Page 10 of Summers at the Saint
“Shady shit? Caribbean Soul is a food truck. Perfectly legal. We have a permit from the Health Department…”
The girl shrugged. “Well, looks like your man has moved on. Maybe you oughta think about doing the same thing. You’re only paid up through today.”
Felice reached for her pocketbook. Thank God she’d taken it with her to the store. She pulled out her billfold and thumbed through the thinning stack of currency. Her Visa card? She scrabbled around in her purse, sifting through the contents: lip gloss, pens, her notebook—the red spiral-bound one with all her recipes.
Then it struck her. Two days ago, she’d handed the Visa to Deion so he could gas up the truck. And now De was gone. With her Visa card, and her future.
“I, uh, I think my card has been stolen. I’ll call Visa and get a new one issued. In the meantime…” Felice took four twenty-dollar bills from her billfold and pushed them across the counter to the girl.
The girl smirked, enjoying her misery, and shoved the bills back, watching as they fluttered to the filthy carpet. “Sorry. No vacancy. Checkout time is ten, by the way.”
Felice traveled light. Out of necessity. Out of habit. She reached into the bottom of the duffel and for reassurance, touched her one treasure. Her knives. Deion had his shoes. Well, Felice had her knives. They were snug in their felt-lined pockets inside the leather roll that was tied up with grosgrain ribbon.
The knives had been a graduation present from the kitchen crew at Shanahan’s, the steakhouse she’d worked at in Hialeah. All six ofthem had gone in on the gift; no telling how much they’d saved out of their own shares of the crappy tips that came their way.
She slid her fingertips over the smooth steel of the knife handles as she called Visa to report that her card had been stolen. Already, the fraud squad told her, someone had used the card at a Walmart, spending just over three hundred dollars. There was a charge at a Starbucks, twelve dollars, and thirty-two at a McDonald’s.
Who spends thirty-two bucks at McDonald’s? Solo?De must have ordered one of everything on the menu. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so freaking infuriating.
Thank God, Felice told herself, she’d never shared her PIN with him. She didn’t have much in her checking account, less than three hundred dollars, but that was two hundred more than she’d had when she left home eight years ago at seventeen.
Stranded again,she thought, rolling up her panties, some shorts, three T-shirts, and her spare pair of jeans, stuffing them into the bag. She went into the bathroom—puke-green tile, one of those plastic shower stalls that never looked clean—and swept the thimble-sized containers of shampoo, conditioner, soap, and hand lotion into her toiletry bag.
She zipped the duffel, slid the strap over her shoulder, and headed for the door, tossing the plastic key card onto the dresser. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she stopped, then dug in her wallet and placed two one-dollar bills beside the key. One thing she’d learned early on, working in the business jokingly called hospitality. Never stiff the help.
CHAPTER 6
KJ
One minute he was minding his own business, sprawled facedown across his bed, and the next minute his old man was in his face, yelling like the house was on fire.
“Get up, goddammit,” Spencer Parkhurst said, yanking the sheets back. KJ looked up, bleary-eyed, and tried to cover his naked form.
“Huh? Whuut’s wrong?”
His father wasn’t a large man, but when he was mad, like he was now, his rage made him seem ten feet tall.
“Wrong? You tell me, son. Tell me why your mother has to find out from Christine Foyle that you’ve flunked out of school? Tell me why you’ve been lying through your teeth since the day you got home a week ago?”
“Shit.” KJ pulled the sheet over his face, and his father quickly snatched it back.
“Get up,” he repeated. “I’ll see you in my office in ten minutes. In the meantime, take a shower and get yourself sobered up. Your mother doesn’t need to see you like this.”
Kevin John Parkhurst was always the man with the plan. Take every Advanced Placement test available at Westminster Academy, the elite Atlanta prep school he’d been enrolled in since the age of six. Go out for the tennis and lacrosse teams, win a place on the mostcompetitive travel team in the southeast. Date the hottest girl at Westminster. Get accepted for early admission at Duke, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and his old man’s alma mater, Penn, even though he had no intention of going to school there. Earn a lacrosse scholarship. Rush the best fraternities, get bids from all the top houses, and eventually, inevitably pledge the hardest-partying house on the Wake Forest campus.
And it had worked. Mostly. Until it hadn’t.
KJ couldn’t figure out when it had all gone to hell. His first- semester grades had been crappy, averaging barely C−, which came as a shock, because he’d always aced his high school classes. But college was different. The lacrosse practices came at a brutal pace, and the frat’s social schedule was killer.
He’d gone home over Christmas break and lied to his parents about his grades. They’d happily accepted his story because why not? Hadn’t KJ Parkhurst always been awesome at everything?
His coach had warned him—pick up the grades, or leave the team—and he’d been newly motivated. Until he wasn’t. Until organic chemistry kicked his ass and he hadn’t been able to get his term paper on beat poets written because he didn’t get beat poetry and anyway, the library was closed by the time he got done with practice… and it was just as easy to borrow an old term paper from one of his fraternity brothers, except his prof recognized it and reported him to the university honor court for plagiarism, and he’d been put on academic probation.
Then, as if his life hadn’t already gone completely to shit, in February, he’d blown out his left knee, and had to come limping home at the end of the semester, a total washout. In more ways than one.
When he was out of the shower, he scraped a razor across his chin and combed his wet hair. Better. He picked up the pill bottle, shook two tablets into the palm of his hand, and paused. He had six left, andNO FURTHER REFILLSwas stamped in bold letters across the bottom of the label.
“Fuck it,” he mumbled, and swallowed both. He could easily get more, and anyway, he’d need something to take the edge offthe coming shitstorm brewing right down the hall in the old man’s office.
