CHAPTER 6
I remain in the stripper’s dressing room until Mel finds me. I’m lying on a bench with my arm over my face. Mel starts chattering the instant she sees me. “That man has some seriously oversized ovaries. Can you say PMS? He barked at anyone and everyone before shoving his way outside.”
Moving my arm, I glance at her. “Tell me you’re talking about Trystan.”
“Hey! Don’t you go dissin’ my man. Me and Crème Brule are going to be the perfect couple, get married, and have lots of perfect babies. You wait and see.” Mel’s voice has that teasing tone. She has a serious crush on Trystan, which means she won’t go after him. She’s like Sean with things like that. Anyone she actually cares about, she keeps at arm’s length—except me.
I sit up and swing my legs to the floor. “Does he know you call him that?”
“What? Like he’d be offended. It’s the perfect dessert, all rich and white.” She giggles and then slaps her hand over her mouth. “Uh, you didn’t see that.”
I roll my eyes. “You are so mental. If you like him, ask him out.”
“He’s a rock star, Avery. You don’t just walk up to the guy and say, ‘hey, you wanna go out with me?’ Plus, Miss Black will kill me.”
“Miss Black wants to kill you anyway. And you should do what you want. Life’s too short.” I feel a dazed look settle on my face—the one I have when my mind starts to wade through dark thoughts. My mind is a goddamn swamp. No matter which direction I turn, there’s more dark sludge. It’s everywhere.
“So, why’d Mr. Pampered-Ass run?”
I look over at her with a sheepish grin. “I told him he was a coward.”
Mel’s jaw drops. “Holy shit on toast! You did not!”
“I did. He asked what I wanted and I told him—I want him to stop running from himself.”
“Psh, if that’s not the blind leading the blind, I don’t know what is.”
“It is not.”
“It is so. You’re gonna lead that boy right off a cliff. Avery, you don’t even have your own shit together. How can you ask him to do that when you can’t?”
I puff up, offended. “I can so!”
“Avery girl, I love you, but you can’t see past your tits on this. You cower and hide from life the same way he does. How you choose to manifest that fear is different and more socially acceptable, but you’re both in the flame out stage. You’re no better than him.”
It feels like she punched me in the stomach. I raise my voice and wag a finger in her face. “You don’t know shit about this, okay. You don’t know Sean or what he’s done. We’re not the same.”
“Yeah, that’s where you’re wrong. You’re both candy-coated crazy people. You seem all sweet on the outside, but once you get past that outer shell, you’re both a f*cking mess. If you can’t admit that, I don’t know if we can be friends. It’s one of the only things we have in common.” She smiles at me. “Avery, you have to know that about yourself. Are you seriously sitting there, telling me that you had no f*cking clue?”
Am I really that messed up? I thought I was healing. My hackles lower a little bit and I admit, “It’s not intentional.”
“Of course not, and that’s the point. It’s a defense mechanism—you can’t turn it off. If you tried, you’d have nothing to shield yourself with. You just told Wonderbread that he’s a coward for leaving his defenses up. The man’s been through some serious shit.”
“And you’re defending him…”
“If that’s your main issue with the guy, yeah.”
“He put some call girl in South Oaks.”
“Did he light her on fire or f*ck her?” I glance at her like she’s crazy. “Uh, Avery, call girls are there to be screwed. If she didn’t want him to do her, she shouldn’t have taken the job. If he lit her on fire or buried her alive to listen to her scream, then I’d be more concerned.”
“He doesn’t do that, but he likes fear. He thrives on it.”
“Dark f*cker, isn’t he?” I nod. “Kind of like me. Well, since you two are no longer an item, I want Sean. I bet I can make him cry.”
“He’ll make you cry and beg for mercy.” I know she’s teasing, trying to get a rise out of me, but I don’t take her bait.
Mel slaps her hands on her jean-clad knees, “Well, if that’s all, then I—”
Mel is ready to walk away, but the offer from Black is still bobbing up and down in my thoughts. Every time I consider it, I think it’s ridiculous and shove it back down, but it pops up again. I blurt it out before she can finish her sentence. “Black offered to make me madam.”
Mel is half standing, with her butt sticking out and her hands still on her knees, when she pauses. Her jaw drops and she sits back down. “White girl say what?”
“Hey, that’s my catch phrase.”
“Yeah, it didn’t sound right coming out of this luscious mouth. But enough of that. Black seriously offered?” I nod and go into the details. When I finish Mel is uncharacteristically silent. “What’d you say?”
“She told me to think about it.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“I don’t know.” I’m picking at my nails as I speak. “I’m kind of thinking that it depends on what happens with Sean, but then I’m depending on Sean for everything. Black tapped into one of my biggest fears and twisted.”
“I’d let you stay with me, but I’m screwed everyway ‘til Tuesday until they catch whoever shot my twin.”
I blink at her. “She looked like you.”
Mel puts her hands on her hips and tips her head to the side. “Yeah, we’ve been through this already. You saw her, thought she was me…”
My brain is grabbing at strings and my neck prickles. I don’t know what it is, but something is off. I can’t place my finger on it. “Wait a second.” I pull out my phone and call Black.
“What?” she snaps.
“The girl you sent to check on us at the hotel—what’d she look like?”
Black sighs dramatically into the phone. “Avery, I don’t have time for your—”
I’m insane and cut her off, saying each word staccato. “What. Did. She. Look. Like?”
Black huffs and spits out a description. “It was Tawny—dark hair with ghastly gold streaks, caucasian with olive skin, green eyes, about five foot seven, and a buck ten.”
“And she died?”
“Yes! Avery, we’ve been over this already.” Miss Black is yelling at me, but she’s wrong. Her information is totally wrong and she doesn’t know. “Unless you have something helpful to add, or you’re accepting your new position, I suggest you hang up.”
Done. I disconnect and stare at Mel. “There’s another dead body.”