Perfect Lie(32)

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him. “What time is it?”

“It’s early…or really late. I don’t know. It’s, like, three in the morning.”

I groaned and flopped back down on the couch. “If your booty call is over, please lock the door behind you and make sure to visit your doctor within forty‐eight hours.”

“Wake up, party animal.” He shook my shoulder, and I reluctantly opened my eyes.

“What could you possibly need that’s so important at three a.m.?” I groaned, as I wiped the sleep from my eyes.

“You have a problem.”

“I do, huh? This ought to be good.” I sat up and stretched my arms over my head.

“Yes, you do. Her name is Trish, and she’s fucking obliterated. We did a few shots, and she fucking lost it.”

“Lost it how?” I was wide‐awake with concern now.

“I was asking myself the same question until I discovered the pill bottle in my glove box was gone.”

I rubbed my hands over my face out of frustration. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I never joke about—”

I waved him away to stop talking as I stood up from the couch. “It’s too early for your bullshit. Can we tone it down until…let’s say…five in the morning?”

He laughed and stood up next to me. “Fine. I’ll take the couch. Be warned that I tend to sleepwalk when I’m drunk, so wear something sexy to bed.” He stepped closer, and I put my hand on his chest to stop him.

“You aren’t staying here.”

“Kettle, I let you spend the night with me. It’s only fair you do the same.”

“What am I supposed to do about Trish?”

Abel lay out on the couch that I had just been curled up on and closed his eyes, not bothering to respond.

“Just great.” I turned to go to my room.

“Good night, Delilah.”

“ ’Night, Abel.”

I lay awake for the next hour, getting up to check on Trish every few minutes. I was terrified she was going to overdose or vomit all over the place. Her skin was pale, and she shivered like a puppy in the rain. I forced her to drink several glasses of water and eat a few slices of toast. She cursed and swatted at me, but I wasn’t about to let her destroy herself. Eventually the weight of my eyelids won out, and I finally was able to get some shut‐eye.

My dreams were a montage of childhood memories. I pictured my mother yelling at me to eat my cereal, and when I refused, she flicked the ashes of her cigarette into the bowl and told me I wasn’t allowed to move until I learned to listen. She locked herself in her bedroom, and after what felt like a lifetime in my young mind, I did my best to eat around the gray milk.

My memory faded into Christmas morning at my grandparents’ house. I couldn’t have been older than ten as I sat perfectly quiet on the sofa. I heard my mom and grandma arguing in the kitchen over money. My mom was crying because she couldn’t afford groceries, to which Grandma replied that she should have kept her legs closed. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but my mother’s response cleared up any confusion. My stomach sank, and the red and green ornaments on the white plastic Christmas tree across the room blurred into a swirl of color. I heard my mother tell my grandma that if she wanted me, she could keep me. My grandpa snapped at them with a string of curse words before closing himself off in his den.

On the ride home from my grandparents’, my mother counted out a stack of cash, and that was the last time we ever visited them.

“It’s rude not to feed your guest.”

I jumped. “Fuck. Abel, go the hell away.” My eyes slowly came into focus on his bare, toned chest. They traveled lower, over the ridges of his abdomen to the delicious V that disappeared below his low‐slung jeans.

“My eyes are up here, Kettle.” His eyes locked on mine, and I knew I was busted. “It’s five in the morning. It’s officially time to start with my—what do you call it? My bullshit.”

“Why don’t you go harass Trish?”

“I tried, but she yelled at me about needing her beauty sleep.”

“She’s very serious about her beauty habits.”

“Duly noted.” Abel grabbed my ankle and tugged me across the bed a few inches.

“I’m not the live‐in help, Abel. Go make yourself some breakfast.” I swung my arm blindly behind myself toward him but didn’t connect.

“Careful there, Lie. You almost felt what a real man is like.”

“You’re a pig.”

“The expression is ‘hung like a horse.’ You getting up, or do I have to carry you to the kitchen? Who let you women out of there anyway?”