Right Where You Are Read online

  No. Fuck that. I didn’t want to find out.

  This little back-and-forth was clearly pissing her off, but I could tell it excited her too. That much was obvious. Now I had to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do about it. She was already under my skin, and damn me if we weren’t going to be around each other for eight fucking weeks.

  “I’m not going to talk to you anymore, and you can bet your ass I’m not going to sleep with you, so don’t even bother trying. Do I need to involve the supervisor? Because I will.”

  I held up my hands in surrender. More for show than anything. If she thought she won this round, she’d let her guard down. I had three hundred hours to fuck with her. Yep, I already decided by the time we were done with CS, she would be begging me to fuck her against the bus, and then I could tell her not in a million years and walk away from her.

  See how she liked it.

  “I’ll be right over there, if you need me. Just say the word.” I winked at her and almost laughed when she growled again.

  I moved to the middle of the bus and sank down into an empty seat.

  “I won’t tell you no,” a female voice said softly.

  A head peeked over the top of the seat in front of me and I saw the only other girl in our group. Her bright pink hair was spiked up in the front, and when she smiled, I saw a stud in her tongue. At first glance earlier, I’d thought she was about thirteen, but up close, I could see the years on her face.

  The gauntness that only drugs could cause.

  Another face popped into my head, and my insides twisted with fear and pain, a cold dose of reality that immediately extinguished any desire in my body.

  “What’s your name?” I asked before I even realized it.

  “Sasha.”

  For one second I froze. I thought she said Sara and panic started to take over. Shit, I needed to get it together. I scrubbed my hand over my face. My new apartment was too quiet to sleep much. I was used to noise all night long. “Could you let me know when we get there, Sasha? I’m kinda beat.”

  “Sure thing. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Seth.”

  “Well, Seth, here’s to three hundred hours of picking up shit with a dozen of our closest friends.”

  I laughed. “No kidding.”

  Sasha ducked back down into her seat, and I closed my eyes, letting the rocking movement of the bus and the voices around me lull me to sleep.

  “Hey, sleeping beauty, time to pay your debt to society.”

  A foot kicked my boot and my eyes flew open. I was up and had my fingers wrapped around the guy’s shirt before I was fully awake.

  “Whoa, back off right now unless you want to go back to the slammer.”

  Shit. I released Rick’s shirt immediately, took a step back, and held my hands up. “Sorry, man. Won’t happen again.”

  Rick glared at me for a few more seconds before he started toward the doors. I grasped the seat back in front of me and exhaled roughly. I was still jumpy from prison.

  Outside, I could see everyone lined up waiting for their assignments.

  I squeezed my eyes open and shut, then without looking back, I pushed off the seat and walked off the bus. After a few seconds, Avery stumbled out behind me, and her gaze skirted right past me as she went to the opposite end of the line. Shit. She’d seen me and Rick. Now she probably thought I was some psychopath one wrong move away from the loony bin.

  It felt like I swallowed a bowling ball.

  I didn’t mean to grab Rick like that. It was pure fucking instinct. A year of instant reaction that might save your ass. I laced my fingers behind my neck and exhaled slowly.

  “Okay, this”—Rick held up a stick with a wicked-looking point on it—“is what you use to pick up trash along this three-mile stretch of road. And these”—he held up a box of blue disposable gloves—“are what you use when you can’t stab it. Split up into pairs. Grab a bag, a stick, and enough gloves to get this done.”

  Everyone shuffled forward to get the supplies.

  “Ladies, since there are two of you, you’re a team,” Rick shouted.

  I glanced over to see Sasha glaring at Avery. Avery didn’t look too happy about the match either. In fact, she looked a little green about all of this. Yeah, she probably never even took her own garbage out to the curb, if her soft as hell hands were any indication.

  “What about roadkill?” a guy asked. “That’s some nasty shit, especially in this heat.”

  “Can we stab it and watch it explode?” another douche asked.

  “Oh, God,” I heard Avery mutter. Now she definitely looked green.

  “Leave the dead things,” Rick said. “We got a truck that picks them up along with the bags. Enough talking. No one goes home until three miles are clean. Fill a bag, tie it up, move on to the next one.”

  We spent the next five hours stabbing and bagging everything under the sun. People threw out the weirdest shit. Halfway through, a kid named Max decided to make a game of it. The person with the most whacked-out find won.

  Sure, it was only for bragging rights, but among this group that was a pretty big motivator. Everyone called out when they found something interesting. Everyone except Avery. She stumbled along, sweat running down her face as she concentrated on jabbing the sharp end of the stick through all the garbage people threw out their windows.

