Clicking on “Contact Information,” Lexi felt as though she could dance around the room in joy when she saw that there was a phone number listed. She nearly kicked herself in the ass when she realized that she didn’t have a pen to write it down.
“Hey,” she whispered to the guy next to her. “Do you happen to have a pen?”
“Sure,” he said, pulling a blue ballpoint pen out of his bag and handing it to her.
“Thanks,” Lexi said, smiling – and trying not to focus on how cute he was. Knowing how she felt about Gabe, she knew that she shouldn’t look at other guys…but it also wasn’t like they were official yet. Reminding herself that she would be upset if Gabe was with another girl, Lexi tried to snap herself out of anything that she might feel for…um, she realized that she didn’t know his name.
Scribbling down her dad’s number on the back of her hand because she had forgotten her phone at home, Lexi powered the computer off and turned to walk out the door. Once she reached the long hallway that lead to the back entrance, Lexi felt a tap on her shoulder.
Turning, she found herself standing face-to-face with the really cute guy she had just been sitting next to.
“Oh, I’m sorry! I totally forgot to give you back your pen,” Lexi said, handing it to him.
“It’s okay,” the guy said, smiling. “That’s not why I came after you.”
“Oh?” Lexi asked, puzzled.
“I’ve never seen you around here,” the guy went on. “I was wondering, are you a student?”
“Yes, but I don’t start until the fall,” Lexi half lied, half told the truth. She was a student after all, just not at Briar Creek College.
“Sweet. I’m Craig. Maybe we can get together sometime?” He asked.
Trying not to stare at his muscular chest, which looked like it belonged on a lifeguard chair on a hot beach somewhere, she said, “I’m Lexi, and sure. I’d love that.”
“Cool. How about I give you my number and you call me?” Craig asked.
Nodding, Lexi stared at the cell phone holder on his belt loop. “Yeah, that’s fine. Write it down. Hey, do you mind if I borrow your phone for a second?” she asked, adding, “My battery is dead and I have to tell someone to pick me up.” She wasn’t about to tell him that she was so absentminded that she forgotten it, or that she was looking for her dad who had abandoned her when she was a kid.
“No prob,” he said, swiftly handing her his cell phone.
“Thanks,” Lexi said smiling at him. “I’ll be back in just a second.” Taking a few steps away from Craig, she dialed the number she had written on the back of her hand and suddenly found herself pacing back and forth in the wide hallway.
As the phone began ringing, Lexi felt as though her heart was frozen. It almost hurt breathe. She couldn’t believe that she had managed to get the guts up to call her dad so quickly after finding him online. Normally, it took her months to get up the nerve to do anything. Then again, it wasn’t that weird. It was just how badly she wanted to get out of Briar Creek.
After a few rings, an automated voice prompted her to leave a message. Lexi gulped and took a deep breath. Once the beep on the other line had ended, she said, “Hi, Ben, err…dad. This is Lexi…your daughter. I need you to call me back. It’s important. Mom died, and I really need your help.” Hoping that he wouldn’t call her back while her aunt was in earshot, Lexi recited her number and pushed the end button on Craig’s phone before handing it back to him.
“Thank you so much, for letting me use your phone,” Lexi said, as Craig handed her a folded piece of paper with his number on it. “I’ll call you soon,” she said, smiling at him.
“Cool,” Craig said. “I’ll see you around then, I guess.”
“Yup,” Lexi said, swinging open the back door of the college to begin walking back home. As she approached the garbage can that had flies swarming around it, she tossed the number. As much as she wanted to see Craig, she realized that adding him into the mix of things going on in her life right now would only complicate things – and that really wasn’t fair to him. Lexi hoped that he would meet a nice girl on campus and forget all about her.
****
Chapter 10
The next morning, Lexi was awakened by the sound of her aunt’s Toyota Corolla pulling out of the gravel driveway as Violet and Tom set out for New Jersey. She breathed a sigh of relief. Now that they were gone, she had the house to herself for the next few days. Lexi realized that this meant she could see Gabe as much as she wanted until they returned without getting grounded for it.
