the brick wall, where he hit his head again and went down, out cold.
"Okay, I know I didn't do that." I turned around, stumbling a bit as my shaking legs tried to hold me up, and I looked into the shadows. "Hello?"
Silence. No one was there. I must have been really drunk, except I didn't feel that drunk. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe I was hallucinating.
"Oh, god." I gasped, putting my hand to my mouth, remembering how my mother's sickness had first presented with an insistence on putting the milk under the sink in the bathroom. "Brain tumor."
I felt a roiling in my gut, and the next thing I knew, I puked.
Right next to the guy's work boots.
I'm no Stacy Easter, my ass, I thought.
The guy grunted as he started to come to. I glanced around, saw no one there, and did the only thing that made sense at the time.
I beat it the hell out of that alley, and ran the rest of the way home.
Chapter 4
I was naked and dripping wet from the shower when I heard a familiar banging on my bathroom window.
"Goddamnit, Peach," I muttered, then pulled my fluffy pink polka-dot robe around me and yanked up the blinds just in time to see her pulling her headless broom handle back across the tiny gap between our houses and back into her bathroom. I threw the window open and sat on the radiator.
"We're not twelve anymore, Peach," I said. "You can call me on the phone."
She leaned her elbows on the sill of her open window. "Have you talked to Millie lately? Oh, and I'm out of conditioner."
"Just a minute." I reached under my bathroom sink and pulled out the small bag full of hotel toiletries I kept there. I pulled out a little bottle of conditioner and tossed it across the six feet between us; she caught it handily.
"No, I haven't talked to Millie," I said. "I've been a little distracted since the Confessional. You haven't talked to her?"
"No," she said. "And Nick said she hasn't shown up for work."
"She's missed three days of work? Why would she...?" I shot Peach a look. "You didn't tell him, did you?"
Peach gave me an indignant look. "About her being in love with him? No! What kind of friend do you think I am?"
I stared her down for a moment, and she deflated a bit.
"Okay, fine, yes, I told him. He's going to be my husband. We share everything. But I told him not to say anything to her, and he didn't, I swear. He didn't get the chance." She nibbled her lip. "I've left, like, ten messages on her phone. She hasn't called me back. Have you tried to call her?"
"No," I said, feeling a twinge of guilt. I'd been so wrapped up in my own drama with Tobias that I hadn't thought much about Millie. Not that there was much real drama with Tobias at the moment; hard to have a lot of drama when you're pretending the other person doesn't exist. I'd also used a fair amount of mental energy rationalizing the trash-can-lid dog - tequila causes hallucinations, right? - so I just hadn't had much left to worry about Millie.
"I'm worried," Peach said. "Maybe we should go by her house later."
I grabbed a towel off the rack and scrunched my dripping hair in it. "Good idea. All right, I'm going to go dry my - "
"Why don't you come over?" she said. "We can go to CCB's for waffles."
I sighed. "I can't. I've given up waffles. Just until I get the pudge off. Do you know how many calories are in those things? I think I get contact fat just from serving them."
She shrugged; Peach had never had to think about calories a day in her life. "Have you talked to Stacy?"
I felt myself stiffen at the mention of her name. "No."
Peach gave me a sharp look. "You should cut her some slack on that whole thing. It was a long time ago."
I felt a stab go through me, and I toweled my hair with a little too much vehemence as I said, "It doesn't matter. It's over. I'm not upset."
"Okay, whatever you say. But she didn't know how you felt about Tobias back then, and she feels really bad about it."
I stopped rubbing the towel against my head and stared at Peach. "Oh, please. She does not. Stacy has never felt bad for anything she's done, ever." I continued toweling