You've Got Fail(53)

“I could work for Pauly—”

“No.” I shook my head.

“I can make up the debt myself, okay? It would just take a few weeks of dealing for him at the big game. Or maybe I can just, I don’t know, stay over his shoulder and give him tips, you know?”

“That’s a one-way ticket to the Pine Barrens. Look what happened when he found out you were cheating him. If another one of those goons catches you, it’s all over.” I dropped my sandwich and turned to her. “You’re my responsibility. When Mom died, I swore I’d take care of you. I didn’t do a good job of it, and that’s why this happened.”

She tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, then took my hands. “You think this is your fault, but it isn’t. You were out in the world, making a future. I was here being stupid with asshole men and dumb schemes. I pulled you back into this shithole, right when you’d finally gotten free.”

“We’ll be free again.” I squeezed her hands. “Both of us. We have to stick to the plan. It’s the only way.”

She sighed and took a real bite of her pickle. “I just like Willis, is all.”

“So do I.” My emotions churned inside me, fizzing and popping. But it didn’t matter what I felt. This was about survival.



“Scarlet?”

“Yes.” I flumped back onto my bed and stared at the cracked ceiling.

“I’m glad you answered.” Willis’s smooth voice rolled through my ears, and reverberated throughout the rest of my body. How could one simple sentence send me into a tingly abyss?

“I didn’t have much of a choice.” I snuggled under my comforter and turned off the lamp. “You’re calling kind of late.”

“Were you waiting for the phone to ring?”

“No.” I may have been giving it sideways glances, but I certainly hadn’t been waiting for it to ring. Not at all.

“Sure you weren’t. I had a lot of blogging to catch up on. People are getting excited about the book’s release, so I have to keep the hype going with new content.”

“All work and no play for the bad girl of blogging?”

He laughed, the sound rich and thick. “Is that what we are? The bad girl of the blogosphere?”

He said we. But there was no “we.” Not now that my plan was solidified. I brushed off the dark thought and said, “With a name like Scarlet Rocket, how could she be anything else? Where did you come up with that, anyway?”

“You won’t believe me.”

I smiled. “Tell me.”

He sighed, and a shuffling noise came through the phone.

“What was that?”

“I was just getting into bed.”

“Oh.” A flash of memory from our night in bed together shot across my vision, and a spark of heat licked at the skin between my legs.

“Are you in bed?” His voice had dropped an octave, all the way down into the sex-on-a-stick range.

“Yes.” I rested my hand on my stomach. It wouldn’t go any lower. Not at all. “Now tell me where you came up with the name.”

“So… When I was younger, I had a thing for a particular porn star.”

A giggle shook me. “This is already getting good.”

“Her name was Scarlet. When I was about sixteen, she was it for me. The perfect ten.”

“So this Scarlet Rocket powered your teen fantasies.”

“Her last name wasn’t Rocket.”

“What was it?”

“She was a porn star from the seventies. She didn’t have a last name.”

“The seventies? I bet her bush was huuu—”

“I loved vintage porn. It was sort of nastier, I guess? I liked it because it was more real than the current stuff. It’s like I was a porn hipster or something. If I could have grown a porn ‘stache, I would have been all over it.”

I crowed with laughter at the mental image of him with a burly lip rug.

“Oh, come on. It’s not that funny.” He chuckled softly. “Okay, yes, it’s kind of funny.”

I took a deep breath to keep the giggles away. “That explains the Scarlet. What about the Rocket?”

“That’s a different story.” He cleared his throat.

“Don’t hold out on me now, Porn ‘Stache.”

“Tell you what. I’ll tell you where Rocket came from, if you tell me why you call me Sparky.”

“What if I call every guy Sparky?”

“You don’t.” He answered smugly. “I’ve made a study of you and how you interact with others. I’m the only Sparky.”

He was right, of course. I didn’t want to reveal my methods, but if that meant I got to find out where “Rocket” came from, I was game. “Fine. Now spill.”

“My very first high school girlfriend was a Catholic schoolgirl.”

I snorted. “You tell the best stories.”

“You ain’t heard nothing yet. So, we do some regular old teenage making out. Kissing in her parents’ basement, meeting up every weekend for the ever-escalating groping, stuff like that. After a focused effort on my part, she finally agreed to put it in her mouth.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it tickled my funny bone, and I had to work to stifle my laughter. “Yes, go on.”