Lying in bed, Lexi found herself thinking about the carnival again and, mostly, Violet’s reaction to her being attacked. Violet had said that it couldn’t have happened because things like that just don’t happen in Briar Creek. Well, what about that newspaper article? Wasn't that enough proof that something that violent could, and did, happen in Briar Creek?
Lexi couldn’t stop thinking about her attacker. She hadn’t seen his (she assumed it was a “him,” because she didn’t think a woman would be as strong as her attacker was) face, and that made her nervous. What if he had somehow found out where she lived? Was her attacker also Jessica’s murderer? If he was, he might try to come back and finish the job so that Lexi couldn’t rat him out on the off chance that she remembered him (which she didn’t, since she hadn’t even seen his face). Just thinking about her attacker finding her gave her goose bumps.
Lexi’s stomach leapt into her throat when the phone started ringing.
She threw herself out of bed and ran downstairs. As she reached the phone, it beeped loudly.
A man with a deep voice began speaking. “Hello, this is Dr. Stevens calling from Briar Creek Medical Center. I’m calling to share the autopsy results—”
Lexi scooped the phone up from its cradle and pressed the “talk” button. “Hello? This is Eileen Hunter’s daughter. You have her autopsy results?”
“Yes, I do. First, let me say that I am terribly sorry to hear about your mother’s passing,” he said, coughing into the phone. “Traces of Escherichia coli, which you’ve probably heard referred to as E. coli, were found. The particular strain of the bacterium generally comes from undercooked beef, which was found in the contents of her stomach.”
“So, you’re saying that my mom died of food poisoning…from eating beef?”
“Yes ma’am. Once again, I’m sorry. I hope you will find some closure with these results. Have a great day,” the doctor said, hanging up the phone on her.
Lexi curled up on the couch. The tears began pouring out, sliding down her cheeks before forming a tiny a puddle on the front of her navy blue hoodie. Somehow, the autopsy results made her mother’s death even more real to Lexi…and more painful. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting from the phone call. Maybe for the coroner to tell her that her mom was still alive, that this was all just a bad dream?
Lexi wanted something, anything, to make the pain go away. If she were at home, she would probably sit in the bathtub and cry until her skin turned wrinkly. Or she would drown herself in Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream, while watching depressing Lifetime movies. Aunt Violet’s bathtub was old and uninviting, and Tommy was lactose intolerant so they never kept ice cream in the fridge.
Violet and Tommy had been drinking wine yesterday; maybe there would be some left. Lexi had promised her mom that she wouldn’t try her first alcoholic drink until she was twenty-one, but that promise didn’t matter much anymore now.
She decided to check the kitchen, since that was where she had seen Violet and Tom gulping down their drinks in the middle of the day.
Opening the refrigerator, she spotted a jar of mayonnaise, a few tomatoes, and a carton of milk – but no wine. Sighing, she glanced at the counter top, which was also bare.
Lexi knew that her aunt and uncle had had another fridge installed in their basement when she was a kid. They mostly used it to hold alcoholic beverages that they wanted to keep away from her and Austin. Decidi
ng that it should still be there now, she moseyed her way to the stairs.
When she reached the basement, Lexi found that the stainless steel fridge was in the same place that she remembered it. Pulling the handle open, she glanced in to find four glass bottles of Coor’s Light staring back at her. Lexi had never imagined that her first alcoholic drink would be beer. All of her friends told her that it tasted like cat pee – though she wasn’t sure how they knew what cat urine tasted like. She’d always imagined that her first drink would be a Cosmopolitan like Sarah Jessica Parker’s character on Sex and the City or a chocolate martini with whipped cream.
Sighing, she reached into the fridge and picked up the closest Coor’s Light – which looked like nothing more than a blur to her, because her eyes were practically swollen shut from all that crying.
Popping the top off, she sniffed at the bottle of beer that she held with both hands and realized that her nose was too stuffy from crying so hard to smell anything. She took a cautious sip, hoping that it tasted better than she was expecting. It didn’t.
