For A Good Time, Call... by Jessica Gadziala Read Free Book Online

out around eight to grab some food
after getting a look inside her refrigerator. I came back, ate a
bagel, made a pot of coffee, and read the paper. Sure she would wake
up sometime around ten or eleven.
    But
she came out a few minutes later, looking exactly as awful as I
thought she would. Her hair falling out of its band, her eye makeup
smudged out toward her hairline, her throat and wrists bruised
painfully.
    “I've
had better mornings.”
    I
want to throttle her. I really did. I had never met someone so
incredibly frustrating in my whole life. And I had met a bunch of
pain in the ass people. So I went up to her, trying to get a
reaction. Trying to show her that what had happened to her was all
kinds of wrong. But she looked up at me with those huge green eyes
and told me I wouldn't hurt her. And offuckingcourse I wouldn't hurt
her. But that wasn't the point.
    She
shouldn't have been fine. Of all the things she should be: shocked,
angry, horrified, hurt, sad, vulnerable, vengeful... “fine”
was not one of them.
    But,
perhaps even more than she was fucked up, she was stubborn. Pushing
at her wasn't going to get me anywhere. Except maybe locked out
behind one of those huge walls she had around her. And I would prefer
the opportunity to be able to at least speak to her again. I don't
know why. Maybe it was just the mystery she had about her. Maybe I
just wanted to figure her out.
    Or
maybe I just needed to go out and get laid. It wasn't like me to
obsess about some chick living next door. It was probably all of the
loud, kinky sex she had that was making me get all worked up about
her.
    There
was a knocking on my door sometime after six that night, light,
hesitant knocking. So I knew it wasn't the hellcat next door. No one
from my past knew where I was so I grabbed a hammer off the table and
went to the door.
    Then
there she was. In a pair of tight blue skinny jeans and a tight
golden sweater, holding a potted cactus out at me and looking
completely petrified. “Sixteen,” I said as way of
greeting, inclining my head at her.
    She
looked down at her feet for a second, stuck into a pair of brown
leather boots with four inch heels. I don't know how the hell she was
able to wear the ankle-breaking shoes I always saw her in all the
damn time. “I... I ... ah...” Was she stammering?
Seriously? The chick with the chip on her shoulder and walls higher
than Mount Everest was nervous? “Here,” she said, pushing
the cactus out until I took it. “It's a... welcome to the
building and thanks for saving me from rape gift.”
    “Wow,
they have a whole section for that, huh?” I asked, trying to
lighten the mood.
    It
worked a little. She snorted, shaking her head. “Look, I know
I'm a bitch and I and am really, really bad at the whole human
interaction thing,” she started, her green eyes looking even
bigger with her hair pulled and braided down her back. She looked
younger, almost soft. “But I do have manners. And you were good
to me...”
    “Hard
for you to say that, huh?” I asked, watching the look of
discomfort on her face. “Consider us even. You haven't been
assaulted and I have... a... cactus.”
    She
smiled then, a strange, self-deprecating kind of smile. “I
figured you would think of me whenever you saw it.”
    Because
she's prickly, I thought and laughed, the sound foreign to my own
ears. When was the last time I had really laughed? “That was
pretty damn clever, Sixteen.”
    “I
thought so,” she said, shrugging. “Well... um... I just
wanted to drop that off. I have to go...”
    “Get
ready to go out and drink again,” I supplied and I swear I saw
a trace of embarrassment cross her face. “Tell you what,”
I started, not even sure what I was about to suggest until it was out
of my mouth. “why don't you just... hang out with me tonight
instead?”
    She
glanced worriedly out past me toward the balcony. “No. That
wont work. You don't understand.”
    “Then
help me understand,” I