Because it seemed like the most prudent course of action, I backed my car into the garage. You know, for ease of removal. Lucy was tapping away on the cracked screen of her phone while I put the car in park.
“Now what?”
She glanced over at me, amusement in her eyes and mischief in her smile. “Can we nap first? I’m only a little exhausted. And sore.”
Color heated my face, and she laughed. The teasing wasn’t something I was accustomed to, given that the women I’d slept with before weren’t often around long enough afterward. They all wanted something carnal, something simple and uncomplicated.
Lucy was entirely complicated, to the very root of the word’s meaning. Every part of her was complicated. Yet there I sat with her.
“JK.” She turned back to phone and her thumbs flew across the screen. “So, I’ve been Googling. And it seems like we have a few options.”
“You Googled what exactly?”
The look she gave me roughly translated to duh. “How to dispose of a dead body.”
I snatched her phone out of her hands. “You did not.”
She did. She definitely did. The horrifying part was all the links that appeared, the articles and threads showing just what she’d asked. How to dispose of a dead body.
“You know who would probably know what to do?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“Your chauffeur.”
“Claude is a driver, there’s a difference.”
She snorted. “Mmmkay, Richie Rich. But seriously, you’ve never noticed that he’s got that creepy look in his eyes?”
I glanced at her. “What look?”
Again, it struck that maybe I should have been bothered by the fact that she noticed it about Claude. She saw him … once? If she’d been paying that close of attention that first night, then I was a mark from the first interaction.
But Lucy could have tattled on me too, and she hadn’t. My fingerprints were all over that cast iron pan, and she let me take it, hide it in my home. It seemed that despite how this entire mess had happened, she trusted me. And looking over at her in my car, only the light from the garage door illuminating her beautiful face, I think I trusted her too.
Even though she apparently thought Claude was some kind of professional body hider.
Her face was all seriousness and I actually cracked a smile. Her hands started waving around. “You know, that look. The look of a man who knows how to get rid of a body in forty-three different ways that are completely untraceable.”
In lieu of an answer, because I couldn’t precisely disagree with her on that, I nodded. “Mmmkay, Nancy Drew.”
Her shocked burst of laugher sent a warm ripple through me. “I like this playful side of you, Xenopus.”
I pointed a finger at her. “Did you also Google some new X words?”
Lucy rolled her eyes and opened the door. I did the same, and we walked back into the house. I glanced at her over my shoulder as I approached the alarm panel. “Maybe you should just disarm this. You probably memorized the code.”
She shouldered past me with a haughty sniff. Of course she did. Hovering behind her so that she’d be able to feel the heat of me, I watched her punch in the correct sequence. Why did that make me want to rip her clothes off? See if what we’d felt on the couch was a fluke of adrenaline and stress and heightened feelings.
It wasn’t. There was no way. That kind of tangible chemistry couldn’t be a fluke.
Even now, there was a dangerous snap of electricity between us in a constant stream. If she got close enough to me, I’d feel the prick of it against my skin. I lifted a hand to touch her, but dropped it. It was completely possible that she wasn’t feeling the same intensity that I was. It was also completely possible that despite the sweet she’d given me, this meant nothing to her other than a convenient outlet of physical attraction.
Alarm deactivated, Lucy marched purposefully toward the stairs, and I followed.
“Okay, there’s got a be a room in this place that we can stash him.”
At the top of the stairs, she started poking her head into various bedrooms and bathrooms, closets that I’d never touched. “Maybe we could find something other than a bedroom?”
“No, it’s perfect.” She stared at a guest bed that had remained untouched the entire time I’d lived in the house. “Haven’t you ever seen Weekend at Bernie’s?” Waving a distracted hand at the bed, she nodded like it was settled. “You could just pretend that you guys are having a sleepover. Pop some sunglasses on his face, maybe one of your hot hipster beanies to cover the gash on the back of his head? We’ll be good to go, Lockwood.”
With the reminder of the gash, I pressed a hand to my suddenly queasy stomach.
“We’re not putting him in a bed, Lucy. Nobody would believe that story anyway.”
“Why? You’ve never had a friend crash here?”
You already guessed that earlier, I almost said, but I knew she’d either pity me or poke fun of me. So, I shrugged. “Nope.”
When she walked past me, she rolled her eyes. “Fine. Oooh, that would be perfect.”
Framed in the doorway leading into one of the unused bathrooms, she propped her hands on her hips. That particular bathroom had a large white bathtub that had probably never held a drop of water.
“No,” I said firmly.
“Oh come on, Ronny would love it in there. He could use a bath anyway. He stinks.”
“He stinks because he’s decomposing.”
She laughed. “No, I don’t think there was a day that I knew him that he didn’t stink. Like loose morals and the stench of body odor. Blech.” Then she looked up at me. “It’s not like you use this. How many bathrooms does one man need anyway?”
The slight rush of defensiveness that zipped up my spine surprised me. Nobody questioned why I lived in such a large house by myself. Okay, fine, because my mom and Claude comprised the majority of people who had ever been in my home. Dad was too busy, and again, it wasn’t like I had friends. The idiots that went to school with me never interested me, or I was too concerned that they would only hang around because of my last name.
“I don’t like feeling closed in.” The simplest possible explanation, and from the look on her face, she believed me. Or she accepted it as all she’d get out of me. Either way, I was relieved she didn’t push it. It was hard enough looking at the sprawling rooms in my home now that I knew how she lived.
“Fair enough.” She started back down the stairs, and again, I followed her. That seemed to be my new lot in life. Follow the sex-induced breadcrumbs that Lucy Connors laid down for me, on the off-chance she’d let me back in for another bite. “What about the basement?”
