Deconstructed(20)

“He wanted to experiment with sex toys, and I shot him down without even considering it. I didn’t want to do freaky stuff.”

Griff may have had an ear cocked in our direction, because he darted a glance our way before catching himself and going right back to unhooking chains.

“Yeah,” I breathed. I really didn’t know what to say to that.

“And when I was, like, ‘No way,’ he said he was joking. But maybe turning him down drove him to Stephanie. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe I should have tried the anal beads or the other things he showed me on that website.”

“I would have turned that down, too, Cricket. I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. None of this is your fault. Not wanting to push the boundaries of, uh, what you do in the bedroom is not justification for cheating.”

She looked up at me with tears sheening her eyes. “You would have said no, too?”

“Yeah, that would have been a hard pass.”

A sigh of relief escaped her as she looked over at Griff, who had turned toward us.

“Okay, Mrs. Crosby,” Griffin said, walking over and readjusting the cap on his head. “Got you loaded. You gals ready? Or do you need more time to . . .”

His words faded as if he wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Cricket’s eyes widened, and I felt protective of her. I hoped like hell Griff hadn’t heard our conversation, but the slight softening of his expression and the solicitous query made me suspect he had. Griff wasn’t a bad guy. He’d probably maim Scott if I asked him to.

I looked at Cricket. “Ready?”

She pushed off the curb. “Sure. Thank you, Mr. Moon.”

Griff didn’t say anything more. Just watched as we gracelessly climbed into the cab of his truck. The cab smelled like coffee and—I squinted at the green-tree freshener dangling from the rearview mirror—pine. A stack of bills bundled with a rubber band sat on the dash, and another ball cap with the Blue Moon logo sat beside it. The cab was clean, like I knew it would be. Griff had always been disciplined. That’s why he ran a successful business.

He swung into his seat and shut the door, giving us automatic intimacy.

“We good?” Griffin asked.

Cricket’s phone trilled.

She sighed when she looked at the screen. Punching the ANSWER button, she tiredly said, “What? I said I’d be home.”

Because we were in close quarters, I heard Scott say, “Did you pick up my dry cleaning?”

I felt her answer before she said it. “No.”

“I told you I need a white button-down for tomorrow. There are none in my closet. You said you would get them.”

“I forgot,” Cricket said.

“Damn it, Crick. When you say you’re going to do something, you should do it. Now I’m screwed. What’s been going on with you? You never forget stuff like this. I’m sure you saw that I didn’t forget the anniversary of our first date. You got the flowers, right?”

“Sorry about the shirts. Wear the blue one. I’ll pick the dry cleaning up tomorrow.” Cricket pressed the END button before her husband could respond. She lowered the phone and screwed her eyes closed. “Sorry about that.”

Thick discomfort pressed on all of us. No one liked to be plunged into someone’s jacked-up life uninvited. And yet here I sat, ass deep in my boss’s personal business.

Griffin pulled away from the curb while simultaneously turning on the radio. Van Halen roared from the speakers, instructing us to “Jump.”

Too damned late.

“I hate him. I really hate him.” Cricket’s words scattered like buckshot, powerful and angry.

Griff leaned forward to look across me at my boss, who had pressed her hands into her eyes. “You want me to kill him for you?”

Cricket dropped her hands and looked over at Griff. “You do that sort of thing?”

Griff grinned. I had only seen him do that maybe four times in my life.

“He doesn’t kill people,” I clarified just in case Cricket thought my cousin was serious.

“I know,” Cricket said with a slight smile. “Besides, I don’t want Scott to die until I make him pay.”

Griffin pulled through a Family Dollar parking lot, looping around and pointing his tow truck north. “That’s the spirit, sunshine.”





CHAPTER SIX


CRICKET

A week later

I smiled at Ling Stewart as I handed a slice of pizza to a kid who had the biggest set of braces I had ever seen. Or maybe it was merely that he was small. Junior high kids were odd. Some of the girls looked like twenty-two-year-old bombshells, but the boys in the same class often resembled babies with their round faces. Or perhaps puberty hadn’t yet hit, based on how this kid looked.

“Something wrong, Cricket?” Ling asked, passing the same boy a bottled water, side-eyeing me with concern. I guess I hadn’t really said much since we’d started passing out rewards to all the honor students. Sometimes I wished we could give the pizza to the kids who didn’t do so hot on the nine weeks’ report cards. Some of them had bigger fish to fry . . . and didn’t have a mama who would write the paper for them.

“I’m fine,” I replied.

“You seem tired.”

“No. I’m fine.” I wondered if my undereye cream had failed me. Damn it. The Facebook advertisement had promised me I would look ten years younger and never again have unsightly smudges beneath my baby blues. I had ordered the product one of the foggy evenings when I had been sitting on the couch nursing my third glass of chardonnay. I also now owned the world’s softest hoodie, some deodorant that you could use everywhere on your body, and a 3D puzzle of the Tower of London. Seemed grief and wine made me trigger happy. Scott made a smart-aleck comment about the Amazon boxes on the porch and how I must be on my period when I bit his head off for saying something about my shopping spree.