Page 14 of Best Served Cold
Lee nodded, allowing the information to seep in, much like ink on a crisp white page. Before she could even process as to what to say next, Morgan continued.
“I’m going to get another hour or two of rest considering I’m no longer working today, unless there’s something else?” she asked.
There were perhaps a million ‘something else’s’, as Morgan had put it, and yet, Lee shook her head and exited the room, exhaling only when she had closed the bedroom door behind her.
Leaving Morgan to sleep for another hour, Lee stepped outside onto the fire escape, hanging her arms over the railing. With her eyes closed, she pictured the day they met, legs crossed around a campfire, basking in the glow of the light just as she was doing now. “You want one?” Morgan’s first words towards Lee falling out of her mouth as the smoke from her cigarette entered it. Lee Holmes recollected how the light of the fire made Morgan look beautiful. She recollected thinking how beautiful she would look with or without it. For Morgan Finch emitted her own light as she sat beside her, offering her something she had yet to taste before.
It took a moment for her to shake her head—to decline the girl before her. She had yet to even learn this woman's name, and yet somehow, she would do just about anything to place that same cigarette in her mouth that was presently sitting in Morgan’s, like a faux kiss of ash and smoke. “I don’t smoke. I appreciate the offer, though. I’m Lee. Lee Holmes.”
Lee would never forget the next words that came out of Morgan’s mouth, indelible now since the moment she witnessed what the woman was capable of. “Holmes, huh? Just like my man, Arthur Howard. Good ol’ H. H. Holmes.”
Even then, the signs had been there. Lee had batted them away like a nuisance fly, if only because she herself had a fascination with serial killers through means of her podcasts.
As the sun painted her vision in purple and green splotches upon the balcony upon where she stood, Lee Holmes came to the conclusion that she would not continue to help Morgan now just as she wouldn’t smoke a cigarette then. Perhaps she did enjoy the power she felt that night whilst they washed away the existence of another, that addictive buzz that coursed through her insides and lit her up. But that feeling would always be fleeting, just like nicotine. A temporary high laced with permanent regret. She wouldn’t indulge.
Instead, she would sit beside the proverbial campfire of their relationship and watch Morgan inhale.
Chapter Thirteen
There was something to be said about the trivialities of five friends huddled around a cramped booth in a club, the complete and utter normalness of such an act, and yet the triviality of it all was exactly the reason as to why Lee had elected to invite her closest companions alongside Morgan toPhysik,a nightclub at the far end of town,following the morning at the station.
She had work tomorrow, as did Morgan, but any excuse to get out of their apartment after previous events of the murderous variety were deemed welcome.
Her closest friend, Natalie, cackled through her own joke on the opposite side of the dilapidated booth whilst she spilled vodka soda down her mint-colored dress. “You guys get it, right? They couldn’t find the camo pants.”
Natalie was peacocking again, as Morgan liked to call it, signaling all of the attention to herself and herself alone. It was no secret to the rest of the attendees at the club that Morgan housed a particular distaste for Natalie.It’s not that I hate her, she’s just so fucking loud.Lee tried not to smile at therecollection of both herself and Morgan sitting in Jerry’s Diner for the first time, forcing her newly acquired girlfriend to tell the truth about her friends. “Yeah, we get it, Natalie, we’re all in stitches over here,” Morgan commented.
Another one of Lee’s friends, Sienna, stared through to the bottom of her glass, as if she could hide behind it as she sucked the liquid through the straw, attempting to avoid eye contact with Morgan after her less than subtle remark. In fact, the only one oblivious to Morgan’s distaste for Natalie was Natalie herself.
Natalie leaned forward, her blonde hair falling effortlessly around her face, framing it, as she propped her elbows on the table, setting her newly emptied glass down. “So…how was your anniversary? I want all the details. Leave. Nothing. Out,” she said, tapping the sticky table with a finger at the last three words as if attempting to communicate via Morse code.
Leaving nothing out would no doubt result in three terrified women running to the closest police station in high heels wielding a smashed cocktail glass for a weapon. Lee would leave out as much as possible to avoid such events occurring. “It was lovely, thanks. We had a quiet night in, cooked dinner,”murdered and disposed of a body,“nothing out of the ordinary.”
Lee’s eyes shifted towards the left of her as she observed her girlfriend, Morgan, seemingly texting underneath the table. The behavior would already be considered odd, by any standards, and yet, now, all things considered, her mind diverted into two separate areas—one in which Morgan was cheating on her with another woman, and another in which she was texting a potential victim to lure back to the apartment for round two. Both options seemed less than idyllic.
Natalie leaned back in the booth, placing a hand over her mouth in the act of committing to a fake yawn. “Sorry, I just nearly fell asleep listening to that.”
Lee jumped in her seat, stifling a gasp as she felt a kick underneath the table, prompting her to look at Morgan’s phone as discretely as possible and read the text, which she now realized was her Notes app, on the screen.
CAN I KILL NATALIE PLEASE?
Lee suppressed a smirk, hitting Morgan back underneath the table with her foot. All things considered, she wasn’t sure if she was ready for murder jokes just yet, but with the way that Natalie was acting, combined with the amount of alcohol in her system, she had to admit it was rather funny.
So long as Morgan was joking.
She also couldn’t deny the sense of power that was continuing to course through her body. Sitting here, in this booth, bathing in the normality of conversation, whilst knowing an underlying truth others weren’t privy to, felt like understanding the world differently to everyone else. It wasn’t that she deemed herself better than anyone, her friends included, because of her newly acquired knowledge, she simply felt dissimilar.
Her legs, in close proximity to Morgan’s, were magnetized to the feeling of being beside her. A feeling she had experienced many times before, and yet this was seemingly laced with something new. Something toxic. Something…enticing. She shook away the thought immediately, reminding herself of the promise she had made upon the fire escape. She would not indulge.
“We made love until the early hours,” Morgan chimed in, taking a sip of her whiskey and coke as she let out a contented sigh into the glass. “It took three jars of peanut butter, a cucumber, and a fitness DVD from the 1980’s to make it truly magical, but overall, it was a success.”
Natalie seemed less than impressed whilst Sienna and Lee’s other friend, Kat, giggled over the bass that blasted through the speakers within the nightclub. “Fine, don’t tell me,” Natalie conceded. “But Lee will just give me all the gory details when we’re alone, anyway.”
Careful what you wish for,Lee thought to herself, grateful to be hiding behind her own drink of choice, a piña colada with a pink umbrella sitting delicately at the top.
When the booth had dulled to an awkward silence, and only the sound of repetitive dance music remained, Sienna stood up to excuse herself from the table, her phone wrapped firmly in her fingers. “I need to sort something out. I’ll be right back.”
Kat sighed and rolled her eyes in unison with her exhale. “We all know that thesomethingshe’s referring to is Dylan. I don’t know what she sees in him. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be so negative,” she held up her hands, as if nullifying her own remarks the moment they left her lips. “I just think she could do better. That’s all.”