“Absolutely not. That’s the place I spend the most time.”
“Now how come that does not surprise me, Xenon?”
“My gym equipment is down there, not that I need to explain it.”
She stopped on the bottom step and turned, giving me a hot look that I felt everywhere. “Well that explains a lot about whatcha got goin’ on under there.” Her eyes trailed down my chest and hovered somewhere around my belt buckle. “I very much appreciated the fruits of that labor.”
If she saw the heat in my face, she ignored it, hopping off the last step and going back toward the garage. The sun was coming up finally, and the garage was bathed in a warm, golden glow from the opened garage door.
“Should we shut that if we’re going to move the … uhh, the dishwasher box?”
Lucy was still wandering and then made a little noise of happiness. “A chest freezer! Perfect. Why didn’t you tell me about this? It’s perfect. At least for the time being.”
I reached her just as she opened the lid and stared in confusion. I winced as she gave me an incredulous look.
“There’s like … four thousand frozen pizzas in here.”
“It’s not four thousand.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glanced away when she found the stash of pizza rolls.
“Explain, please. Your fridge and freezer in the kitchen look like you’re anorexic.” Her arm swept over the open chest freezer like she was Vanna White. “And this looks like a college boy’s weed-induced dreamland.”
Carefully, I sat back on the hood of my car and sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“Xylophone, we’ve got nothing but time.” Then she cocked her head. “Come on, you can talk while we move pizzas.”
Lucy handed me a handful of boxes, and for the time being, I set them next to me on the garage floor.
“My mom,” I started, then cleared my throat. “My mom is a little … neurotic about my health. All those supplements you found, she buys that shit for me all the time.”
Lucy nodded. “I remember. Why does she do that?”
I let out a deep breath and set the boxes she handed me onto the growing pile. I guess I had more pizzas than I realized. “My brother died when I was just a baby. Less than a year old, so I don’t remember him at all. I guess it kinda made her … overprotective of the one she had left.”
It was a simplification, to be sure. My mother felt a gnawing, soul-destroying amount of guilt over his death, and I was the unwilling recipient of her attempts to unleash that burden from her shoulders.
Lucy hummed, a thoughtful sound that I hadn’t expected from her. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine that he died, but it’s not like I ever grieved him. I didn’t know him.”
“I get it.” She peered at the stack of boxes on the ground and then back in the freezer. “Doesn’t explain this little collection though.”
I laughed a little. “Seems weird now that I see them all like this, but I guess it’s my quiet rebellion against her meddling. I’ve changed the locks on my home, switched the security code, and she still finds a way in to put fresh food in my fridge, buy me healthy groceries so that I don’t die of a heart attack or become morbidly obese or something. It makes me feel like a child, and I hate it.”
“Maybe she got in the same way I did. Those little screwdrivers are handy, I’m tellin’ ya.”
“You know,” I mused, “it wouldn’t surprise me if she did.”
We were quiet as she took out a couple more boxes and shoved some bags of pizza rolls to the side. In one conversation, I’d told Lucy more about my relationship with my mother than anyone knew besides Watkins. He was the only other person in the world who knew how it made me feel when she interfered in my life. Like she’d never look at me and see a man capable of making his own choices in life.
The fact that my mommy issues only made me act out like a petulant child, not working, not doing the things that she expected of me, was part of the reason I’d probably be in therapy for the rest of my life.
“I think there’s enough room in here now,” Lucy said, then she hooked her chin back at the car. “Shall we?”
“Let’s get this over with,” I sighed and opened up the back of my car. The box still sat there, innocuous in its shape and size. I’d never see a dishwasher box again without thinking of Ronald. While I gauged how I was going to do this, Lucy pulled a plastic drop cloth off the shelf next to her and laid it in the freezer. Breathing through my mouth as best I could, I hefted the box in my arms and walked it to the freezer as Lucy held the door open. It felt heavier now than when we left her apartment in the dead of night, in a place that wasn’t my home. Tonight, I’d have to fall asleep with the knowledge that he was here.
The only reason he hadn’t been on my mind the night before was the effective and potent distraction of Lucy. My back still bore the marks of that distraction, and I secretly loved that I had physical proof of it. I wondered if she had any from me. Bruises from where my hands had gripped her so tightly, marks from my teeth and mouth. I wanted her to have some, I realized with a visceral thud of my heart.
I set the box down in front of the freezer and looked at Lucy. “Lift him in on the count of three?”
She swallowed roughly and then nodded. “Yeah.”
With careful hands, she opened the box. They shook as she pulled them away, but she still stared down at him, wrapped in her bedsheets. We each gripped the edges, and I counted quietly.
“One, two, three.” And we pulled up at the same time.
Ronald landed with a thud in the freezer, one hand flopped up over the edge.
“Yuck,” she whispered, wiping her hands on the front of the sweatshirt she was wearing. Definitely using bleach in my next load of laundry. For everything I’d worn in the last two days.
Moving to shut the freezer door, I had to actively shut my brain off. The ramifications of every decision we’d made in the last twenty-four hours could alter our lives in a terrible way. Jail time for both of us, especially now that we’d done what we’d done. Our records would be stained with an ink so black, it would never disappear.
As I was thinking about that, I realized the door wouldn’t shut. “Lucy, it won’t shut all the way.”
“Shit.”
If I pressed down hard enough, I could feel the seal engage on the door. But as soon as I lifted my hands, it popped open. Just as our eyes met, another what the hell do we do now moment, the bright cut of headlights swept over us.
I glanced around my car, and my heart stopped. “Oh damn it all to hell.”
“Is it the cops?” she hissed.
“Worse,” I told her with complete sincerity. “It’s my mother.”