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“Yes,I am. You need to listen to me because this is serious shit.”
“As if I don’t know that.” I glare back at her. She really is not helping by telling me things I already know or giving me bad options. “Telling me to ask Asher for the money is not my idea of finding a solution. He picked me up from jail, Beth. Jail.Do you know how embarrassed I was? And he paid my bail and everything else.”
The determination on her face loosens. Thank God. She’s like a dog with a bone when she gets one of her bright ideas.
“And he knew about Nick.”
“Asher mentioned Nick?”
“Yes. It was only left for him to call me an idiot airhead. He thinks I’m completely incompetent because that’s exactly how I look. Then there’s Josh. I’m like a sponge soaking up all his reserves and a burden on him.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I’m not being hard on myself. I’m being realistic. It’s time I take my life in hand and straighten it out myself without begging people for help or draining my brother.”
Josh shouldn’t have to tell me that the money he has is for him and Lisa. I know he didn’t mean anything by what he said but I still feel bad for pushing him to put up that kind of boundary between us. He was right to say it.
“Okay, maybe we can figure something out. I can ask around and see what I come up with.”
“Thanks, Beth.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Just remember most of the people I know are a little on the wild side.Iwouldn’t even get mixed up with some of them for certain things.”
She gave me the same answer when I asked if I could stay with any of her friends. When she narrowed my options down to either stay with a drug dealer who had a spare room because his roommate was on the run, or a guy she thought might be a pimp I realized staying with Asher was definitely the better option.
“Anything you can do will be appreciated.”
“Alright. Give me a few days.”
“Thanks. And thank you for everything else. You’ve been there for me a lot.”
She grabs a chair and pulls it closer so she can sit next to me. “You know I’ll always be there when you need me.”
Beth has always been a good friend to me. We met when we were five and have been friends ever since.
“I know. I’ll always be there for you, too. I’m just not sure how useful I am. Only one of us has saved the other’s life throughout our friendship.”
She smirks. “That’s not entirely true. Remember the waterpark trip in fifth grade? You came after me when I went on the adult slide and ended up in the deep end of the pool.”
I roll my eyes at her. “That’s not the same thing.”
“I couldn’t swim.”
“Neither could I.”
“But we were together. I would have been terrified if I’d been on my own. I still maintain that clinging together and flapping around in the watertogether,saved us from drowning.”
I don’t know how but I burst out laughing. It’s been so long since I laughed it feels strange to me. “You are so crazy.”
“The point is we save each other when we need to.” Beth nods.
“You have your head screwed on though. I don’t.”
“I beg to differ. I’m the one who didn’t go to college, had the type of boyfriends you couldn’t take home to meetanyone,and I’m the one who knows all the unsavory characters of this world, as my father put it.”
“Yet you have a successful beauty salon, an apartment of your own, and the guys you date don’t try to screw you over. Trust me, you have your head screwed on. I still remember being terrified that night when Nick killed those people.”
Her smile fades. “Don’t think about that.”
