It’s dark when I park in Sophie’s driveway.
I’ve got a key to the front door, but I’m so busy digging it out of my handbag it doesn’t dawn on me that most of the lights in the house are off.
Until I’m inside, with the door closed behind me.
By then it’s too late.
The muffled noise and simultaneous pain in my side help me realize I’ve just been shot. I cry out, but before I can react, I’m hit two more times.
Shoulder and stomach.
My knees buckle. I fall to the floor in slow motion, and land in a sitting position. Gravity slowly takes over, forces me onto my back.
In the darkness I hear Sophie say, “You’re still breathing, bitch. I can hear you. But that won’t last for long.”
She gloats, “I can’t believe how easy this was! I don’t mean pulling the trigger. I mean, you just walked right in, stood there like a deer in the headlights. I could have put one between your eyes, ended it once and for all. But this is better. So much better.”
I turn my head in the direction of her voice, but don’t see her.
She says, “I’m going to stand over you and watch you bleed out. When the light comes on, if you’re able to turn your head upward, you’ll see I’m completely naked. Want to know why, bitch? It keeps the blood evidence off my clothes. While you’re lying there helplessly, struggling to gasp your final breaths, I’ll be smearing your blood all over my body. I’m going to bathe myself with your hot, bitch blood.”
I concentrate all my power into forming a sentence. “You’re…completely insane. You’ll never…get away…with it.”
“I could kill you now, bitch. You know it’s true. I have all the power. Say it! Tell me I have all the power.”
I say nothing.
“Say it!” she screams, “or I swear I’ll shoot you right now!”
The light comes on and I see Sophie standing over me, naked, holding a gun.
A nerf gun.
We both pause a moment, then laugh hysterically.
“Hot, bitch blood?” I say.
She laughs, shoots me in the arm.
“Was ‘hot, bitch blood’ too over the top?” she says.
“A bit. Maybe.”
We laugh some more.
I say, “What possessed you to get naked and attack me with a toy gun?”
“You’ve been preoccupied like crazy. I wanted to get your attention.”
“It worked.”
“So,” she says. “You want to fool around?”
“I’m not gay, Sophie.”
“Who said you were?”
She places her hand between my legs, rubs my sweet spot.
I feel my body surrender. She straddles me, unbuttons my shirt. Cups my breast. Lowers her face till our lips are inches apart. I lift my chin to accept her kiss.
We pause to take a breath and I say, “I just wanted to be clear.”
“About not being gay?”
“Yes.”
I put my arms around her, caress her lower back with my fingertips.
We kiss again.
She says, “Noted.”
YOU ARE READING
Promise You Won't Tell?
Teen Fiction"I think something might have happened to me Saturday night. Something bad." Private Investigator Dani Ripper's client list is nuttier than the Looney Tunes conga line, but she diligently solves one crazy case after another, waiting for a game-chang...
