Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger (17 page)

She dialed and leaned against the wall, holding the phone to her ear.
Please don’t let Dottie answer, please don’t let Dottie answer, please don’t let Dottie answer.…

“Hello?”

Oh, thank
god
. “Burke, I need you to come get me. I’m at a party and I’m sick and Rami drank too much to drive, and…” She started to cry, like a kid who’d fallen and skinned her knee. “I just want to go home.”

“This is Frank. Burke’s not here. But where are you? I’ll come get you.”

“Burke’s not there?” The tears burned.

“No, but don’t worry, I will leave now, just tell me where you are.”

“I don’t know!” She felt frantic, like a caged animal. “I don’t.” She shook her head even though he couldn’t see her.

“Have you been drinking?”

She grimaced. “Yes.”

“Okay, are you in someone’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Can you ask someone the address?”

It was too pitiful to say,
I don’t know anyone here
, so she said, “Hold on,” and started to put the phone down to begin the humiliating task of asking someone where she was. Then she noticed a pile of mail on the counter by the oven. “Wait. There’s mail. I’m at…” She squinted and tried to read the printing on the catalog addressed to
Clark or Resident
. She read it off, then looked at another piece of mail and read it again to make sure she was consistent.

“Got it,” Frank said. “I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”

“I’m going down to the end of the driveway,” she said, hoping the walk would do her good and knowing that being away from the people would. “Don’t run me over,” she added with a lame laugh.

“I won’t,” he said, but his voice remained gentle.

She made her way down the drive. It seemed to take forever. Even alone, she was embarrassed to be so wobbly. She took big gulps of air, willing the freshness in and the toxin out, but everything was still spinning and once she even had to stop and be sick into the bushes. It was horrible. What a mistake.

She’d always been anti-drug, so it figured the one time she went against her own principles something like this would happen.
Lesson learned
, she thought.
Let it end now.

She sat down on a brick wall by the end of the driveway and held on with her hands, gripping the rough surface hard so she wouldn’t fall.

After what seemed like forever, headlights appeared in the distance and a car came slowly down the road, drawing to a halt in front of her. He flicked his lights and she got off the wall and went to the passenger door.

“Thank you,” she said, climbing in. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

“Don’t worry about it. Seriously.”

“I didn’t wake your grandparents up by calling, did I?”

He gave a laugh. “An earthquake wouldn’t wake them up.”

There was that small mercy at least.

He started to drive and she felt her stomach lurch.

“Maybe you should get sick,” he said. “Get rid of whatever might be in your stomach waiting to go into your bloodstream.”

“I already did.” She started to cry again. “Frank…”

“What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t just drink.”

He stopped the car and turned to face her in the mostly dark. “Okay…? What did you do?”

“Swear you won’t tell anyone.”

He paused. “If you need medical attention, we’re going to
have
to tell the truth.”

“I don’t think I do. Swear you won’t tell Burke.”

“Okay.”

“
Swear
it. You’ll
never
tell him.”

“I swear I’ll never tell Burke,” he said. “What am I not telling?”

“I smoked pot.”

Even in the dim light, she could see his features relax. “Quinn, that’s not
that
big a deal—”

“I think it was laced with something.”

His gaze shot back to her eyes. “What?”

“I’m not sure. It’s just that I’ve never done it before and it made me really, really dizzy and I’m seeing vapor trails and it’s been like, I don’t know how long, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better, and”—a wave of nausea came over her—“I don’t know if it’s
supposed
to be like this or what. I’ve never done it before.”

“Who gave it to you?” His voice was hard. He was ready to kick ass on her behalf, it was clear. And she appreciated that.

“I don’t even know,” she admitted. “Nard or something.”

He thought. “Bernard Wolfe?”

She shrugged and swallowed hard.

“Tall, skinny, black hair?”

She nodded. “Maybe.”

“Motherfucker.”

“You know him?”

“Barely. He’s a dealer. He probably hoped you’d like whatever the hell this is so you’d buy more.”

Great. So the supposedly cute guy hadn’t even liked her for herself, he just wanted her to be a new customer. Maybe she deserved that.

“So you don’t think it’s dangerous?”

He glanced at her, then pushed the gas to resume driving. “Probably not. I’ll stay with you till you feel better and if we need to go to the ER, we will. I can kill Bernard later.”

She wanted to thank him, to express how this wasn’t like her and she didn’t normally do anything crazy and would never, ever do it again, but she was afraid if she didn’t stay very still she was going to puke.

So instead she leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

She didn’t think she was tired but she fell asleep anyway, and the next time she opened her eyes, she was lying across the front bench seat of Frank’s Chevy Impala and the sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon.

He was sitting on the front hood of the car, watching it.

She sat up and put a hand to her head, still woozy. The world wasn’t spinning anymore, but it wasn’t exactly “normal” either.

She opened the car door and got out into the fresh, warm air of another perfect summer morning.

“Hey,” she said.

“Oh, hey.” He turned, surprised, and got off the hood. “I was just thinking I should wake you up so we could go before your parents get up.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes. “Thanks.” She met his eyes. “Seriously, thank you.”

He smiled. His eyes crinkled at the corners and his whole face softened. “Get in the car.”

She did, and as they started toward her house, only a few blocks away, she said, “I know you really went out of your way to help me last night and I really appreciate that. I also know I don’t have any right to ask you any sort of favor on top of it, but, like I said last night, I
really
don’t want Burke to know about this. It’s … it’s just really embarrassing.”

“He’s not going to hear it from me.”

“Do you mean it?”

He glanced at her. “Quinn, I think you’ve been through enough hell from last night. Why would I add to that? What could I possibly gain from it?”

She felt her face grow warm. “Thank you.”

