by Lucy Score
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Uncle Jimmy’s voice sang in her head.
She ignored it. The sign had been there for the last six weeks, and as far as she could tell, the parking office was just screwing with drivers at this point.
She waited for a rusted-out pickup and a shiny Tesla to cruise past before crossing the street. A guy with dreadlocks and a lot of facial piercings held the door for her as she jogged up the two concrete steps into the shop. There was a line, as there always was on weekday mornings. But no one else seemed to be in the hurry that Riley always was. They all probably had make-your-own schedules or work-from-home jobs.
Lucky bastards.
The higher-ups at the marketing firm where she worked had freaked out over the suggestion.
Employees were required to be in the building for exactly eight hours a day, five days a week, in order to get paid. Her boss, Leon Tuffley Jr., a crotch-scratching “charmer,” told them all that there was no way he was paying employees to “pretend” to work when he knew damn well they’d all be “drinking beer naked and farting around.”
In an unspoken rebellion, the offended employees had since dedicated wildly inappropriate amounts of time to social media and computer games during work hours. It had been the only thing to unite them.
Riley shifted her weight from foot to foot, tantalized by the smell of Honduran dark roast. Unless everyone in front of her was ordering a black coffee, she was going to be late. Again. And Donna, the front desk sentinel of indeterminate age and humanity, was going to be a pain in the ass about it. Again.
After nearly a year at Sullivan, Hartfield, Aster, Reynolds, and Tuffley, Riley had yet to see the woman smile, say “excuse me” when she elbowed someone out of her way in the snack room, or wash her hands before leaving the restroom.
“Should I shave the ol’ bikini line in case we have sex tonight? Or should I not shave it and hold out for one more date?”
Instinctively, Riley glanced over her shoulder. The woman behind her was studying the menu board, but apparently her mind was on more important things. Things that a stranger such as herself should not be eavesdropping on.
Opening a news app, Riley drowned out the private thoughts of strangers and focused on more local happenings.
“Welcome to Little Amps,” the barista said cheerfully when she arrived at the front of the line. “What can I get you?”
Her hair was chopped short and shaved on one side. Her cat-eye glasses were a bright shade of raspberry that matched the tips of her hair. The tattoo at the base of her thumb was a penguin with heart eyes. She also had swollen lymph nodes on one side of her neck.
Not that Riley could actually tell. But she knew.
Oh, shit. Not again. Not here.
Her nose twitched.
“Uh, I’ll have the cold jar, please,” she croaked, looking everywhere but the girl’s neck.
“Tell her,” the grandmotherly figure from her dreams insisted. “Tell her. Tell her. Tell her.”
Riley pressed her lips together. She wasn’t doing this again. She’d already had to stop going to her favorite sandwich shop for lunch. And then there was the dive bar over on Fifth Street that she’d never set foot in again.
“Say it!”
She rubbed a palm over her nose. It was still twitching.
These stupid messages were ruining her life. She needed a damn mute button. It wasn’t like they were true. They felt true, but they were probably just deranged compulsions.
On cue, her phone rang.
“Hi, Mom,” Riley said. The barista was pouring milk over ice and cold brew into a to-go jar. If customers brought their jar back, they got ten percent off their next order. She really wanted that discount.
“What’s wrong?” Blossom Basil-Thorn demanded. The nasally Wisconsin accent was always more pronounced when she was worried about her daughters.
“Nothing,” Riley lied.
“Lying. Skip to the part where you tell me the truth. Was it another dream?”
She heard a bang and a clunk on her mom’s end of the call. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making homemade laundry detergent while your father makes the leak in the sink worse,” she said. “Now, tell me about the dream.”
“Can’t right now,” Riley hedged. The barista screwed on the lid, whistling a jazzy little tune, completely unaware of the battle that was waging inside her customer.
It wasn’t even real, she told herself. It was just a stupid dream, and the girl in front of her had perfectly normal lymph nodes. She probably didn’t even have a dead grandmother.
