Smoke & Mirrors by Skye Jordan

25

Isabel

Ifeel like a failure as I turn into Safeway’s parking lot. Like a shitty human being. Like a loser who can’t manage her own damn life no matter how hard she tries.

“I’m so fucking done with this.” I’ve spent the last five years pretending to be something I’m not. Wishing and working and waiting, only to be disappointed and passed over time and time again. I’m ashamed of how far I’ve fallen since graduating. How long I let it go on without asking for help out of shame.

My heart is shredded over Logan’s doubt and accusations, but I can’t exactly say he’s wrong. I have been telling him only part of the story. Still, it’s my story to tell, dammit. I don’t have to tell him just because he wants to hear it. And I was planning on telling him, just not quite like this or quite this soon.

I park toward the front of the stores, directly across from a marijuana dispensary that uses retired cops for security—it’s amazing what a girl can learn in casual conversation at a bar. One of the cops is always out front. It’s the next best thing to meeting in the police station parking lot.

I shut down the Jeep and drop my head back against the seat. The sight of Logan’s expression when I left haunts me. I can only hope he’ll listen after he’s cooled off. If he cools off.

The sound of a car nearby pulls my eyes open to find Aiden coming up beside me. I roll my eyes to the roof. “Here we go.”

Determined to remain civil, I get out of the Jeep and round the back.

“Where’s your fireman?” he asks as he gets out of the car. I immediately know he’s drunk. I didn’t notice it at the bar, but I was distracted by a lot at the time, more concerned with Logan than Aiden.

“None of your damn business.” I pull the rifle from the back of the Jeep and put the rosewood box on the trunk of his rental. “Good luck getting that back to New York on a plane.”

Surprise darts through his eyes.

I laugh. “I see you didn’t think ahead. Don’t know why I’m surprised. Your ego eclipses all rational thought.”

“I’m not the one who stole someone else’s things.”

“My bank account says different. And technically, this is mine. But I want to get rid of you so badly, I’m willing to let all that go.” I gesture toward the box. “So there you go, asshole. Knock yourself out.”

I turn toward the Jeep and emotionally release all the anger I’ve had pent up around that damned rifle. In hindsight, the whole situation has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

The second I feel his hand on my arm, I jerk away. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

“The gun isn’t the only bad blood between us. Your exit interview reflected poorly on me.”

“Damn right it did.” I put a hand against his chest and push. “Back off or I’ll knee you in the nuts.”

He laughs. “Not in front of that cop, you won’t.”

“Try me.”

I didn’t mean it literally, but he steps into me and slides his arm around my waist.

“Damn you,” I say as I slam my knee into his groin.

His body bends in a sharp forty-five-degree angle, his eyes bug out, and his mouth rounds into an O. Then his knees buckle. I’m not sure if he’s trying to pull me down or trying to keep himself up, but we both end up on the ground.

The knee of my jeans rips, and pain shoots through my leg. “You fucking asshole.”

I’m trying to shove him off me and untangle myself when I find the dispensary’s cop, one I haven’t met, looking down at us with a here-we-go expression. “Well, good evening, folks. What seems to be the problem here?”

“He’s an asshole,” I say, “and he had his hands where they don’t belong.”

“She’s a bitch,” Aiden says, “and she stole my stuff.”

“Ain’t love grand,” the cop says. “Get up, hands against the vehicle.”

I’m relieved and righteous until it’s clear he wants both of us to put our hands on the vehicle.

“It’s not me,” I tell the cop. “It’s him. I just came to drop something off for him.”

“The gun she stole.”

“I can’t steal something I paid for.”

“Whose name is listed as the owner?” he spits back.

“Ma’am, put your hands behind your back.” He doesn’t wait for me to obey, just grabs one hand and clicks cold metal cuffs on both wrists.

My first thought is why me? Then Aiden’s “the gun she stole” drifts through my mind, and I realize the cop thinks I’m the biggest threat, which is laughable.

“You can’t be serious.” Does this sense of shame ever end? Am I slated to continue these shitty patterns the rest of my life? I have a sickening split-second image of me barefoot and pregnant, the baby daddy drinking beer from a can on the porch in a wifebeater while listening to a ball game.

Aiden starts laughing. “God, I’ve got to get a picture of this. Wait till this makes the rounds through the office.”

He’s laughing and laughing and laughing. Definitely drunk.

A second police unit pulls into the parking lot and stops in front of my Jeep. Two cops get out, and my mortification only quadruples when I see two men I do know from the bar. Dennis Delgado, a man in his fifties, takes my arm and steers me toward his cruiser.

“Wait, what…” Panic sizzles in my stomach. “What’s going on?”

He stops where I can lean my butt against the cruiser’s fender, releases my arm, and reaches into his breast pocket for a notebook. Then cues the mic on his shoulder. “Sixteen-sixty requesting the assistance of a female officer at the Bloombridge shopping center.”

I drop my head and bite my lip against tears. Angry tears. Futile tears. This doesn’t happen to me. This happens to other people, stupid people who do stupid things.

Well, shit. I guess that describes me. I’m caught in a vortex of stupidity. If I ever wished a hole would open up and swallow me alive, this would be that moment.

“You’re not a girl I saw getting in trouble like this,” Dennis says, his voice calm, but with a fatherly shame-on-you edge. “Tell me what’s happening here tonight.”

I reiterate what’s going on—in far too much detail, because I’m rambling, then hear Aiden’s voice grow louder and louder as he is cuffed, and his life gets just as real as mine.

There is a God.

I swear an hour has passed by the time I’ve been searched by a female cop I don’t know, and we’ve straightened out absolutely nothing except that Aiden was driving drunk and his hands weren’t where they belonged, as was my knee. Ownership of the rifle is still in question.

I’m going to jail. Jail. How did this happen? How is this my life? What in the hell am I doing wrong to end up in shitty situations again and again?

They put me in the back of the female cop’s cruiser, Aiden in the back of Dennis’s. This is all very fortunate, because if my hands were free and Aiden was within reach, I might very well throttle him. For real.