Page 67 of Heartsick & Lipsticks
“You did the nasty on the roof?!” Ri whisper-yelled.
“Shh, no!” I hushed her again. “No, we just talked on the roof. And he asked me if I needed to go home or if I wanted to go back to his hotel room.”
Ri’s brows lifted. “Hotel room?”
“Yes.” I could feel my cheeks redden. “I told him I didn’t need to go home.”
“What happened? I want to know everything.”
I had never been one to kiss and tell, and despite her insistence, there was no way I was going to give her a play-by-play.
“We spent the night together.”
“No shit, Sherlock. What was it like? Details. Ineeddetails.”
I was shaking my head when I heard a loud knock on the front door. It wasn’t a neighborly knock, or even a package being delivered knock. It was a police-open-up knock.
Ri and I both looked at each other and rushed out of the bedroom. We met Lola and Callie in the front room; both were wearing equally confused expressions on their faces.
I opened the door and found a firefighter standing in front of me. “This building has been deemed unsafe, and you have thirty minutes to evacuate.”
“What?” I asked, sure that I must have heard him wrong.
“The brick façade in the front of the building is buckling, leaving the structure vulnerable. You have thirty minutes to get what you need and evacuate.”
“Is this a joke?” I turned toward Ri, who had been known to be a prankster, although this seemed a little out of her wheelhouse. If the firefighter had come in and started stripping, then I would have known it was her.
Ri lifted her hands in mock surrender, indicating she had nothing to do with it.
“This isn’t a joke. I need you and your family out of the building in thirty minutes.”
“For how long? For a night? A couple nights?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. That’s above my paygrade. You have thirty minutes,” he reiterated before walking down the hall to knock on my neighbor’s door.
“What’s going on?” Lola asked as I shut the door.
“You have the same information as I do,” I replied.
“Mom, look!” Callie yelled as she leaned out the front window, which led to the fire escape.
Lola, Ri, and I all rushed over, and when we looked out, we saw that the brick was bulging out at least a half-foot from the structure of the building.
“Oh shit!” Ri yelled.
Okay, this was not a drill. The building was unsafe. I needed to get my family out of here. My first thought was to have Callie go wait downstairs with Ri and Lola so I could grab our things, but if the fire department said we had thirty minutes, then I was going to trust we’d be safe for that time. It would be a lot easier to pack with four people rather than two.
I instantly went into crisis organization mode. I ran over to the front closet and pulled every bag and suitcase we had and plopped them down on the couch.
“Okay, pack up everything you need. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, laptops, and don’t forget chargers,” I specifically reminded Callie, who was always forgetting her charger.
“Where are we going?” my daughter asked.
“I don’—” I started to answer before Ri interrupted me.
“You’re going to stay with me,” Ri stated.
“No, you have a one-bathroom loft. We can’t—” I tried to argue, but she spoke over me.
“We’ll figure it out. You guys are staying with me,” she insisted.
I did not want to put my bestie out and I knew that three people crashing at her apartment would seriously put a dent in her social life, but I didn’t know what else to do. If I knew it was only going to be for a night or two, I’d stay in a hotel, but I had a feeling that this was not going to be a quick fix. Which meant I would have to find temporary housing.
Seriously, if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Just when I thought I was going to get ahead financially, this happened. Or maybe it was Karma. I’d broken a rule by spending the night with Nick, and now we’re being evacuated from our home. I tried not to think that the two were related, but it was hard not to.