Lexi had never tasted alcohol before, but she never expected it would be so disgusting. It was salty and so thick that it was almost hard to swallow. Tilting her head back, she choked down the entire bottle in one big gulp, allowing its cool contents to run down the back of her throat.
Wiping the remnants away with the sleeve of her hooded sweatshirt, she walked outside to toss the bottle into the recycling can. She was relieved to find that the can was already filled with Coor’s Light bottles, so one more would go unnoticed. Violet would probably lock her in her room forever if she knew that she was drinking. Lexi remembered that after her dad had disappeared, her aunt had made a huge deal about him drinking and, at one point, had said that was why he had left. Lexi never believed it – she didn’t remember him that much, but she had also never seen him drunk, as far as she knew.
Hoping that the alcohol would kick in soon, Lexi went back inside and settled down onto the couch. So far, the beer hadn’t taken away her pain; instead, it had only intensified it because she had broken her promise to her mom.
Lexi felt a wave of nausea overtake her, along with a dizzy headache. Clutching her stomach, she ran to the bathroom and gripped the toilet seat.
After she vomited, Lexi realized that it had probably been a bad idea to drink her first beer when her stomach already felt like it was on a really intense roller coaster ride.
Knowing that she would feel even more miserable if she stayed in the house and cried all day, Lexi went upstairs and slid into a clean pair of denim shorts and pulled on a mint green tank top with crochet trim.
Without thinking twice about how unattractive her puffy, red eyes must look, she went outside, leaving the front door unlocked, and crossed the street.
When she reached the front door of Gabe’s house, Lexi paused and straightened her glossy blonde hair, which fell in waves just below her shoulders.
As she extended her fist to knock on the door, it swung open. “Lexi, what are you doing here?” Gabe asked, stepping out onto the front step and closing the door behind him.
“I wanted to see you and I didn’t have your number to call. I hope you’re not mad.”
“Of course I’m not mad.” He kissed her lightly on her forehead and stared at her with his deep blue eyes. “Why don’t you go back to Violet’s and I’ll be over in a few minutes. I have a few things to do here really quick.”
“Okay,” Lexi agreed in a heartbeat. Her own eagerness to go back to her house, correction, Violet’s house, surprised her. She was sick of being at Violet’s. Their house gave her a bad vibe. Actually, it was probably just Violet and Tom that gave her a bad vibe; she shouldn’t blame the house. At least they’re not home for now, she thought to herself, crossing the street. Glancing back at Gabe’s, she saw a curtain quickly close. This time, she knew for sure that she hadn’t imagined it.
When Lexi went back inside the house, she felt a cool draft, despite the fact that she could probably lay outside, comfortably, in a bikini right now. She pulled her sweatshirt back over her head and realized that she was hungry. Really hungry.
Looking in the empty refrigerator, she tried to think of something she could whip up. Her ideas were limited; she only knew how to make pasta and cereal (if that even counted). In the kitchen cabinet, she found a box of Easy Mac.
She didn’t know anything about Gabe’s eating habits, but she hoped he liked Mac ‘n cheese. It was one of the few things that Lexi could find that she actually knew how to cook. Just as she was stirring the powdered cheese in, Lexi heard Gabe knock softly on the front door.
From the kitchen, she called, “Come in.”
Putting the pot of pasta on the table, she turned to go downstairs to greet him, and nearly collided with him. She pressed her lips firmly against his, allowing his cool tongue to encircle hers. Gabe pulled her closer to him, kissing her frantically and tugging at the zipper of her jeans.
Suddenly, he gasped for air and pushed her away. Pointing to her wrist, he asked, “What happened?”
“What do you mean?” She raised her wrist, examining it in the dim light.
“Your sleeve is all bloody.”
“Oh, I didn’t even know I was bleeding,” Lexi said, looking down to examine the rest of her body. “You’re not. It’s not your blood,” Gabe said, with a confused look on his face.
Lexi frowned. “How do you know?”
