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“What?” Lexi says.
Mia keeps drinking. Her face has gone seriously red.
“What?” Lexi repeats.
Mia lowers her glass. “I was just trying to make a joke. A bad joke, clearly.”
“What did you mean by it?” Lexi persists, looking so fierce, so focused. There’s something about the way she’s holding herself that tells me this comment has hurt her, and that hurts me.
“It was just a?—”
“Okay, let’s say it’s a joke,” Lexi says. “What did you mean by the joke, then? We literally just met. How would you know about…” Suddenly, Lexi trails off, leaning back, then laughs awkwardly. “Sorry. I overreacted. Uh… sorry.”
She sits back, arms folded. The couples exchange inward glances: Luca and Ruby, Scarlet and Elio, always looking at each other first, already thinking about how they will discuss and make sense of it. Yet I can’t make sense of Lexi.
CHAPTER 9
Lexi
Scarlet offers to sing a song, maybe sensing how awkward it is. Once that little group breaks up, I follow Mia into the house. I make it casual, pretending to be going to the bathroom, but I follow when I see her head up the stairs. She leads me into the guestroom, the cabinets covered in her things: makeup and hair products. The wall is plastered with wild pieces of artwork.
She turns, shutting the door behind me. It’s almost like it was choreographed, just like it was when Mia took out the business card, a quick hand into her purse, flashing it at me. I saw the silver sparkly material and the words. Chrome Carriage Club.
“Explain,” I snap.
Mia bursts into tears. It happens so fast that I wonder if she’s putting it on for a second. She turns away, wiping her cheeks, seeming annoyed at herself for crying. I know the feeling. “This is nuts,” Mia says. “Why can’t I just shut up?”
“How do you know I work there? How do you know about my past?”
“It’s Ralph, right?” Mia murmurs. “The manager there? The sleazeball who makes a point of coming out to greet all the young women?”
Part of this makes me cringe because Colt is older than Ralph, and I don’t think there’s anything sleazy about him wanting me if he does.
My voice trembles. Ruby is right. Fate or whatever the hell must be real. It’s like the universe is trying to pull me deeper into this world, the Marinos, Colt.
“Y-yes.”
“A week ago, some friends and I went by there.”
“You make friends fast,” I mutter.
Mia shrugs, looking at me as if this should be obvious. I’ve always found it’s like that with popular people. To them, making friends seems simple as if the rest of us are missing a piece, finding it difficult.
“I was on some Facebook groups for the neighborhood before I moved down,” she says. “I hate being by myself.”
“So you were at a club…”
“We were just messing around, but then he came out. Ralph. He was so sleazy, hitting on all of us. He also made some sly digs at me about my weight.”
I cringe, my mind flashing back to places I need to keep locked.
“One of the girls there, honestly, not really a friend, started using the Marino name, trying to freak him out. He pulled me aside and intimidated me when we were about to leave. He was all, ‘I know a girl with connections to them, and let me tell you, I did whatever I wanted with her as often as I wanted for a long time. Don’t mess with me.’”
Clenching my fists, I grit my teeth, not letting myself go there. I can’t. It hurts.
“Sorry,” Mia says, reading my expression. “Do you want me to stop?”
“I need to know,” I tell her firmly.
“I called his bluff, so he…” She hesitates. “He told me, bragged about it. It was crazy. I think he regretted it after, but he got caught up in the moment. I think he was getting off on it, the creep.”
A shudder moves through me, not the warm kind that Colt provokes. This is ugly and foul.
“I’m sorry,” Mia says. “Down there, I didn’t mean to say that. I speak without thinking sometimes. I hate that about myself.”
“It’s okay,” I mutter. “That was really dumb. What if you tell Elio or Luca he was talking badly about the Family?”
“They wouldn’t do… uh, that, just for that,” Mia says. “Only if they knew what he’d done to you, but that’s not my place. How can you work there with him?”
“I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of quitting.”
“He’s a serious, serious creep,” Mia mutters. “I could see it in his eyes, how he looked at us. He was undressing us the whole time. He looked angry, too, like he wanted to hurt us. Like he wanted to punish us for making him excited or something.”
“So he’s still like that,” I whisper.
