convince me that one outfit was superior to another. She knew that it wouldn't change anything if it didn't feel right to me.
So she kept her mouth shut as I went back into my closet. Well, that wasn't accurate. She kept her mouth shut about my clothes, but not my plans for the night.
"When you and Cassie go out, you always get crazy," she tried as I came out with another handful of dresses and skirts. No one wore jeans out on the town.
She wasn't exactly wrong. Cassie, a girl we had known since middle school, who Reese had never gotten on with, being the polar opposite in every way. That being said, Reese and I were polar opposites as well. Maybe because I was closer in age to Paine and Enzo, I had always felt the need from a young age to be tough, to be able to run with the big boys; I had become much more hardass and extroverted. Reese, being the youngest, most protected by not only my mom, aunts, and me, but also Paine and Enzo who always treated her with kid gloves, became bookish, standoffish, way too sweet for her own good.
I was maybe a bit impulsive and let my mouth run away with itself, though I tried my best not to get too crazy anymore, and Cassie was just like me in that regard. She had never grown out of her teenage rebellion. Maybe we both still felt like we had something to prove. We had been tight since we were twelve. I didn't see the friendship going anywhere and was hoping that it would eventually evolve, that we would both grow up, but do it in the same direction.
But that night, I was glad she was still the same old Cassie.
I needed a night of reckless abandon.
She was the only one who would be in on that with me, happily, no questions asked.
"You always get in trouble with her."
"Exactly." I shrugged out of a typical little black dress that just didn't have enough oomph for me and into a bright pink, short, tight, wrap skirt, knowing before it was even settled at my hip that it was the one.
"I get it," she agreed, trying to be reasonable. She would never give up. It was something unbelievably endearing, but also annoying, about Reese. "Evan was a jerk."
"Dick," I corrected, smiling in the mirror at her sitting on top of my bed with a pile of my clothes in a pair of yellow polka-dotted pajama pants at seven PM on a Friday night, her hair pulled into a side braid, her pretty face completely makeup-free as it almost always was. I had the mouth of a sailor. So did our mother and aunts and our brothers. Reese rarely ever found a bad word. And when she did, it often tripped off her tongue.
"A dick," she said, wrinkling her face up slightly at that. "But what does it prove to go out and get drunk and raise hell?"
"It proves that I am not going to let it break me."
And it wouldn't.
I wouldn't let it.
He cheated. Often. Shamelessly. He didn't even bother to look apologetic or sheepish when I finally had proof to back up my hunch and confronted him about it.
That, well, that was unacceptable.
It was a sad fact of life that many guys would be unfaithful. I had learned not to let it send me into hysterics sometime in tenth grade. Most of that was thanks to my mom and Enzo's mom, Annie. Seeing as both of them found out they had been in 'relationships' with my shithead father at the same time, literally both getting pregnant with Paine and Enzo the same year, they had developed what I always saw as a healthy distrust and suspicion with the opposite sex. They also taught me that no man was worth falling apart over. It was advice I took to heart.