Armed With Steele (11 page)

“That computer happens to pay my
bills
, Matt.”

Jennifer shook her head and led me by the arm toward a cluster of our friends who’d congregated at Northside Bar and Grill. One of our regular Friday night hangouts, Northside was cozy, relatively clean, and more often than not fight-free.

“So,” she said, leaning in closer. “How
are
you?”

I shrugged. “Hanging in there.”

“And Grace?”

“Still the same,” I said, careful not to meet her gaze.

She exhaled loudly. “I just can’t believe she’s, like, in a
coma
.”

“Yeah, me neither. Oh! Can you believe I forgot to grab myself a drink?” I freed myself from her grip. From any further interrogation. “I’ll be right back.”

My favorite bartender was working tonight—tall and dark with chocolate brown eyes. The kind of guy you could sit and drink in with your eyes all night long. Well, until closing time, anyway.

“What, no Grace tonight?”

I’d left the house to get her off my mind—a lot of good it’d done me. “No, Mac, just me tonight. Can I, uh, have my usual?”

“Sure thing,” he said and handed it to me, having twisted the top off my beer before I’d finished my sentence. I was nothing if not predictable.

“Thanks.”

I tossed a few bucks on the bar and took a good, long drink from my beer. Then I headed back into the other room and did my best to blend in with the scenery. It felt awkward not having Grace there. Like I was missing my left arm or something. She was usually the one leading our conversations.

Tonight, though, instead of leading them, she soon became the main topic of discussion. I knew our friends would probably bring up her accident. In fact, I’d fully expected it. But if I’d thought tossing out a few quick answers would satisfy their curiosity, I was sadly mistaken. Soon the entire group was humming with questions and comments about it.

“I heard a deer ran out in front of her.”

“A deer? That early in the day? No way, it had to have been a dog.”

“You’re both wrong. I drove by there the next day and there was no sign of road kill.”

Back and forth, round and round, the conversation rolled. I nursed my beer in silence, wishing they would hurry up and move on to another topic.

Jennifer turned in her seat to face me. “So, what
did
the police tell you, Jessica?”

Ten pairs of eyes zeroed in on me. I froze in mid-sip, then slowly lowered my bottle. The image of Officer Steele instantly came to mind, his brilliant blue eyes begging me to reconsider. “The…police?”

Matt spoke up and saved me from my momentary social bumble. “That it was a freak accident. Nothing more.”

My gaze met his, and he gave me a small nod. I hated that he was still convinced there was no other explanation. Hated even more the subtle
don’t you dare bring up your harebrained idea
look he was giving me.

“Now, will you all please give this poor gal a break?” He smiled at the rest of the group and put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s had a rough week, and came out to drink away the stress she’s been under.”

I blushed. “Well, I—”

“Shots!” someone cried out. “We need a round of shots!”

“No, really—” I stopped. After the week I’d had, one shot couldn’t hurt.

So we all did a shot. And drank some more beer. And did some more shots.

For the next two hours, people took turns sliding drinks in front of me. And not wanting to appear ungrateful, I drank what they gave me. Unfortunately, since I was usually the designated driver, my tolerance for more than a beer or two was virtually nil. By midnight, I’d not only forgotten my worries, but also how to stay upright on a barstool.

“Come on, drunky-drunkerson,” Matt said, catching me before I slid completely off my seat. “We need to get you home.”

“Aww, but I’m haf’ing
fun
.”

“You won’t be having any fun if you fall off that seat and crack your head open. I think we’ve all been at the hospital enough for one lifetime these past few weeks, don’t you?”

I scowled at him for a moment, then waved my half-finished beer in his direction. “You’re right. Jus’ let me finish this las’ one.”

“You know, if we stay much longer, ole George is gonna make his way down here and try to convince you to go home with
him
tonight.”

I not-so-subtly glanced over at the bar’s resident drunk, whom we’d lovingly dubbed George. I had no idea if that was his real name or not, nor did I care to find out. He was at least twice my age, had half as many teeth, and looked like the poster child for why not to do meth. “Eww.”

“Let’s get you home.”

“Okay, Matt. Thanks for being the DD tonigh’…yer the best.”

“Uh-huh.” He helped me down and threw some money on to the bar to cover his tab.

I winked at the hunky bartender and turned to go. Unfortunately, my legs felt like rubber and my pumps weren’t being very cooperative, so I didn’t make it very far.

Matt sighed and threw my arm over his shoulder.

I threw him a drunken grin and whispered loudly, “People’re gonna talk.”

He kept his eyes on the door ahead. “Trust me, they already are.”

We rode to my place in silence, him shaking his head, me with my mine against the passenger window. Every bump served as a reminder that I’d consumed entirely too much alcohol. In a matter of blocks, though, the torture ceased—I was home.

Matt stopped in front of my place, and turned in his seat to face me. “What the hell were you doing tonight?”

The thump-thumpity-thumping of my over-liquored brain made it hard to stay coherent. “W-what?”

“You know
what
. Drinking so much. What the hell, Jess?”

I crossed my arms, jutted out my chin, and pouted. “I’m a big girl, Matt. I can take care of myself.”

“You’re drunk off your ass! If I hadn’t been there—”

I ran a hand through my hair, in no mood to listen to his lecture. “Geez, Matt, lighten up.”

Matt’s jaw fell open. Even in my blurred vision I could tell I’d hit a nerve.