“Ah,” her mother said, understanding. “You need to tell whoever it is whatever it is, Riley. It’s a gift. You’re wasting your talents by ignoring them.”
“It’s not a gift,” she argued. She handed the girl cash, and when their fingers brushed, she saw the barista as a five-year-old standing on a stool in Great-Grandma Ida’s kitchen as a very alive Ida taught her how to mix pancake batter.
Crap.
“I gotta go, Mom,” Riley said and disconnected. She stood rooted to the spot for a second, debating whether she should wait for her change or just run.
She’d forked over a twenty. She needed that change.
“Tell her this instant!”
Riley wondered if death had made this Ida lady more authoritative or if she’d always been that way.
“Here’s your change,” the barista sang, handing over the bills.
Visions of lymph nodes danced in Riley’s head. She stuffed a dollar in the tip jar and cleared her throat. “Ida wants you to get your lymph nodes checked,” she whispered.
There. Happy, Ida? Another public place officially ruined. She was definitely going to have to start going to coffee shops and restaurants in disguise so she could at least keep coming back after these stupid revelations.
“Wait. What? Who?” The barista’s mouth fell open in an O, and she stared.
See? She didn’t even have a Great-Grandma Ida.
“Do you mean my great-grandma?” the girl asked.
Well, shit.
Riley started to back away. “Just get them checked. Right away.”
“Wait!” the girl called after her. The rest of the customers who weren’t jamming out to indie folk-rock in their earbuds watched Riley hurry toward the door.
Skidding to a halt, she swore, then dashed back to the register. “I’m just going to take this,” she said, her cheeks flaming as she grabbed the coffee.
She could kiss that ten percent discount goodbye. Because this jar was never coming back.
3
8:05 a.m., Tuesday, June 16
She was four minutes late, and of course the side door was already locked.
Frazzled and annoyed, Riley walked around the building to the front entrance. Sullivan, Hartfield, Aster, Reynolds, and Tuffley was housed in what had once been two row homes. The floors were uneven, the ceilings low, and the walls were painted a morale-crushing gray that Tuffley got at a discount when a local jail accidentally ordered too many five-gallon buckets of industrial paint.
The reception area was one of the only presentable spaces in the office, with its dull green carpet, fake plants in brass pots, and four matching vinyl chairs that faced a water cooler. The water cooler—and the rest of reception—was guarded by the aforementioned short, round, angry receptionist.
“Morning,” Riley said.
“Looks like someone couldn’t be bothered to show up on time again,” Donna hissed, her beady little eyes doling out judgment behind floral rimmed glasses.
Donna took things like lateness or long lunches or making too many photocopies at one time as a personal insult. She’d once reported a graphic designer for “walking weird.”
Riley ignored the snide little woman and hurried down the hall toward the cubicle farm, but not before she heard Donna say into her phone, “That Thorn girl was late again. I must be the only one in this building who takes their responsib
ilities seriously.”
The shabby hallway connected the two buildings. It opened into a room with more gray walls, fluorescent lights, and ten cubicles crammed together at the center, well away from any actual natural light. Riley slipped into hers. She shared it with Bud, the graphic designer who never removed his earbuds, didn’t shower often, and did obsessive amounts of research on Ultimate Frisbee fails. In the year that she’d been with the company, they had had only one conversation. That was the day the fire alarm went off, and she had to tap him on the shoulder to tell him to evacuate.
The bright side? Bud didn’t have many internal thoughts for her to accidentally overhear.
The cubicles on either side of them were empty, thanks to a spring round of layoffs. But when Riley had asked if she could move to a different desk, the answer had been a firm no.
It was the answer for every question ever dared to be asked within these walls.
No, she could not leave early for a dentist appointment. No, she could not move her lunchtime to 1:00 instead of 12:45. And no, she could most definitely not hang up the flyer for her sister’s yoga studio on the community bulletin board.
