Ally nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” I asked.
“You were avoiding Lee and Eddie’s hot. I thought if I told you about Eddie you might give up on Lee and I’d never have a niece named after me.”
I looked at the hit man who was watching us closely and told him, “Don’t think in the crazy-ass soap opera that is my life that I’ve forgotten about you. Or you,” I said to Rosie.
I stared them both down and they both settled in. Clearly I was looking like a woman who wanted to be given the excuse to shoot someone.
“How long has Eddie had this thing?” I asked Ally.
Ally shrugged. “According to Hank, it ran parallel with your thing for Lee.”
Holy shit.
“How parallel?”
“Apparently, last year was not the first fight they had over you. Remember when Lee showed up to pick us up from that Haunted House and he had blood on his shirt and we could tell his nose had been bleeding? We saw Eddie later at Andrea’s party and he was shitfaced and his eye was swollen?”
I remembered, kind of. It was my senior year, I was seventeen. Lee had blood on his shirt a lot back then and Eddie was also a brawler. I thought they’d been in a fight against other people (which happened a lot), not with each other.
“Me?” I asked.
“You. That wasn’t the first and obviously not the last,” Ally answered.
I didn’t know what to do with this information. I didn’t even want to know this information.
“I think it’s time to step into Denial Zone,” I told Ally.
“That would be my advice,” Ally replied.
I was thinking that being with Lee I was going to spend a lot of time in Denial Zone.
Lee and Eddie came back in. Body language was not good. Darius was gone.
Without a word to us, they both got on the phone.
Lee called the office for a ride.
Eddie called the station.
When Eddie was done, he said to the couch at large, “You’re under arrest.”
The hit man’s expression didn’t change.
“Me? What’d I do?” Rosie cried, clearly forgetting he was a primo pot farmer and unfortunately that was still an illegal substance.
Eddie stared at him and if looks could burn, Rosie would be scalded. “I’ll think of something.”
Lee was off the phone and looking at Ally.
“Later, we’re gonna talk,” he said to her.
“You gonna offer me a job?” She smiled at him.
Lee was not in a joking mood. His eyes swung to me. “Rosie’s found. Our arrangement is over.”
I was beginning to allow the fact that I’d just seen Scary Darius, the fact that I’d not only tasered but flashed a hit man and the news that Eddie was attracted to me to penetrate my Denial Zone Fortress. Regardless of that, most of the day had been good, some of it real good, and to be honest, I kinda liked being out on the job with Lee. It was fascinating and the last part was a serious rush.