As I walked in, I darted a quick cross-glance over to the counter. Her friend was nowhere to be seen, and whether that was good news or bad news I couldn’t decide. I made my way over to the elevator and got inside.
This was where she had kissed me. The impertinent girl. Thinking about it now made me heat up - her soft body against my chest, her hungry lips seizing mine. I licked my lips and pressed the button to go up.
On the third floor, the elevator jerked to a stop. Wandering aimlessly down the aisles, I let my fingers run across the spines of the books. Crime novels, science fiction tomes. Romance novels down at the corner, their spines red and gold and well-worn.
Fiction. This was all a fiction, I thought. My kitten, back at home, tied safely to the bed - all of it was a story that I told myself. A story that led, in every possible path, towards a tragic ending.
Tragic, for how else could this story end? It was impossible that we would figure out a way to live together. Outside of the house, she had seemed so happy, so enchanted with the world. And for all my pretensions at objectivity, she had managed to slip underneath, into my calm world, and ripple the surface with her desires.
At the end of the row of books, I turned around, then stopped dead in my tracks.
It was her friend, the other girl. She was sitting down in the middle of the aisle, a handful of books at her side. Her hair was dyed green where before it had been purple, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but it was her.
This was why I had come here, but now that the girl was in front of me I didn’t know how to react. Recognition flashed over her face as she looked up at me, but if I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have found it.
“Can I help you?”
Her voice sounded tired, and although her words were polite, she narrowed her eyes while looking at me. Not blinking.
“Just browsing. I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I?”
She rolled her eyes and thumbed toward her face. I didn’t know whether she was pointing at the piercings or the hair, or both.
“Can’t miss me,” she said.
“You worked with that girl, didn’t you? The one who ran away?”
“She didn’t run away.”
Now her face sharpened into rapt attention. I could almost smell her suspicion. Rather than make me cautious, though, her suspicion emboldened me. Here I was, right where I had met her. It almost made me understand those killers who leave notes or other clues. Before I thought that they were trying to get caught, but right now, standing next to the one girl who could link us together, the world was so bright that I couldn’t even remember the shadow.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I saw on TV—”
“That’s what they’re all saying,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair, brushing her green bangs back. Under all the eyeliner and metal, she was actually quite a beautiful girl. Not my type, but classically pretty. “Even her parents.”
“You don’t believe them?”
“I don’t—look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to believe. Kat wasn’t that kind of girl.”
“You knew her well?”
“Well enough.” She squinted up at me. “How did you know her?”
“I don’t. I only met her here that one day. When she was working with you.” My voice was calm, smooth, remembering all the details. The romance novel on the cart.
“I can see how you would remember me,” she said, tossing her green bangs back. “But how did you remember her?”
“Well, she did kiss me.”
Now the girl’s eyes widened.
“She what?”
My mind stumbled. Kat had told me that it had been a bet. That this girl had bet her to kiss me. Was that a lie?
“She kissed you? Are you serious?” The girl stood up,
“I—I mean, yes, she kissed me. Out of nowhere. I didn’t know her before, and when she asked me on a date I said I wasn’t interested. I was dating someone else at the time, you see.”
I clamped my mouth shut, stopping myself before I rambled off into a world of explanatory lies. Only liars ever gave explanations without being asked.
“Wow.”
The girl leaned on the wall of books, and a title caught my eye: Caught In the Act. I blinked my eyes back to her face.
“So she really did kiss you. I didn’t think she had the balls to do it.”
I shrugged, affecting nonchalance.
“When I saw her on TV, I thought: what a coincidence. One day she’s flirting with me, the next day…” I waved my hand away into the air.
“She told me that she chickened out,” the girl said in a half-whisper.
“I’m sure she didn’t want to bother me after I’d turned her down. You really think she didn’t run away? You think something else happened to her?” I leaned forward, and the girl looked up at me, frightened.
“I don’t know.” The girl shook her head, her bangs and earrings swinging in the air. “I mean, she had her demons, we all do. God, I don’t know anymore. She told me that she would never do something like that again, but… I don’t know. Maybe she was lying about that, too.”