throw rocks at windows for kicks. Is that how you show your lady friends a good time? Property destruction? By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask, Karras … What is it with your family and these Saint-Martins, huh? Just can’t stay away?”
What?
“I think the morphine has addled your brain,” Lucky mumbles.
“Stop it,” Evie says, dropping my hand. “Both of you!”
She’s upset. She was just in a wreck. She’s in a hospital, and she hates hospitals. I get all that. But right now, I’m really confused. “Can you just explain,” I say to her in a quiet voice, shielding my face with one hand in a poor attempt at privacy, “why in God’s name you were riding in the car of an ex-boyfriend who was drunkenly embarrassing us at a party a couple of weeks ago?”
“Josie,” Evie pleads.
“An ex who said horrible things about our entire family, including basically calling me and my mother whores in front of whole bunch of people.”
“Not my proudest moment,” Adrian calls out from the hospital bed. “But I don’t remember everything I said that night.”
“Well, I’m not going repeat what you said about me,” I mumble, refusing to look at his face. Or mention what you showed everyone. “Though maybe you don’t remember that, either.”
“Seem to recall being called an asshole by certain parties in the room,” Adrian says, directing this toward Lucky. He turns back to me to say something else, but Lucky quickly cuts him off.
“Whoa, whoa! Hey,” Lucky says, holding up his hands. “That nurse will come in here if they hear us, and you need to rest. Maybe we should do this another time?”
I start to argue, but Evie interrupts and looks at me as she says, “I asked Adrian to talk with me today, okay? He apologized for … his behavior the night of the party, and I was trying to ask him if he could talk to his father and get him to drop the whole window thing with Lucky. There. Are you happy? Is it not enough that everything he’s worked for at Harvard next semester has just been lost? You two aren’t the only people going through shit, you know.”
I’m too shocked to respond. I guess everyone is, because for a strained moment, there’s nothing but the sound of Adrian’s monitors. While I’m picking my jaw up off the floor, the nurse comes into the room with a wheelchair and Evie’s release papers. Evie signs them in a huff, ignores the wheelchair, and storms out of the room.
“Thanks for stopping by. A pleasure,” Adrian says, closing his eyes. “Now I’d advise you to leave before my father comes back and catches you in here. He’s likely to make you pay to replace all the windows in the store to match the new one, just out of spite.”
Lucky doesn’t bother to say goodbye. He just leaves the room, heading in the same direction that Evie went, and stops when he sees her striding into the ladies’ restroom. “Welp, that was fun,” Lucky mumbles. “Guess we took her mind off her hospital phobia.”
Yeah. Not happy about our methods. Upsetting Evie is the last thing I wanted. And now that I’m out of Adrian’s hospital room, I’m a little embarrassed we had an argument with a guy who just wrecked his car and broke his ankle, asshole or not.
I didn’t handle any of that well. At all.
“Sorry,” Lucky says. “But after what he did to you … If I’d known he was in there, I wouldn’t have gone in. Hope Evie’s okay.”
Me too. Exhaling a couple of times to rally my courage, I start to tell Lucky that I’ll go check on her, but movement through a pair of doors near the restroom snags my attention.
Cat-eye glasses, bright retro-red lipstick. Mom.
She strides toward us, handbag tucked under her arm and face lined with worry. She’s walking alongside some guy I don’t recognize.
Lucky spies her too, and I can practically feel all the energy around him withdrawing like a turtle on the side of a highway sensing an out-of-control semitruck headed its way. “I’m gonna take off. Your mom doesn’t seem to like me much.”
“Yeah,” I say on a long exhale, “I’m going to be in so much trouble for being here with you.”
“Not sticking around for that. I’ve already filled my drama quotient for the day.”
“Wait!” I whisper loudly to his back as he turns to leave. “What about our payment arrangement? This doesn’t change anything.”