Page 31 of Only for Him

I’ve done my best to return the favor. On the back of a warrant request, sitting in the center of my coffee table, is a sketch. Just a pair of eyes, blue and absolutely wrong, the color gouged so deep into the paper with ballpoint that it nearly ruptured the fibers.

I stare at them now, and imagine what it would be like to open the door and just let him in.

My phone buzzes. I reach for it, thumb ready to unlock, but the screen is still black. The buzz comes again, and I realize it’s my actual phone, the one buried under a week’s worth of unopened mail and a half-eaten container of lamb over rice.

“Yeah?”

Ida’s voice, bright and sharp as a shot of whiskey. “Giselle. You alive?”

I hesitate. “Define alive.”

“You really know how to make a girl worry,” she says with a laugh. “You want to meet for drinks or do you want to keep being a hermit at home?”

I almost say no. I want to say no. But there’s a heaviness on the line that says Ida knows what’s going on, even if I haven’t told her. She’s worried, and that’s enough to tip the scales.

“Where?” I ask.

“Iron Lounge?”

I glance at the clock. “Half an hour. You’re buying the first round.”

I hang up before she can gloat, then push everything to the far side of the table, gather my hair into a bun, and run a hand over my sink, wishing that Serena’s earrings aren’t lost and gone. They’ve been gone for so long that my ragged earlobes are actually starting to heal.

I hate it.

I don’t want to heal.

I want to hurt.

I check the deadbolt, the windows, and the peephole one last time before I lock the door on my way out.

But I know it doesn’t matter.

He’ll find his way inside.

11

GISELLE

Idaand I sit in a corner booth. She looks amazing in a light blue dress that’s sharp at every edge and wearing a smile that could coax a confession from a sitting judge. She hasn’t changed since college: hair still black as a hangover, eyes still smokey with liner and grey eyeshadow.

The only giveaway that she’s now a partner at Hirst & Holloway is the manicure. Much better than I ever managed when we’d pre-game in my dorm room.

Iron Lounge is packed: investment bankers pretending to be blue-collar, off-duty NYPD in their weekend camouflage, and the bridge-and-tunnel overtime scammers strutting around like extras in a mob biopic.

My shoes make a muted sucking sound each time I shift, like the floor is trying to eat me alive.

Ida is already two drinks ahead of me, which is dangerous. I watch her knock back the rest of a Manhattan, tongue finding the cherry and rolling it around until the pit clatters against her teeth.

“Okay, spill,” she says, setting the glass down with a declarative thump. “Tell me every detail.”

I’m tempted to deflect, but Ida has a way of circling back to her prey.

“You really want details?” I say, and my voice comes out colder than I mean.

She leans in, a hand on my wrist to anchor the moment. “Yes, Giselle, I do. Because what else are friends for?”

So I lay it all out. The murders, the evidence, my name carved in the corpses. As I word-vomit the past five weeks onto the table between us, her mouth slowly drops into a near-comical frown. By the time I’m done, I’m out of breath and thirsty enough to drink half my beer at once.