They finished the drive in silence.

When he pulled up in front of her house, she took a steadying breath, then looked at him one more time. “Thanks again.”

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

They looked at each other for just a fraction of a moment too long, and Quinn felt a tremor go through her. Embarrassment, she rationalized. He’d seen her at her worst.

How could she ever face him again?

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that the most obvious thing occurred to her: Where had
Burke
been in the middle of the night when she called?

It wasn’t the last time she’d wonder something just like that.

Chapter 12

Present

Speed dating. Tonight. I already signed you up.

Glenn had used a bigger envelope this time so he could fit a pamphlet in for Short Stops Speed Dating. Tonight’s meeting was in a good restaurant in a bad strip mall twenty-some miles away, in Leesburg.

“Oh, good, you got it,” Glenn said, coming through the front door of the shop.

“Like you weren’t standing in the window watching.”

“I was,” he admitted immediately. “I had to rush in and quell the objection I
know
you’re going to make.”

“Not necessarily.” But probably. He was probably right.

“Listen,” he said. “I went to a few of these when I lived in Savannah and they were really fun, though, admittedly, a different crowd. Each round is just a few minutes, then you’re off the hook. Honestly, this should have been a Day One activity, and I tried, but they sell out for women so fast, this was the soonest I could get.”

“Which means there will be, like, three men there?”

He hesitated. “There
do
tend to be more women than men,” he acknowledged. “Especially in the big metropolitan areas. That’s what everyone says.”

“Great. So it’ll be like musical chairs. Some people sitting and chatting, while everyone else stands around awkwardly, trying to figure out what to do with their hands.” I hated that feeling, the self-conscious posture that came with knowing there was no way to look cool in a given situation. Like inhaling on a doctor’s command, or waiting for a ball you may or may not have to dodge.

“But you are
superior
to most women. Besides, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not expecting me to get a boyfriend out of this, right?”

“Tonight? No. It would be
nice
, but the main objective of you doing this tonight is to get you mingling with people who don’t live within two miles of you. Consider it mere practice for a later assignment.”

“That sounds daunting.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Let’s just stick to the task at hand, okay? This is going to be totally refreshing. Think about it—how often do you get to meet new people and
not be allowed
to talk to them for more than six minutes?”

I nodded. “I have to admit, there is some appeal there.”

“And if you find a guy to keep your mind off the Morrisons?”

I thought about it. “There is
definitely
some appeal
there.
”

“So you’ll do it?”

This one actually made sense as far as breaking my routine. “Sure. Why not?”

*   *   *

Kate Newton was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met. Seriously. Everything about her just emanated
kindness
.

She’d come to me in March with an outdated pink bridesmaid dress in hand. “Can you make this into a wedding dress somehow?” she’d asked. “It’s the most formal thing I have and we don’t have a lot of money to waste on something we’ll only use one day.”

I’d half expected her to go on to tell me they didn’t have
time
either, that she needed the dress for a shotgun wedding—not that there’s anything wrong with that—but it turned out she was a teacher and he was a truck driver and they were saving their money for a house someday, so everything to do with the wedding had to be on the cheap.

It made sense, really, and even though I was in the business of making quality, and most often
costly
, gowns, I was more impressed with her attitude than that of many of my clients.

So I wanted to help in any way possible.

The dress was a challenge, I’m not going to blow sunshine on that one. It looked like something from the eighties, slick satin cut into an asymmetrical hem, higher in the front, ankle-length in the back. I imagined there was probably some sort of uniform flower or hair band for the bridesmaids, and shoes dyed to match.

Fortunately, Kate wanted her gown cocktail-length, which eliminated the hassle of trying to blend a different fabric in to make a long gown that didn’t look like patchwork, which it would be.

So, with some work, and a few nice bolts of fabric I’d had left over from other projects, I’d managed to make her bridesmaid dress into one of the prettiest, if simplest, gowns I’d ever made.

Now it was her final fitting and the first time she saw herself as the bride she was about to be.

The dress was actually pink, but so pale with time and the wide weave of the fabric that it actually looked more like an elegant ivory. Gone was the bi-level hem—the Farrah Fawcett hair of dresses—and it was now a swingy (but not hip-exploding) cocktail length, tight in the bodice and up to a straight neckline that could
only
be flattering on someone as modestly endowed as Kate. But on her it was perfect, creating the illusion of an ample breast and narrow waist, neither of which she would have probably attributed to herself naked in front of the bathroom mirror.

Yet she came out of the dressing room slowly, her eyes gleaming. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“Come on,” I said, ushering her in front of the three-way mirror. “You’ve got to see all the angles.”

She stepped up and, even in bare feet, looked so much like a doll on a music box that I could have cried myself.

It was perfect for her.

She looked for a long time, shyly checking the side views and the back, then turned to me and ran her hands along her forearms. “It gives me goose bumps,” she said. “Is that really me?”

“Of course!”

“Charlie is going to be so surprised. He saw the dress the way it used to be. He’s no seamstress, but even he could tell that it was horrible.”

I laughed. “It wasn’t
horrible
.” It was, though. “But I’m glad you like it now.”

“I love it.” She looked at me evenly. “I will be so proud to wear this now. I will never, ever have another wedding, and even though we couldn’t afford to make it into the social event of the season, it is going to be the most special day of my life.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks then. “I didn’t want to look like a clown.”

And then I was verging on tearful too. “You never could. You would have looked beautiful no matter what. No one as happy and in love as you are could look anything less than that.”

She smiled. “Well … the hem…”

“Yeah.” I wrinkled my nose. “There was that hem.”

“Thank you,” she said, sobering. “From the bottom of my heart.”

“You’re welcome. From the bottom of mine. You want any adjustments before you take it?”