face neutral, not wanting to voice my thoughts before she explains it all.
“I knew it was wrong… so I told her I was going to tell my brother everything. She threatened me,” Georgie says. “Said she’d make sure it looked like it was all my idea. I was scared. She’s really powerful, or at least that’s how it looks.”
Trying to get the story straight, I ask, “And how exactly did you get in touch with her again?”
Georgie smirks. “At the grocery store. She probably saw me, this girl she used to know, who was supposed to become something special, who ended up with a shopping cart full of Hot Pockets, and thought I was an easy target.”
I bounce my shoulder off hers. “Don’t knock Hot Pockets. They’re delicious.”
Georgie laughs sadly. “Grady, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Try to remind you to breathe?” I take her hand. “This is going to be okay. Explain what happened next.”
“Yesterday, Karen left town, and left a lot of people out of money. She gave them my number – can you believe that? Now I feel responsible because I’m the person they are all calling, wanting to know what happened… and I’m the only one who knows where she went.”
My stomach drops. Karen’s the person Vance is looking for.
Georgina
“What is it?” I ask Grady, seeing a dark look in his eyes.
“We have to tell your brother,” he says.
I shake my head. “No. That’s the last thing we need to do.”
“Georgie, listen to me. You need to tell him everything. I think he’s looking for Karen.”
“Why are you even helping me?” I ask, pulling back. “Aren’t you totally put off by what I’ve done?”
Grady swallows, clasps his hands together, looking down. Thinking. I squirm in my seat, the agony of knowing he is so close to walking away kills me.
But then he looks at me, not with pity but with determination. “First of all, you didn’t know what was going on. And secondly, we can get through this. We can get through anything. I promised you that last night and I’m not backing down. We’ve all done stupid shit, Georgie.”
“You’ve never done anything this dumb.”
He runs a hand over my cheek, pulling me close, and our foreheads meet. “It was pretty fucking dumb to wait so long to tell you how I feel.”
“What will happen to me?” I whisper.
Grady pulls me into an embrace and I melt against him. “I don’t know the laws, what might happen, but I do know this — whatever you’ve gotta face, we can face it together.”
Grady’s words give me the confidence to call my brother. I ask him to meet Grady and me for breakfast.
“How about the Hot Spot?” Vance suggests Val’s diner.
Half an hour later, the four of us are sitting in a booth, and Vance and Valerie are looking at us, stunned.
“You guys are together?” Val asks, hurt. “How long have you been keeping this from us?”
“It’s not like that. Grady and I… we’re just starting out. I haven’t been hiding that from you.”
Valerie has been my closest friend for a long time, but I’ve been pretty crappy at treating her like a BFF. I’ve been hiding so much out of embarrassment. A woman like Val doesn’t have to pretend to be someone she’s not. She’s confident without any falsity. Me, though? I’ve been trying so hard to be something that I forgot how to be myself.
“Look, I need to apologize to both of you,” I say, making the bravest choice I’ve made in a long time. “I’ve made a big mess of things and it’s time I owned up.”
I explain it all — my insecurity about not having a clue where my life is headed, how Karen seemed to come into my life at the perfect time, and how I fell for her lies. And then I explain her pyramid scheme.
“I knew the moment she explained it that it was shady, that someone would end up losing money, and when I called her on it, she skipped town.”
“Hell, Georgie,” Vance says, shaking his head. “Karen is the woman our department is after. She’s done this in three states. There are a shit ton of people looking for her.”
“I know where she is,” I say with shaky breath. “She left for Miami two days ago, and that’s why I got so scared. The people she took money from started calling me, asking me to get them their cash back, but I don’t have access to it. Karen has it. All of