“Lighten
up
? My girlfriend was in a horrendous car accident two weeks ago. Now she’s stuck at some run-down rehab center. In a
coma
. Then I offer to get you out of the house for a few hours and end up babysitting a drunk! After all I’ve been through, you’re telling me to
lighten up
?”

“You’re not the only one suffering here,
buddy.
Where were you when I was trying to convince the police that Grace’s accident was no accident? In fact, where the hell have you been since then? Huh?”

Matt recoiled from my words, eyes narrowed. “You deal with grief your way, I’ll deal with it mine.” He shifted in his seat. “Just because I didn’t buy into your idea doesn’t mean I miss her any less.”

“Whatever.” I crossed my arms tighter and looked up the walk to my dark house. The thought of spending another night alone filled me with dread.

Suddenly, all I could think about was how much I was missing Grace. How badly I wished she was home, so when I came stumbling in she’d be there to take care of me. I burst into tears.

“Oh, Jess.” Matt dropped his arms, reached over and hugged me as best as he could. Had I been sober, I would have resisted. But in my lonely, drunken state, I gave in without a fight and proceeded to cry a river on his shirtsleeve. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

“I know,” I blubbered. “I…I just miss her so much.”

“So do I,” he said, gently stroking my hair. “So do I.”

* * * *

Before Matt kidnapped me—or rescued me, depending on how you looked at it—I’d planned on getting up early Saturday to go see Grace. Bring a McGriddle or two along to see if their sweet, greasy scent might convince her it was time to wake up. Then I could stop feeling guilty about turning Nate down.

But instead of my alarm waking me, my cell phone yanked me from the land of slumber and deposited me into hangover hell. With my still queasy stomach warning me not to make any sudden movement, I reached over and blindly groped atop my nightstand for the phone. After a few clumsy swipes, I heard it drop to the floor with a thud.

Damn.
I gingerly propped myself up on one elbow and cracked an eye open. Thanks to my prior evening’s indulgences, even that slight movement got my head pounding and stomach churning. I snapped my eye back shut and concentrated on not throwing up right there in my bed.

When it felt like the room had stopped spinning, I reopened one eye, then the other. I shifted slowly over to the edge of my bed. The blasted phone was face up on the floor just a few feet away, taunting me. With a heavy sigh, I slowly crawled out of bed and reached down to grab it. Even at tortoise speed, that action proved to be a huge mistake. Suddenly, all the alcohol I’d consumed the night before threatened to make an encore appearance. So instead of collecting my phone, I rushed to the bathroom and grabbed the toilet instead.

A few minutes later, after I’d purged everything in my stomach and then some, I sank down onto the cool bathroom floor, exhausted.

“I swear, I’ll never touch another drop,” I said, looking skyward. “Well, at least not anywhere near that many drops in such a short span of time.”

My cell phone beeped in the other room. A voice mail. I wanted to see who’d called, but was afraid to move for fear it would lead to more vomiting. Curiosity soon won out, though, and had me crawling across the floor into my bedroom.

“Jess, it’s Nate—don’t hang up. Look, I know you’ve been avoiding my calls all week. But please reconsider. And buy yourself a newspaper. Page 3D, second column, halfway down.”

I hung up and glanced over to my bedside clock.

Eight AM? Who the heck called anyone that early on a Saturday?

An annoyingly persistent cop, that’s who.

I closed my eyes and sighed. What would it take to get him to drop this idea of his?

* * * *

“Morning, Grace,” I said just after eleven, and lowered myself into the rocking chair beside her bed. I gave her hand a little squeeze. I’d opted not to bring the breakfast sandwiches—my stomach would have flipped if I’d gotten within one hundred feet of fast food today. Without the aroma of greasy breakfast goodness to help me entice her out of the coma, I had to change my strategy.

“I saw Matt last night.”

Silence.

I watched her face closely, looked for any hint of movement. Seeing none, I dangled a larger proverbial carrot in front of her. “He was looking handsome as ever in that shirt you love on him.”

Nothing.

“Took me over to Northside to see the gang. They were all asking about you, of course.”

More silence.

Though my hangover had receded to a dull headache, my patience was still not at its normal, slightly-better-than-nothing level. “Look, Grace, you need to wake up. You, being like this? It’s killing me. Swear to God, it’s killing me. I didn’t have you there last night to look out for me. Went and got all stupid drunk.” I stopped. Shook my head. “Why, oh why, won’t you just wake up already?”

I squeezed her hand to the point it hurt mine. Still she gave me nothing.

“And then there’s the whole cute cop badgering the crap out of me,” I said, releasing her hand to slump back in my seat. “Guy keeps calling, asking me to reconsider—”

I stopped. If I found out later that she
could
hear everything I was saying and knew I was weenie-ing out, the guilt would just be that much worse. It already felt like I was carrying around an 800-pound gorilla on my back. “He’s a persistent S.O.B., that’s for sure,” I mumbled and looked away.

My eyes wandered over to the table where I’d set my purse down. And the newspaper I’d grabbed off our porch, on my way out. “Speaking of which…”

I hopped up and snagged the paper. Opened it and searched for section D.

“The classifieds?”

I rolled my eyes. What silly advertisement could he have possibly wanted me to see badly enough that he’d call so early on a Saturday morning? I flipped to page three, skimmed midway down the second column and stopped. Took a hard look at the job posting I was certain he’d wanted me to see. There it was, in black and white.