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“So what did the evil fuckhead do this time?”
I tell her what he wrote on my car.
“Seriously? And that’s how he wrote it? I’m fucking pissed, and not just because he threatened you, but because he fucking butchered the damn language. ‘Ur dead bitch’?” She shakes her head. “We should kill him on principle.”
“No killing,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because murder is bad,” I say, knowing it’s a crappy defense, but unable to bring myself to actually defend Jay.
“He seems willing to do it.”
“I’m sure it’s just a threat.”
Those words are nothing more than a flimsy lie that can’t hold a candle to the fear that’s wrapped itself around my heart. Not just fear for myself, either. So many people I care about could be targets for Jay’s malice. I don’t believe for a second that he’ll be content with just hurting me; he’ll want to hurt everyone I’m close to, just to make me suffer.
“Are you?” She says, sliding the cosmopolitan across the bar to me and transfixing me with a knowing look. “Because I’m not so sure, Em. I think we need to strike this motherfucker first. Murder isn’t murder if it’s in self-defense, remember?”
“I can’t just go kill Jay because I think he might try to hurt me.”
“Everyone hates him. I bet people would buy it.”
“Not his friend on the Ironwood Falls PD.”
“Officer Burt Abrams can go suck a fat donkey dick to climax,” Harper says, loud enough that the entire bar can hear it. “That pint-sized prick has bailed Jay out of trouble too many times.”
“And he’d do it again if we try anything.”
“Not if we kill them both,” Harper says.
“Harper!”
“There’s three of us — you, me, Soph — and two of them. You and Soph can go kill Jay and I’ll take out Officer Dickwad. All I’d have to do is squash that little bug under my heel. It’d take like five seconds.”
“We are not committing double homicide,” I say, aghast, yet also flattered how extreme Harper is willing to get for me. Then I remember she once threatened to gut a deliveryman like a trout because he was too rough with one of her packages.
I finish my cosmopolitan and slide it over to her for a refill. She does and makes it stronger this time.
“So, what do you want to do about this?” She says.
I shrug, knowing that my shrug will do nothing. Harper’s like a pit bull. Once she has an issue in her teeth, she just doesn’t let it go until she’s satisfied… or someone’s dead. “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that out. That’s why I came here.”
“You know my opinion.”
“And you know mine. Since it’s my life, it’s my decision.”
“What it sounds like you’re telling me, Em, is that you’re going to do nothing and let something bad happen to you, and the only thing I can do is watch. Which, if I’m being honest, is the worst fucking deal in the world, because I love you.”
“I love you, too, Harper,” I say and finish the cocktail in a long gulp, and then motion for another. It comes quickly, and I drink that one fast, too. It’s after the fourth one, when my cheeks are hot and my lips are tingling like I’m kissing a light socket, that I open my mouth again. “But I am open to hearing your other suggestions that stop short of double-murder.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “Really?”
“Really. It’s not like I just want to let Jay walk all over me. I know I need to protect myself, Harper.”
“You’re not talking about taking a self-defense class and learning how to kick a guy in the dick while yelling ‘heeyah’, are you?”
I shake my head and, with a shaky hand, guide my glass to my mouth. “I’m not.”
