Promise me that you won’t call him!”
“But—
“Promise me, Kate.”
“All right, fine. Then I guess we won’t see you until tomorrow. What time can you leave there tomorrow?”
“I’m really not sure, but I get the feeling that it won’t be for a while since the whole experience feels a lot like processing me like a package of meat.”
A guard tapped me on the shoulder.
“I have to go now, Kate. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there,” she said. “Stay safe in there.”
I hung up the phone and started to cry,
I sat on the metal cot and was too exhausted to even cry anymore. I was disgusted with myself for having done something so stupid that it landed me in this cell. Why did it seem like everything was one string of bad decisions after another lately? I knew why; it was because I couldn’t think straight.
All I could see in my head when Chelsea had come into the café was her hand on Tim; her hand gripped around the sacred piece of his body that had been inside of me on the most wonderful night of my entire life. She was honestly lucky that all I did was throw a latte at her and punch her in the face. I wanted to break her whole hand off. Maybe next time she’d think twice about touching someone else’s boyfriend. That woman had been the catalyst for so many problems between Tim and me. Granted, the biggest part of the issue was Tim’s consistent lack of being open and communicative. But still, if it hadn’t been for Chelsea, none of that would have even happened to begin with. I swear that the universe puts people like her on the earth just to torment us and laugh at how much chaos gets created.
So now I would have no job—again—and if Chelsea pressed formal charges, then I would have something on my criminal record, not to mention I had to spend the night here on a metal cot with a toilet in the corner to pee in. My life was seriously at an all-time low. Never did I think I’d be going from my awesome job at Cubed with my amazingly hot boyfriend to a jail cell with a pee pot.
A cop came to stand at the gate to my cell. When he started fumbling with a ring of keys and opening the lock, I got worried that I was about to get dragged off somewhere else.
“You’re free to go,” he said to me.
“What? Why?”
He laughed. “Would you prefer to stay in there?”
I quickly got up and rushed out to the other side of the bars. “No, of course not, sorry. But why I am being released. I thought there was a two thousand dollar bail to post?”
“There was. It’s been paid.”
“Paid? By whom?”
As soon as we walked out into the waiting room and I caught sight of Tim, I was absolutely mortified. Grateful, but still mortified. I literally wanted to die of embarrassment and shame.
“Thank you, officer,” Tim said before he opened the door for me to leave.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked as we walked to his car.
“Kate called me.”
Dammit, Kate. I had specifically asked her not to get Tim involved.
“Thank you for paying the bail,” I said. “I’ll pay you back.”
“Why would you do that?” he asked. “You don’t have two grand, and I don’t need it to be paid back. I’m just happy that Kate called me so that I could come to get you out of there.”
We got into his car, and I was so relieved to be pulling away from the police station.
“Do you want me to take you back to Kate’s?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
“Want to tell me what happened?” he asked. “How did you end up in a jail cell tonight?”
“You mean, Kate didn’t tell you?” At least I owed her for keeping her mouth shut about that.
“No. She said you had asked her not to even call me and that you would be furious at her when I came to bail you out. But that I was the only person she knew who could afford the bail, and she didn’t want you to have to spend the night in jail. I asked her what had happened, but she refused to say. She’s a good friend to you.”
I nodded; she truly was.
“Why did you tell Kate not to call me, Brooke? You know I would have come and gotten you out. I just don’t understand why