“I, uh...I just don’t see any wounds,” he replied, examining her wrist.
“Oh, that’s strange. Are you hungry? I made dinner,” she said, tearing off the sweatshirt and heading downstairs. “I’m just going to put this in the washer.”
When she came back upstairs, Gabe was sitting at the table with a pile of Mac ‘n cheese in front of him and a plate waiting for her across the table.
“I wasn’t sure if you liked Mac ‘n cheese or not, but I was hungry,” she said.
“It’s fine,” he said, in between bites. “Thank you for cooking for me.”
She smiled. Her aunt may think Gabe was a bad guy, but what bad guy had good manners?
*
After they did the dishes, Gabe suggested that they watch a movie together. Lexi realized that a night on the couch with him was just what she needed right now. While Violet’s DVD collection consisted of a lot of horror movies Lexi was too much of a chicken to watch, she did find Legally Blonde, which was one of her all-time favorites.
On the couch, Gabe pulled Lexi against his rock-hard chest, wrapping his arms tightly around her. She snuggled back against him.
“Gabe, what do you know about Austin and Mary-Kate?”
“Honestly? Not much. All I know is that they were dating.”
“Dan was Austin’s best friend. Do you have any idea why he wouldn’t even mention that Mary-Kate and Austin dated?”
Lexi felt Gabe shrug behind her. “It’s just the type of person Dan is, Lexi. He’s not the most honest guy you’ll ever meet,” he muttered.
“Is that why you two don’t like each other…because he’s lied to you before?”
“It’s part of the reason. You know how I told you that Kevin died in a motorcycle accident a few years back?” He waited for Lexi to nod so he could finish. “Well, Dan was at the scene of the accident. When the cops questioned him, he said he didn’t see anything. Later, I found out that he saw it all.”
“That’s strange,” Lexi whispered, gazing into Gabe’s eyes. “I found a picture of Dan kissing Mary-Kate. That’s the only reason I can see why he would lie about Austin and Mary-Kate.”
“He was involved with Mary-Kate?” Gabe asked. Lexi could hear the worried tone in his voice.
“Yeah, he was. Why, do you know something about them?”
“No,” he said, coolly. “It’s just that she’s the mayor’s daughter. Cheating on her boyfriend with his best friend seems out of character.” A soft thump came from the kitchen. Lexi turned to look. Once again, she became worried that her attacker
had found her.
“It’s always the ones you least expect,” Lexi pointed out, afraid that Mary-Kate was getting more credit than she deserved. After the Facebook message she had read and what she had overheard, Lexi had a hard time believing that Mary-Kate was a goody-goody. She didn’t know what she and Austin had been doing the night he died, but it didn’t sound like something a mayor’s daughter should be involved in.
Lexi’s thoughts were interrupted by the loud banging sound.
This time, Lexi and Gabe both turned to look in the direction the noise had come from.
“I suppose,” he said, kissing a trail down her neck. Lexi leaned against him, feeling a spark shoot through her body every time Gabe’s lips brushed against her skin.
Another bang sounded from outside. This time it was louder, and Lexi was sure that it was coming from outside. Lexi jumped and felt her heart beat quicken as Gabe’s entire body went tense.
Tiptoeing into the kitchen, Lexi glanced out the window. “Oh, my God,” she gasped.
“What is it?” Gabe asked, shooting up from the couch.
“Come look.”
In a millisecond, he was standing at her side. “What,” Gabe asked again.
She pointed at the hundreds of bats that were hovering outside the window, blindly crashing into it.
****
Chapter 11
The next morning, Lexi opened her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. The bats, which had hovered outside the house, darting loudly against the windows until sometime after she had fallen asleep, were gone. Shivering, she grabbed a fleece blanket and resumed her place on the couch next to Gabe. Lexi figured that, between vomiting yesterday and having the chills today, she must have the stomach flu.
She remembered the phone call from the doctor yesterday and felt her stomach drop.
The Briar Creek Vampires 01 - Kiss of Death Page 9