Sarina
Stacey was a miracle worker. With a ten-dollar investment in thrift shop clothes and dollar store accessories, she transformed me into an eighties pop star, complete with garish make-up and a side ponytail.
The party was getting into full swing. A mass of wacky characters coming together for the first time on the dance floor, while Godzilla squared off against Spongebob in an epic game of beer pong at the side of the room.
It surprised me how enthusiastic Ryan had been about attending the Halloween party. He said it was one of the best parties of the year when he was in college, though, so I guessed that was as good a reason as any.
He’d supplied me with ten grams of F and told me how to cut it with powdered food coloring to make it go that bit further. He said it was all I needed to pay for my tuition and accommodation for the rest of the academic year.
Of course, all I had done was hand it in to Sergeant Shelton, who gave me some money that had previously occupied the evidence room. It would have been impossible to find cash more randomized in serial numbers and infused with the chemical traces of its drug-loving owners than this.
All I had to do was pay Ryan back for the F he’d given me on credit, and then I’d be in good standing with him for potential future deals and getting more involved in the business. That’s how the story was supposed to go, anyway.
In reality, handing over the F to my CO felt like the betrayal of the century. Doing it made me feel like a robot, disconnected from myself and going through the motions I’d been programed to do.
Underneath the self-assured, cocky even, exterior there was so much more to Ryan. He was smart, funny, fiercely loyal, and he’d shown me such devotion over the past couple of months that it was tearing my heart in half living this double life.
He said he never told anybody about why he got involved with this F stuff as a side business and, going by the way it cut him up to admit, I believed him. I felt terrible that it took all these lies to weasel my way into this position of trust. He deserved better.
Telling him about that horrific night with my foster father, James Salter, took the edge off my guilt a little bit too. Even thinking his name made my skin crawl, but sharing that part of me was like opening up the armor a little. It let me feel like I made some kind of real connection between Ryan and myself.
When I wasn’t with him, I couldn’t shake the guilt and the knowledge that everything that felt so good and so right was going to crumble and fall to pieces around us. When I was with him, well, he brought Sarina Bell to life, and gave her the kinds of intangible things that made Sarina Beckett more than a little jealous.
It was so fucking weird to be thinking about my undercover identity and my real identity, both, in a detached way, as if the essence of “me” was floating around trying to figure out which life I belonged in. When Ryan texted me saying he’d just arrived, my heart soared and it was a welcome leap out of the swampy existential crisis my mind was creating for me.
I grabbed an extra drink and made my way towards the entrance, painfully aware of how much more thrilled I was to be seeing Ryan than I had been to hand over the drugs. Then things took a turn for the surreal when he came through the doors.
Complete with inflatable nightstick, mirror-finish sunglasses and suspiciously realistic-looking handcuffs, Ryan was in full police uniform. I was a statue, carved with an expression of full disbelief, as Ryan spotted me and bopped in my direction in time to the music.
“That for me,” he asked, pointing at the red plastic cup full of beer.
I nodded.
“Thanks. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? Resisting arrest?” He reached for his nightstick.
I shook my head, as much to say “no” as to clear the cobwebs from my brain. “Uh… no. That’s just a very realistic costume. I was going to hand over some money tonight, but this makes me feel like I have to watch myself!”
“Oh you do, ma’am, are you trying to bribe an officer of the law?” he said, curling his free hand around me and bending down to give me a kiss.
As soon as his lips touched mine, I felt my worries slipping away from me. I melted against him and by the time he pulled back, I was feeling more like myself again. Or more like Sarina Bell. Who was I?
As far as Ryan was concerned, I was an eighties pop diva here to dance the night away with, and he didn’t waste any time taking me out into the middle of the floor. Sometimes we danced alone, sometimes in a circle made up mostly of the girls I’d taken out on that first night, and the guys who were trying to get into their panties at the moment.
Whatever we did, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Ryan. I’d seen a lot of people in uniforms a lot like that one, but none of them ever filled it out quite like he did. Truly, it had never looked sexier.