Page 13 of Not So Goode

Smack!

My eyes flew open, my cheek stinging. Lexie was in the driver’s seat, eying me warily.

“There you are.” She reached out and palmed my cheek. “You okay?”

I sat up, touched my cheek—looked in the mirror: my cheek was pink. “Did you…slapme?”

“You were screaming bloody fucking murder, Charlie.”

I blinked. “I…I was?”

“Thrashing around, screaming, kicking. You almost hit me in the face—while I was doing eighty-five on I-90.”

I looked out my window, and realized we were on the shoulder, emergency flashers on. It was eight in the morning, and I’d been asleep for two hours. We’d switched after four hours, stopped for gas and a quick meal, went another four. Shared a bed in a sleazy no-tell motel somewhere in Pennsylvania, slept a few hours, and gotten back on the road around dawn. I could tell Lex was antsy to put as many miles between us and New York as possible, so I’d pushed us along. Now, though, I could tell she was getting ready to talk.

The quality of her silence was different. Pensive, restless, thoughtful.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Close to Chicago.” She glanced at me, and then checked traffic, accelerating and merging. “I need coffee and an omelet and shopping.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

Thus, in another forty-five minutes or so, we found ourselves parking on the street outside a breakfast place in Chicago. We got coffee, ordered omelets, and relaxed.

I let the silence breathe, knowing she’d start talking eventually.

We were in a corner booth, and the restaurant was crowded, noisy. This was the best place to have a private, sensitive conversation.

Lex stared into her coffee, leaning over it. “I broke all my rules. I don’t have many, but I broke them all.”

I held my tongue.

“The rules.” She ticked them off one by one, tapping a finger on the table for each. “No one more than ten years older than me. Never be the other woman. Never let a man dictate or pressure me into doing something I don’t want to. Never be a secret.”

I bit my lip. “Oh god, Lex.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I broke every single fucking one. All with one guy.”

I waited.

“Professor Marcus Tyne.”

“A professor, Lexie?”

She nodded. “Yep. I’m that bitch.” A sigh. “It’s hard to talk about.”

“Well, I may express surprise, perhaps even be upset, but just know that I love you, and that I will not judge you or think less of you, and that I’m here for you. I’ll do whatever I can, and we’ll get you through this.”

She sipped coffee. “Thanks.”

“Just tell me what happened, okay?”

“I’m not sure I can dump the whole story all at once. It’s too much.”

“Understandable.”

Our food arrived, and we dug in, both of us ravenous. After a few minutes, she started talking again between bites.