Only If You're Lucky(42)

“Who did you hang out with?”

“Each other,” I say, as if that should have been obvious.

“That’s not what I heard from other people who were there.”

“You didn’t ask about other people.”

Detective Frank stares at me, put off by my tone.

“You asked about us,” I add.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t know what other people saw,” I continue. “But we didn’t see them alone together.”

“So you never saw them hugging, touching, nothing like that?”

“No, never.”

“Interesting,” he says. “Then why did we find her blood on his clothes?”





CHAPTER 30


BEFORE

I wake up to find my bed empty, nothing but the still-warm imprint of Nicole by my side. I glance at the clock, it’s almost eleven, before flinging myself from bed and walking into the living room.

“Good morning,” Lucy says, a mug of coffee in her hands, chipper as ever. They’re all out here, all three of them, Sloane and Nicole looking as miserable as I feel. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, even though that’s not quite true. I fell asleep eventually, the dawn-lit windows making my room just light enough for me to finally relax, but the events of last night have left me exhausted, a weariness in my mind that even six hours of sleep couldn’t erase.

“Did you get sick?” Sloane asks, looking up at me. She’s still in her makeup from last night, a swipe of mascara streaked across her cheek and a single gold hoop still stuck in her ear. “It smelled like puke in here this morning.”

“Not sick,” I say, glancing at Nicole. She’s staring into her lap, skin tinged green and body swallowed by Trevor’s sweatshirt, fingers pulling at the sleeves. “Just … scared, I guess.”

“She was all paranoid about people breaking into the house,” Lucy says, laughing. The sound of it grates on me, especially considering how afraid I was, but I try not to show it. “I basically had to force her inside.”

“That explains why you disappeared,” Sloane says, smiling. “Kind of an intense atmosphere for your first time.”

“First time with what?” Nicole asks, Sloane and Lucy turning to look at her like they forgot she was there. She seems so small like that, bent into a ball in the corner of the couch, and it brings to mind the way she looked last night: curled up on the floor like a baby bird, wet and trembling, after tumbling out of a tree. I wonder if she even remembers me cleaning her up, tucking her in. Lying awake for over an hour to make sure she wouldn’t get sick again and choke to death in her sleep.

“Molly,” Lucy says. “I was an idiot and gave her a whole pill.”

That explains the euphoria, then. The overwhelming sense of love I felt as I looked at all of them around that fire, dreamily pondering the possibility of Levi and me living together in perfect harmony. What is it about Lucy, I wonder, that causes us all to simply do as she asks? I hadn’t even questioned her about what that pill was. I didn’t even hesitate. I just saw the way she was looking at me, all eager and expectant, and tipped my head back. Hoped for the best.

“Speaking of disappearing, where the hell were you?” Sloane asks, directing the question at Nicole now. I walk to the couch and take a seat beside her, making sure to leave a little room between us.

“I don’t even know,” she says at last. She’s holding a cup of coffee, too, but it’s completely full, quivering in her hands. “I went over there early, right after class, and started drinking too fast. I think I was with Trevor the whole night.”

“Not the whole night,” Lucy says, putting her empty mug on the floor. “He was outside for a little.”

“Maybe—” She stops, bunching her eyebrows like she’s trying to remember something. I watch the side of her face as she swallows, shakes her head gently. “Maybe I fell asleep. But somehow, I got home. I woke up in Margot’s room.”

Lucy flings her head back and laughs again, clapping her hands together. This is our normal morning ritual—recounting stories from the night before, bleary and bashful, amused at all the little things we could hardly remember—but right now, it doesn’t feel like it normally does. There’s a darkness to it, a creeping dread like marbled clouds gathering before another summer storm. There were too many things about last night that went wrong and I watch as Lucy and Sloane get up, making their way into the kitchen for more coffee, but Nicole is still sitting, staring. Her eyes on the couch in a way that feels the opposite of focused—like she’s no longer trying to remember something, but instead, trying to forget.

“Are you okay?” I whisper once the others are gone. She still has her wrists covered with her sweatshirt and I try to remember the look of those bruises I saw—unless they weren’t actually bruises at all. It could have been a trick of the light, maybe. A cluster of shadows; a smudge of makeup. It’s tempting to believe that, but still, there was something about them that felt eerily familiar. Something about the placement like five large fingers that makes my stomach twist. “Nicole?”

I reach out to touch her leg, my hand barely grazing the skin when she winces, a physical recoil that makes me yank it straight back.