Curveball(12)

I peel the short black wig from my head and set it down on the vanity in front of me, trying not to roll my eyes at Donna. After all, she is the only real friend I have in this city. “I don’t know. It’s illegal. What if the cops come? I can’t risk losing my job before I’ve even started.”

She rolls a wand of red gloss across her lips and smacks them together, all while looking at me from underneath long, fake lashes. “Stop being such a bore, Liv. Just because you were a lawyer doesn’t mean you have to be so uptight all the time.”

“I am still a lawyer. I took an oath.”

Fixing my hair in the mirror, I attempt to brush out the knots and give it some style after wearing a wig for hours, the sweat coating my scalp and matting each strand to my head. Donna doesn’t take well to me ignoring her, and she stands up so that she’s hovering over me, looking at me with disapproval in the mirror.

“You know, you are such a buzzkill. I really want you to meet Tony.”

“The elusive Tony, who I swear is not real,” I deadpan. “Will I actually meet him this time? Or will this be another one of those nights where he has something better to do and leaves us standing on a vacant street corner, looking like two hookers flagging down their next johns?”

She chuckles and takes my hair in her hands, massaging my scalp as she adds some hair spray to give my dull, flat look some texture. “I promise you, Tony is very much real. That man makes me squeal like a pig when he fucks me. There’s no way I could make that up.”

“You’re ridiculous. This week, it’s Tony, but I’m sure you’ll outgrow him by the end of the month.”

She shrugs. “Maybe. We shall see what happens. He’s a good fuck and apparently just as hung as your fuck boy, but Mark still hasn’t called so more like a man-child.”

“Well, not like I expected a guy I took home from the club to call, no matter how good the sex was.” I let out a frustrated sigh, annoyed with myself for having sex with a complete stranger and being dumb enough to think he would call.

She snorts. “That’s how things started between Tony and me. Maybe he’s one of those guys who has a three-day rule.”

I get up from my stool and remove the jeans and purple sweater I hung on the hangers on the rack against the wall where we keep our clothes. “He would have called if he wanted to see me again. It’s that simple.”

Donna strips off her clothes and stands in black boy shorts and no bra, her boobs bouncing as she pulls her light-brown hair into a neat ponytail on top of her head. “You think too much.” She slips a skintight baby-blue shirt over her head and tugs it down her stomach, her nipples popping out of the thin material.

I wish I could be as comfortable in my skin as Donna.

“Stop acting like you’re some old lady who needs to go home to feed her cats and come out with me tonight.”

After I dress, I stand over the vanity and finish reapplying my makeup that smudged and wore off while I sweat my ass off over the past few hours. “You might want to throw on something a little bit warmer if we’re going to be standing outside, freezing our asses off.”

“Yay!” she squeals into my ear, hugging me from behind. “I’ll be ready in five. Meet me at the back bar. We need to have a drink before we go.”



When I told Donna it would be cold outside and that she should wear something warm, I should have taken my own advice and added a few extra layers to my wardrobe. My teeth chatter as we wait along with at least a hundred people who are huddled together to keep warm at the corner of Front Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philly.

Some pass cigarettes and joints among themselves while others are pounding cans of beer and screaming like maniacs. I’m in shock that the police haven’t broken this up yet and sort of nervous about how much trouble we would get into if we were to get caught.

“Here.” Donna passes a beer to me. “Drink up. It will keep you warm.”

Taking the beer from her gloved hand, I have trouble flipping open the top with my gloves on, fumbling with the metal tab for a few seconds before the can opens.

“They should hand out coffee and hot chocolate instead of beer,” I choke out between breaths, the chill in the air too much to bear.

“Consider yourself lucky that Tony had anything for us to drink. Most of the time, when I go over to his house, I’m surprised when he has leftover pizza and soda in the fridge. He’s such a caveman.”

I met Tony, whom people oddly refer to as Fat Tony even though he’s as thin as a board, for all of two seconds before he had to run off to deal with the other crews. Since I have zero experience with street racing, I had no idea that people formed crews to race with for money. Even the spectators take their own side bets. Apparently, Tony has the best crew in the city with some of the fastest drivers who race modded-up performance cars.

Once the cars line up, the drivers rev their engines at the imaginary starting line, smoke burning off their tires as they spin.

“Typical men,” I say to Donna. “They have to show everyone how cool they are before the race even begins.”

Laughing, she takes a sip of her beer. “That’s not why they do that. Tony says they do it to warm up their tires.”

“Still, seems like it would ruin the tires.”

“Who knows? Tony talks about this shit all the time, and I’m like, Just shut up, and fuck me already.” Donna laughs to herself and buries her face inside her jacket.