“Please, gurl. You can't hide your nympho eyes.” An epic eyeroll ensued. “Not to mention you’ve got a hicky the size of Alaska.”
“You found me out.” Lucy’s surrender was expedient. Keeping anything from Margherita was a fruitless undertaking.
“Far be it for me to throw stones out of my glass whorehouse…but must you sleep with every man you meet?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I only fuck the attractive ones.”
Flashes of Murray’s throaty groan in the dank mausoleum shuttered through her memory, and it took everything for Lucy not to gasp aloud. Her throat was still scratchy from his enthusiastic thrusts, and she chugged some vitamin C. As it burned all the way down, she twirled her hair, remembering how they’d laughed when the caretaker nearly locked them into the mausoleum. The older woman hadn’t said a word as they slipped by her and slinked back to the hearse.
“Cat got her tongue?” Lucy had muttered, but Murray had shushed her, looking over his shoulder with concern.
“Martha has a terrible stutter,” he whispered when he was convinced that it was safe to do so. “She’s really self-conscious about it.”
“You’re nicer than you pretend to be, Mr. Layhe.”
“That’ll have to be our little secret.”
“We’re accumulating a few of those, aren’t we?”
“Let’s add another.” Murray opened the back-door latch and swept Lucy off her feet, lying her down where the coffin had been not long before. He’d been so eager to please, and things escalated quickly. It was only after on the drive home that she really contemplated just how reckless the entire day had been. She barely knew him, and neither of them mentioned a condom. And talk about rough sex. She had his blood under her nails and every part of her hurt in the most delicious way.
“All right. Spill the tea.” Miss Marg came all the way into the kitchen, pink razor still in her manicured hands. “You look like a woman with a secret.”
She nearly laughed out loud. She’d collected secrets all right. Several.
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Lucy struggled to wipe the stupid smile from her face, but she could practically feel Murray’s stubble between her thighs. She felt splotchy under her friend’s judgmental gaze. “I…I really like this one.”
“No way.” Miss Marg blinked in shock.
“For real.” Lucy bit the inside of her lip, but it was useless. She couldn’t contain her cool. She covered her eyes and giggled. She’d warred with herself the morning before. She tried not to go back to Layhe and Sons. She’d only gone there the first time to make her ex jealous, but then she’d met Murray. Curiosity about him launched her into research mode.
Murray and the rest of the Layhes had an impressive number of Google entries. She’d learned a few things about him before yesterday’s encounter. He’d been a popular kid, La Crosse, student counsel. Both he and his sister had been in tons of activities, but things seemed to die down his senior year, most likely because he was prepping for Duke. He’d come home to join the family business, and five years ago, he started running it after his parents died.
She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. She was making something out of nothing. This was just some sort of senioritis. She’d be in a cap and gown soon and had to decide if she was going on to grad school like every other wannabe writer who couldn’t finish a book, or if she was going to break out into the real world and try to live the dream. Murray was a sexy diversion, distracting her from making decisions. And yet, since she’d opened her eyes that morning she’d been plotting a way to run into him again.
“He’s…complicated.”
Miss Marg rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Oh, shit…he’s married, isn’t he?”
“No.” She’d have found that on the internet. “He’s just…”
Hand on her hip, Marg waited. “Just what?”
“He’s...” Broody. Self-destructive. Well-hung. Great at oral. Everything I should probably avoid? “He’s not like the others.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. He just seems lonely. And a little sad.”
Miss Marg clucked her tongue and turned back toward the restroom. “You girls always sniff out a fixer upper.”
Lucy stayed silent. There was not argument to be made.
“Have you been outside yet? It’s Indian Summer today.” As Lucy made her way back to her own space, she saw Marg was still missing one eyebrow.
“Can’t. Work to do.”
“That’s what laptops are for. You could use a little vitamin D.”
“Always the mother hen, Miss Marg.”
“See a need, fill a need,” Marg shot back, and Lucy sighed. Just because she couldn’t remember her parents didn’t mean she had mommy issues or daddy issues. She had issues, but who didn’t?
Vanishing into her room, Lucy quickly pulled on a peach maxi dress, not bothering with undergarments. She moved her laptop from her desk to the bed. Yesterday’s adventures certainly gave her plenty to write about and she didn’t want to sit her sore ass on a hard chair to do it. Snagging her purse, she shuffled the items around inside searching for her notes. Frowning, she flipped it upside down, emptying it onto her bedspread.
Nothing.
Painful adrenaline ripped through her veins. She’d had some damn good lines come to her during all that pomp and circumstance, and now she’d have to reconstruct them from memory. They were never as good the second go-round.
Thankfully she hadn’t misplaced her cigarettes, because she needed one. She thought about texting Murray to check the hearse, then realized she didn’t have his number. Maybe that was a sign. For an artist, Lucy was surprisingly unsuperstitious and no slave to what her psych professor called “magical thinking.” Still, maybe the universe was trying to tell her that she should let sleeping dogs lie.
Lighting a cigarette, Lucy concluded that she’d benefit from some fresh Indian Summer air to center her thoughts. Yanking the cord of her venetian blinds, Lucy dropped her lit cigarette down
