Page 82 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
The single loudest sigh of all time leaves his body as he stares down at me. After a minute where he seems to have a long, internal argument with himself, he holds out his hands to pull me up.
“Standing up is overrated,” I tell him. “I would like to sleep here, please. File a permit with the city if you must. This is my home now.”
Leo’s eyebrow lifts. “And get killed by Daddy Bram and have my beautiful specimen of a body turned into potting soil? Not happening, little bird. I don’t think you know what that man is capable of.”
I pout and I whine, but begrudgingly I let him pull me up.
No matter how many times I blink, the world is still blurry, but I’m able to see that I’m at eye level with the fourth button down from the collar on Leo’s pressed tuxedo shirt.
“What areyousupposed to be?” I ask like it’s an accusation.
“An indecently handsome person in a tuxedo.”
I frown.
“Jay Gatsby,” he says.
And then everything around me is moving.
No, no. That’s not it.
Everythinginsideme is moving.
I begin to shake my head, like that might somehow stop the trajectory of the next ten seconds. “I’m going to—”
And then I puke. It’s mostly blue and a little bit purple and thankfully chunk free. But I puke on Leo Saint James of the Saint James Chocolate Co., and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is the most expensive tuxedo I have ever puked on.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, the words feeling like a cry. Suddenly, I just want to go home.
Leo takes a deep breath and sheds his jacket before cloaking it over my shoulders. “It’s fine, Madelyn.” He glances around like he’s looking for someone, anyone, but after a moment, breathes a resigned sigh. “This was my Monday tuxedo, anyhow.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bram
Iwas already pacing, phone in hand, warring with myself about whether secret hookups get to retrieve wayward brats or whether that’s AITA material, when Leo calls.
“While I’d love to leave a very hot, very drunk Velma on your doormat like a DoorDash order, I also remember very vividly that you are a gigantic motherfucker and I’d rather not test your godlike anger,” he says when I pick up.
“What?”
“Madelyn is currently warbling ‘Part of Your World’ fromThe Little Mermaidwhile lying on a sidewalk outside an Irish pub,” Leo explains. “She’s pretending to have a mermaid tail. She also told me to do something absolutely disgusting with a knockoff Gucci belt we found abandoned in a potted plant.”
I hear a trilling voice above the general clamor and shouting of the Snake Pit on Halloween, singing about bright young women sick of swimming.
“I’ll be right there,” I say, already going for my car keys.
“Spoken like a good Boss Daddy Bram,” Leo approves, and then the call ends, leaving my screen open to the picture sent to my phone two hours earlier from an unknown number. Maddie in a strange bathroom, giving me a coy look over her shoulder, red lips pulled into a kiss, skirt flirted up just enough that I can see the juicy swell of her ass.
The thick-rimmed glasses and the thigh-highs she’s wearing—obscene. Impudently filthy. I’ve already saved the picture to a hidden folder*on my phone.
With a growl, I text Fern to tell her that the house is hers for the next twenty minutes and then I go outside to my car.
TOMBAUGHAVENUE, THEmain artery of the Snake Pit, is still in party mode when I get there, although only a few of the bars are still serving drinks, and the party has shifted from shots and well drinks to flasks and weed vapes. And it’s not like the Snake Pit is Rome under Caligula or anything, but seeing all the reckless young people and the for-real grown-ups who definitely have no business partying like they’re twenty-two is making me itchy under my skin. I need to find Maddie, see her, make sure she’s safe, and then I want to ask her exactly what she thought was going to happen when she sent me that picture.
And then—and then—all sorts of raw, caveman reactions jostle inside me when the crowd parts, and I see the white glint of Leo’s hair, and then Madelyn Kowalczk sleeping soundly at his feet. Flat on the cold, hard sidewalk in a delicious display of turtleneck and short skirt.
I want to scoop her up, haul her home, and take her over my lap. And then hold her close, because Jesus Christ, seeing her passed out on the sidewalk while drunk, rowdy frat boys horse around just a few feet away...
