Coffee and Cockpits (45 page)

“Um, is this a trick question? I just said we had business. Why do you want me to lie to you about it?”

I dropped my head in hands.
No. No. No.
He can’t possibly be into that stuff. No. No.

Margot put her hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Lacey, what’s up?”

Throwing my head back, I whimpered in frustration. “Margot, you know I can’t be with a guy who’s into that.”

Her mouth made a small “o.” “Oh, yeah. Well, fuck. I’m so sorry, Lacey. Wow. That’s some shitty luck.”

I collapsed onto the stairs, running my fingers into my curls. “I just don’t understand. He seemed so strait-laced. I never would have thought that about him.”

Margot sat next to me. “I hate to break it to you, girl, but even strait-laced guys like to smoke weed.”

I shook my head, refusing to let the issue go. “But you don’t understand, Margot. We meshed so well together.”
Obviously, since I didn’t let just any guy shove his tongue down my throat within minutes of meeting him. “I can usually sense these things, and this guy just doesn’t fit the bill. I just don’t understand.”

She didn’t say anything, and I looked up. Sitting with her hands in her lap, she played restlessly with her fingers. When I saw the uneasy look on her face, I knew something was off.

“What is it?”

Glancing my way, she rubbed her arm with an anxious expression. “Derrick brought him to me.”

My eyes blazed. “Derrick? My
cousin
Derrick?” I was going to kill him for dropping one of the sexiest guys I’d ever met into my life only to find out he was a druggy.

“Yeah, and I get what you’re saying about the type. When Derrick brought him to me, he said the guy had never even bought before.”

My eyebrows shot up.

“You should have seen him when I showed him my stash, Lacey. He looked at it like he’d never even seen product before.”

I grabbed her shoulders with so much force that she almost lost her balance. “You’re telling me that you’re selling massive quantities of weed to an
innocent
.” I gritted through my teeth.

She gave a crooked smile. “Money is money, honey.”

Has she no shame!
“Well, you can’t. I refuse to let you.”

“You can’t ask me to do that, Lacey. I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s your guy who’s got the issue. His decision to buy has nothing to do with me. I’m just the source. Don’t punish me.”

I dropped my hands from her shoulders. “Where did Derrick even find this guy?”

“It was actually Ty’s referral. He texted me that the guy was going to come. Derrick was just the delivery boy.”

My nostrils flared. “Ty? Got-too-much-power-and-not-enough-brain-cells-to-use-it Ty?” That creep asked me out his fair share of times. Needless to say, I wasn’t interested. The guy was into way too much trouble for my tastes.

“The very one. But watch it, he’s like family.”

“You don’t have to like all your family.”

“Regardless, he is.”

“Well, how would he come across a clean-cut guy like the one on the roof? Lord knows it wasn’t in our neck of the woods. You should have seen his face when I told him where I was from, Margot. A guy like that doesn’t normally set foot on the West Side.”

She shrugged her shoulders, but then stopped and snapped her fingers once. “I got it. Ty just got a job in the North Shore at a country club.”

“The North Shore? Why is Ty working out there?”

“Two words: it pays. He works on kitchen staff, and I bet you that’s where he met that guy.”

Groaning, I dropped my head between my knees.

Margot put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry to break it to you, Lacey, but it looks like Ty might have picked up a stray.”