Sparks - Wendy Higgins Page 0,33

with her hair frizzed out in the back and her face paler than usual in the slant of streetlight coming through the window.

“Hey,” she whispered into the dark. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Glad you’re still alive.” I wanted to ask what happened with the scary dudes, but I was afraid she might actually tell me. “But listen.” I steeled my nerve even though I hated any kind of confrontation. “If we go out again, just the two of us, and I don’t have a good feeling about the company, please don’t ever leave me. We should have stayed together. It wasn’t safe for either of us.”

Beth let out a groaning sigh. “Yeah, okay, fine. I should have come home with you. Now I need to go to bed.”

I fell back into the hard pillow. Beth started toward the closet hall and the big room when a light turned on. I heard Holly’s voice say, “Damn, Gina.”

“Ugh,” Beth said. “Turn the fucking light off.”

“I have to get ready for work. Are you just getting in?”

“Yes,” she groaned.

I lifted my head to see Beth shuffle her way past Holly in the closet and disappear into the room. Holly peered over to me on the couch.

“I would offer to drive you,” I said in a deeper-than-usual voice, “but I think I’m still a little drunk.”

She grabbed her uniform and brought it into the living room, stepping into the dress while she talked.

“How was it? Was he hot?”

I curled back up and shut my eyes. “He had face tats.”

“You swiped on a guy with face tats?”

“No,” I grumbled. “He didn’t have them in his profile pictures.”

“False advertising. Sorry, babe. Zip me?”

I reached out an arm and cracked my eye enough to zip her up as she squatted in front of me. She turned around and hugged me. “Tell me everything later, ‘kay?”

“’kay,” I whispered. “Is Cheryl already gone?”

“Yeah.”

Damn. Hippie-ninja. She must have slipped past after Beth texted when I dozed off again.

I couldn’t fall back asleep while Holly was bustling around with the light on, so I looked back at my call log and stared at Shawn’s number. It had really happened. My body physically reacted to the thought of him, my chest tightening, stomach swooping, face and lower belly warming. I sighed as guilt traced all of those feelings with its sludgy, heavy, stinky marker. I should not be crushing on this man.

“Can you call the landlord today?” Holly asked, coming out of the bathroom. “The sink’s still not acting right and the light keeps flickering.”

“’kay,” I whispered.

Holly left, and I blessedly fell back to sleep until another text came through at nine-something.

Aww, it was my roomie Willamena. Willa for short. I smiled at my phone.

Can u get me n Syd-lo n Rhea at 4? There was more after that but it was all jumbled words that made no sense. Her next text was an angry red face.

Damn new nails r too long! And then another. By now I was giggling. What that should day is if u can’t it’s olay.

Now I was cracking up. Willa was our queen. Long nails and long braids.

Yes, I got you. I texted back.

She was probably texting between flights. I smiled at the thought of Willa, Syd Lopez, and Rhea with me tonight. Rhea was Indian by heritage, pronounced Rae-uh, from Colorado. Sydney was from Miami, her parents Puerto Rican. The three of them graduated in the sky muffin class before mine. They took me and Holly under their wing right away, treating me like their lil boo-bae from day one.

I yawned and sat up cracking my neck, elbows, and ankles. My mouth tasted like butt, or what I imagined butt would taste like. I went to the bathroom and rinsed my mouth in the beat-up tiny sink, having to apply pressure to the knob as I turned it, my bare feet feeling the cracks in the tiles. Freaking dump.

Then I went to the kitchen to take stock of what I had to last me through the week. The kitchen was my favorite room in the apartment and my mood brightened just being in there. It took up nearly half of our apartment. The room was gigantic with huge windows and wide ledges. On nice nights we could open the windows and sit on the ledges like something from a movie, looking out over the alleyway of stone row homes with matching patterns of fire escapes.

I opened the cupboard. Looked like I’d be