It was a shitty job with a shitty company. But divorced TV news writer pariahs couldn’t be choosers. She needed to stick it out for one more year and twenty-one days—yeah, she had a countdown on the calendar in her apartment—before this position went from red flag to a sign of stability on her resume.
Her desk was littered with job jackets containing printouts of incredibly exciting things like pellet stove schematics and magazine ads for bathroom stall dividers. Another exciting day for a proofreader.
Riley turned on her monitor, gave it a whack in the top right corner to make the green lines disappear, and began her morning ritual: cyberstalking her ex-husband and his girlfriend on social media.
Griffin Gentry was Channel 50’s most popular morning news anchor. He spent more money on spray tans and voice coaches than most people spent on mortgages. He’d claimed that the news was in his blood. But in reality, his blood was in the media group that owned the station. His father—who most definitely tried to slip Riley the tongue on her wedding day—was an executive vice president with the company and had some good ol’ nepotistic pull.
By the time she’d come on board at a bright, shiny twenty-eight, full of high hopes and big dreams, Griffin’s reputation had been edited and sanitized. He hadn’t noticed her for two full years. It wasn’t until the office Christmas party when a drunken Griffin had accidentally knocked her to the floor when she exited the restroom that he’d bothered learning her name.
He’d noticed her after that, and she’d let herself be dazzled, flattered, even grateful for the attention. They’d survived two years of dating and a year of marriage before Riley couldn’t ignore the red flags anymore.
The bustiest of which was weather girl Bella Goodshine.
Scrolling through the twenty-four-year-old’s Instagram feed was Riley’s favorite self-flagellating hobby. Bella had Baywatch-style long blond hair and wide blue eyes that made her look constantly startled or star-struck. That was probably what had first drawn Griffin to the bubbly meteorologist. Or her very large breasts.
Riley was no slouch in the boob department, but she didn’t advertise like Bella.
The perky blonde dressed like a naughty sorority sister and had the disposition of a children’s TV show star. When Riley had burst into her own bedroom to find her husband standing pantsless in front of the mirror, Bella had politely spit out his cock and given her a chipper, “Oh, hi!”
Riley’s response had been less friendly and much, much more costly.
Bella’s Instagram account was a perfectly curated highlight reel of a woman adored by both the public and her “dreamy” boyfriend. Barf.
Riley got to experience the heart-shaped pancakes Bella’s “sweetie” made her for Valentine’s Day along with the rest of the woman’s 65,000 followers. A number that grew exponentially every time she posted another bikini shot.
But it wasn’t a bikini day. No. Today was much, much worse.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Riley murmured under her breath.
The short video clip showed a slim hand with Pepto Bismol pink nails angling this way and that to capture as much light as possible on a blindingly huge diamond ring.
“… thrilled viewers with an on-air proposal…”
“Congratulations, Biffin!”
“Hottest couple ever.”
“#relationshipgoals.”
Riley’s cellphone rang. She didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who it was.
“Hey, Jas.”
“That tangerine weasel gave her your ring.” Jasmine Patel was Riley’s best friend, partner in crime, and wing lady. Frankly, Riley wasn’t sure how she’d earned the honor. They’d met in junior high when Jasmine’s mother had moved her dermatology practice to Camp Hill.
Jasmine had been the instant cool girl in school, arriving secure in the confidence of winning the genetic lottery. She got her natural grace and freakish cardiovascular stamina from her uncle, who played soccer professionally in the UK. The straight-As-without-trying brains were guaranteed for the third daughter of a doctor and a PhD-wielding historian. And then there was her appearance.
Her long, glossy black hair was always elegantly sleek, even when she woke up with a hangover. Her cheekbones were the stuff of legends, as was skin that had never once permitted a blemish to bloom. Jasmine had been the first girl in seventh grade to get boobs. Also the first girl to tell ninth-grade football hottie Bryson to keep his hands to himself.
