Real Bad Things(68)

Jane reached out and took Georgia Lee’s hand. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Embarrassed, Georgia Lee shoved the tear-and snot-covered tissue into the side pocket of the door. “You never take me seriously.”

Georgia Lee’s words hung in the air, drowned by the summer downpour the skies finally unleashed. But then Jane put a hand to Georgia Lee’s cheek. It was cold from where she’d previously held it up to the vent. A smile lingered. Georgia Lee’s body tingled; her mind raced with warnings. She should turn away from that hand, from Jane. She should tell her she had to get home.

It was dark. It was late. Reporters had been hanging around Diane’s trailer. The last thing Georgia Lee needed was another photo to upend her. Everything she’d worked for could disappear. Her life. Her home. Her family. She should go home, beg Rusty for forgiveness, ask to be welcomed back into the comfort of their home, their routine, everything she knew and understood. Everything that didn’t challenge her. She should let Jane move forward, do what she’d always planned to do. And then forget her. Georgia Lee had done it before; she could forget again.

Instead, she welcomed Jane’s mouth when it was offered, without pause or shame. She let Jane pull her onto her lap and undo her jeans, recline the seat, and position her hips. While the residents of Maud Bottoms Estates settled into their bedtime routines or late-night shows or last drinks, their representative, Georgia Lee Lane, the one who fought for them even though they were unaware and mostly unimpressed, unzipped the fleece jacket Jane wore, lifted the T-shirt, and once more cooled her tongue against the skin that had teased her all night and long ago.





Twenty-One

JANE

Jane definitely should not have had sex with Georgia Lee in the front passenger seat of a car like a teenager in an ’80s flick. Things were messy enough without adding extra helpings of emotion on top. However. Considering Jane’s potential imminent arrest for the murder of her stepfather—again—who could blame her?

Outside, the brief thunderstorm had dissipated. They untangled their half-naked bodies and groaned in response to their backs and necks having been forced into uncomfortable positions their joints and muscles no longer tolerated. Georgia Lee settled into the driver’s seat and smoothed her hair. She rubbed away the steam on the windows and peered outside. They avoided eye contact, but not in any way that made Jane’s stomach plunge. It was almost charming, Georgia Lee’s shyness and hesitation and paranoia.

Jane had had plenty of lovers. Enough to know a good one from a bad one. The last ex had been the former until they’d both become the latter out of boredom and disinterest. It got to the point where she would have rather been forced to watch a Bachelorette marathon all day than have a five-minute quickie with her ex. She could barely muster the energy for a romantic comedy and assumed she’d reached that age. But one glance from an emotionally compromised Georgia Lee in the seat next to her and Jane fell under the spell. Her hair and skin smelled like what Jane imagined sunshine would. There were soft curves in the places where her ex housed muscle. Roughness instead of smoothness, though no less exciting to Jane’s palm.

Georgia Lee sat quietly with her eyes closed, dozing off, after they’d exhausted each other in familiar ways Jane had never thought possible when she first started thinking about other girls with both alarm and excitement. After their first night together, so long ago now, Jane distinctly remembered thinking, If this is what it’s like to be in love, to be happy, then I never want to leave Maud.

Jane. Plain Jane. Nothing but a nobody since the day she was born. No one, in all the lunchrooms where she had eaten at the end of a long table way at the back, all the playgrounds where she’d found a spot against a wall, all the classrooms where she’d kept her head low. Elementary school, middle school, high school. Jane had let herself feel invisible. But then she’d met Angie, the closest she’d ever come to a best friend. And then along came Georgia Lee, the closest she’d ever come to love.

She’d been seen. She’d been liked and loved. In Maud. And then she’d lost both. She’d lose them again soon.

Past tense, present. It all collided. Emotions raced across Georgia Lee’s face, and Jane’s heart hammered.

“Let’s leave Maud.” A foolish notion, but she’d done a foolish thing. “Let’s run.”





Twenty-Two

GEORGIA LEE

Nothing had ever felt so good to Georgia Lee as those moments of climax, when every nerve ignited. In the moments before and after, her guilt and shame swelled. Didn’t matter the gender of her lover. A needling voice rushed at her. Two opposing devils, one on each shoulder, not even an angel to balance her out. They whispered all the thoughts and deeds Georgia Lee embarked on, not willing to stop, not willing to say no to the moment, that big burst, the one minute of her day when the devils dispersed and there was nothing but that blinding, beautiful sensation.

She breathed in that heady remembrance of yesterdays, tried to keep herself from tripping into the present, where nothing waited for her but hurt. The air thick with their scent, reminding her of how primal they were. Another animal on the food chain. At the top, with no predators, so they’d created them out of each other to compensate. Her body, her mind, her desire a weapon to be used against her.

God hadn’t made weapons; man had. But he’d made rocks. And she’d wielded one.