Page 6 of Safari Murder Party
As far as she could tell, Kent’s globe ended at the Lincoln city limits. They were twenty-six years old. God forbid she wasn’t ready to settle down, get married, pop out three kids, and adopt a golden retriever.
“What’s going on with you?” Kent asked when she didn’t respond. She could practically see him thoughtlessly swipe an oil-stained hand down his face, exasperated.
Bumping open the door of her entirely too-orange building, Fletcher groaned. If they weren’t already fighting, they would be soon. “You know that company trip I’ve wanted to go on for the last three years? Dyer approved the guest list today, and I’m not on it.”
Kent bristled like she knew he would. “I told you. He doesn’t appreciate you. None of them do.”
“That’s not the point.” Hot, angry tears welled in Fletcher’s eyes, but she blinked them away as she hiked up and up and up toward her fifth-floor apartment.
“Like hell it isn’t.” Kent’s drawl always exaggerated when he was frustrated. “You’re killing yourself for this company that doesn’t care a lick about you.”
When she reached her door, something had been taped to it. Something that looked an awful lot like an eviction notice.
Which wouldn’t make any sense because Fletcher had spent way too many nights eating Top Ramen and Haribo candy Girl Dinner so she could make rent for her to be evicted.
The all-caps, 140-point header begged to differ. Words like30-day noticeandoccupancyandreconstructionleaped off the page. A pit formed in Fletcher’s gut when she reached the fine print.
Her rent-protected apartment was being converted into a commercial building.
A bitter tang coated her mouth. It was always a miracle she’d been able to afford this place without a roommate, but the real estate market was a certified shit show, and her measly 3 percent cost-of-living raises were a joke. No way was she going to find another apartment in her budget. Certainly not one close enough to answer Dyer’s every beck and call.
“Fletcher?”
And if she couldn’t find somewhere new to live, then what? Move in with Ford? Maybe. Bridge troll? Tempting. Tuck her tail between her legs and head back to Nebraska? Never.
“Hello?”
What she really, truly,desperatelyneeded was a promotion. A new career track with actual growth potential. A photographer gig atJet-Setter, working under Jackie. Why else had she spent the last three years lugging around her Canon and sneaking out while Dyer was in meetings to photograph the city, building her portfolio print by print?
“Fletcher!”
“What?”
Kent sighed so hard she could almost feel his exhale through the phone. “Come home, Fletch. You’ve got to quit letting people walk all over you.”
The words came out before she could stop them, before she couldworry about disappointing him or some version of herself who used to think she wanted this. “If I did that, then we’d have to break up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t do this anymore!” Her throat chafed, sore and rasped with emotion.
“Can’t do what anymore?” Kent’s voice shifted. Stern, like a parent lecturing a disobedient child.
“You. This. All of it!” she said. Then, sharper: “I don’t want to come home, and I don’t want to marry you, Kent.”
She hung up before he could argue and somehow convince her to change her mind.
Fletcher crushed the eviction notice in her fist. She needed a drink. Stat.
After a couple rounds of Manhattans, Fletcher’s thoughts had forsaken all margins and bled together into One Thought to Rule Them All: Figure out a way to get to Lydell Island.
Meanwhile, Ford “I have a second liver” Jepson’s mission was to sweet-talk free drinks out of bartenders, and he was doing a great job. Perhapstoogreat of a job. Fletcher could already feel tomorrow’s hangover forming at the back of her head.
“I still can’t believe you actually dumped him,” Ford said. His arm was slung around Fletcher’s shoulders as they paced the Dumbo sidewalks toward their next destination, a bookstore-turned-bar called Subtext that Fletcher had seen all over Instagram.
After work, he’d changed from his Business Button-Up (white, untucked, satin) to his Party Button-Up (a short-sleeve patterned monstrosity he’d bothered to fasten only two buttons of). With his deep brown skin, bottle-blond hair, and arms polka-dotted with fine-line tattoos, he could always be mistaken as a cover model.Fletcher’s sensible heels and poly-blend blouse, on the other hand, would never qualify as couture.
“Me either,” she muttered.