While Riley had spent her adolescence obsessed with being normal, Jasmine had railed against it. If there was an expectation, she ignored it. If there was a rule, she broke it.
And if some asshole ever dared hurt one of the people she loved, Jasmine Patel was the Don Corleone of payback.
When the judge had ordered Riley to pay damages to her lying, cheating ex-husband, Jasmine had calmly strolled out of the courthouse, got in her SUV, and rammed it into the driver’s side door of Griffin’s Audi convertible.
She’d pleaded “bee in the car.” Coupled with her good looks and the fact that Griffin had taken up two handicap spaces, the cops had let her off with a warning.
“I almost feel sorry for her,” Riley confessed to her best friend.
Champion grudge-holder Jasmine snorted. “Please, she’s old enough to know that marrying a dickless moron who cheated on his first wife is a shit idea.”
“I’m sure they’ll be very happy together,” Riley said. At couples’ plastic surgery appointments and across conference room tables while their attorneys hashed out a prenup.
“How do you feel?” Jasmine asked. Riley found it comforting that there was more rage than pity in her friend’s tone.
“Like I want a gallon of tequila,” she admitted.
“I can make that happen,” Jasmine promised.
Riley gave a humorless laugh.
“Look, I’m worried about you, and not just because your ex is a self-absorbed toadstool,” her friend said.
“I’m fine,” Riley insisted. “Everything is fine.”
“No, you’re not. You’re living in a sketchy retirement home. Working a dead-end job. You’re not dating. And I bet you a bottle of that tequila that not only did you not put on mascara this morning, you’re wearing gray or black.”
Riley was wearing gray and black.
“Not everyone needs a colorful closet, Jas.”
“Listen, girl. You need to accept the fact that your attempt at boring and normal failed. Stop clinging to the hope that one day you’ll wake up and be someone else. You need to embrace who you are and get back out there. You are stagnant. Stir things up. Slap on some concealer, bust out something that shows cleavage and do something.”
“Doing something involves money,” Riley pointed out.
Jasmine snorted. “Honey, if you walked into a bar with a pouty face, you woul
dn’t pay for a drink or dinner or possibly even your rent. It depends on what bar we go to.”
Jasmine had never paid for a drink in her life.
“I think you’re overestimating my appeal,” Riley said wryly.
“Are you depressed?” her friend pushed.
“No. Of course not.” Maybe. Probably.
Riley’s computer made a “whoosh” noise, and a new email popped into her inbox.
Subject: On-Time Arrivals to Work.
She heard the squeak of Donna’s orthopedic shoes on the industrial tile in the hall.
Riley heaved a sigh. “I have to go.”
“Okay. But do yourself a favor and stay off of social media today. Do not watch the proposal video. I’ll call you later.”
Of course there was a proposal video. “Thanks,” Riley breathed.
She disconnected and then did what she always did when she received a passive-aggressive memo from the supervisory staff. She abbreviated Sullivan, Hartfield, Aster, Reynolds, and Tuffley to S.H.A.R.T. in the signature line of her outgoing email messages.
Then she brought up Channel 50’s Facebook page and cued up the “surprise engagement” video.
4
5:15 p.m., Tuesday, June 16
After watching Griffin theatrically get down on one knee in the middle of Bella’s explanation of a high-pressure system a dozen or so times, Riley buried herself in work. This included spending the entire afternoon double-checking that all 300 links on a township’s horrifically outdated website no longer took users to the porn site that had hijacked them.
She slogged home through the afternoon commuter traffic, windows down and music up to drown out Uncle Jimmy’s fishing suggestions. Her phone rang when she got to the mansion’s parking lot. It was her sister, Wander.
“Hey,” Riley said, shifting the Jeep into park and cutting the engine.
“Hi.” Wander’s breathy Zen tone made a simple greeting sound like the ringing of a meditation gong. If a meditation gong were ringing over a backdrop of three screaming kids. “I just heard about Griffin. How are you?” she asked.