You're in deep. And that was one fucking long ride! Jesus" —she pushes the trash magazine into my chest, pressing her legs together— "I gotta pee like a racehorse. Read it! Oh, my God, it is bird shit yellow!"
She slams the bathroom door as I finally inspect the magazine. My stomach flips. Gray eyes, framed by a wild mess of pink hair and peering over Roman's shoulder, stares back at me. The memory of the Lona comes back in full force. Dancing cheek-to-cheek. The kiss. John. Caspian's sexuality.
It wasn't a dream. "Oh no."
The headline slapped over my splotched forehead reads, 'ROMAN'S HOLIDAY?'
I tear through the magazine to the page written on the cover. "A full-page spread?" I groan, skimming through the article. "'Seen at an exclusive nightclub in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with this mystery girl, have Roman's expectations fallen since Holly Hudson?' What the actual fuck? Fallen?"
"And according to the rag," Maggie shouts from the bathroom, "you are totes hipster!"
"Hipster?" I choke. "Seriously?"
"And the paper calls Roman the 'Resurrected Rock God'—can you believe it?" The toilet flushes and she prances out, wiggling down her skirt. "It also totes slut-shames you, bb."
A knot forms in my throat. Yeah, no kidding. "No one will believe this, right? Right?"
Because she's my best friend, she shakes her head and contradicts herself at the same time. "They'll believe it."
Like they believed Roman killed Holly.
I slam the magazine shut. Not nearly as dramatic as I hoped. It sounds like the whimper that might come from me in a few minutes if I hear any more bad news. "Bb, I know I said I didn't want to be a secret, but I really didn't want to be ousted like this, either."
She snags a banana from the counter and peels it open. "How do you think Cas feels?"
"You didn't," I moan.
"I didn't know okay? And I have a big mouth. And it was sorta in the Bean, so we can't go back there for a while. Read: ever." She takes a bite, almost chews, and swallows. She's in her work clothes—as close as a pinstriped vest and an A-line crimson skirt are—but something tells me that she never went to work this morning, and won't be going. "The second I saw that on The Juice site… bb, this is a total disaster."
"I just don't get how he could've gotten this picture."
"Hello. Camera, click. That's how pap do it."
Because I'm still in my clothes from yesterday, and probably smelling to high heaven, I take John's memory card out of my pocket and hold it out to her. "But I have the pictures."
Her eyes widen as she snatches it out of my hand and turns it around in her hand, inspecting it. Without looking up from the chip, she asks, "Got your laptop on you, bb?"
"It's at home."
"That's fine." She hurries over to the gargantuan purse she dropped by the bathroom door and pulls out her DLSR. She pops out her own memory chip and puts his in. "Okay, let's see what's on this then..." Her frown deepens as she clicks through the pictures, searching through the photos. "This can't be right."
"What do you mean?"
"This." She shakes her camera. "This card. It's not from the Lona, bb." Her mocha eyes connect with mine. "They're pictures from the night Holly died."
Chapter Twenty-One
I snatch the camera from Maggie and scan through the photos, feeling myself pale at every one. John must've been outside her bathroom window.
The photos aren't close, but you can tell it's Holly. They look like screenshots to a scene in a movie. She's holding a glass of wine in one hand, listening to her iPod, her eyes closed. Her hair floats around her in the bathtub beside candles and incense, nothing more than a soothing bubble bath. She has one foot up out of the water. It's black and blue. Hadn't there been something about a fall the week before in Arizona?
John was nothing more than a peeping Tom.
But then...something begins to go wrong in the pictures. The wine glass tips out of her hand onto the floor, coating the tiles in a blood-red stain, and she begins to sink beneath the bubbles, her hair floating like a wreath around her. First her chin goes under, then her lips, and then sliding, sliding...
My stomach heaves. I shove the camera back to Maggie.
"He must've taken the Lona photos on the local memory," Maggie says, although her heart isn't in it. She shuts off her camera and pops out the