  After a particularly vicious stab, she glanced up and caught my eye. Something made me think she envisioned the metal was stabbing into me instead.

  Right before we left for the day, Sasha won the first day’s bragging rights.

  The girl found the gnarliest pair of dentures any of us had ever seen.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Avery

  “I can’t do it again,” I said. “I can’t go back there.”

  Shari sat across from me, and between us sat a half-empty bottle of wine. When I got home after the first day of hell was finally over, I immediately climbed into the hottest shower I could stand. My skin was raw and red, but I still didn’t feel clean.

  Who would, after finding no less than a dozen used condoms dried up alongside the three miles we cleaned today? I shuddered, feeling disgusting all over again.

  And that was on top of the anxiety over having been watched all day. Every time I glanced up, Seth was looking at me. It didn’t take long for a familiar awareness to make my skin prickle.

  I glared at him. Flipped him off. Ignored him. Nothing worked.

  By the time the day finally ended, I was exhausted, covered in sweat, and ready to throw my stick with javelinlike precision straight at his head. Thank God he sat at the opposite end of the bus on the way back, or I might have strangled him with my bare hands.

  “I still can’t believe hottie guy from the bar was there. What are the odds?”

  “Well, I’m not a stats whiz, but I’d say pretty slim.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cool leather of the sofa.

  “There’s more.” Shari waited until I lifted my head.

  “No, there isn’t. There is nothing else. I just . . . I don’t know if I can do this, Shar. I hurt everywhere, I’m sunburned, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to eat again in this lifetime.” I shuddered, thinking about all that disgusting garbage. When Sasha found someone’s dentures, I thought I was going to be sick.

  “So what do you want to do, babe?”

  I set my glass down and dropped my head to my crossed arms. “Beg my father for leniency?”

  “Maybe he’ll understand? There’s got to be some other service you can do. Like bathe old men or something fun like that?” Shari waggled her eyebrows.

  I burst out laughing. That was why Shari was my best friend. The sad fact was that bathing lecherous old men would actually be a step up from what I had done today.

  “Look, you want my opinion? You’re tough as shit, Ave. I think . . . and don’t kill me for saying this, but I think you can do this and show your father you’re not a little girl anymore. You know th
e fastest way to gain that man’s respect is to step up and take responsibility.”

  The biggest problem with Shari being my best friend was that she knew how much I wanted my father to treat me like an equal and not just his daughter. I was top of my class, belonged to one of the best sororities on campus, volunteered, had done what my parents expected my entire life, and it still wasn’t enough.

  This thing with Grant only proved my father’s point that I wasn’t responsible. I’d seen the disappointment in his eyes when he came to bail me out of jail.

  Shari was right. If I ran to him and begged him to help me, it would only reinforce how he saw me. Incapable and in need of his guidance. A little girl.

  “I hate it when you’re right.” I groaned and refilled my glass. “So tell me, o wise one, how the hell am I supposed to work around Seth after everything that happened?”

  “Well, I think you should just ignore him. You don’t really know anything about him, and he’s there for a reason, right?” She reached out and took my hand, her face screwed into a serious expression. “Just be careful, Ave, okay? Repressed rich girl, broody hot bad boy, it’s like a fucking made-for-TV movie.”

  I laughed again. It was pretty cliché.

  Good thing Seth did nothing for me.

  Not. A. Thing.

  My subconscious snorted.

  “Now, what are we ordering in for dinner? All this talking has made me hungry.”

  After everything I saw today, I may never eat again. “You pick.”

  Shari picked Chinese, but all I could stomach was a veggie egg roll.

  Taking Shari’s advice was easier than I expected. Mainly because Seth didn’t try to talk to me again. I caught him looking at me a few times while we worked our way along whatever stretch of highway was on the schedule for the day, but otherwise, it was as if we were strangers.

  Which, I guess technically, we were.

  I waited for a repeat of Monday, but it was almost as if he’d forgotten I was even there. I just tried to do my job and avoid any kind of conversation with anyone. I didn’t want to get to know any of them. After this exercise in humility was over, I would be back at college. These people would all be right back here, since it was a statistical fact that most criminals were repeat offenders.

  Conveniently, I left myself out of the equation.

  On Friday, we were on the last quarter of a mile when Sasha found her tenth lone sneaker. Every time she found one, she made up a story about why it was there. At first I drowned out her ramblings. Then the stories got more and more outrageous.

  “So, this girl was driving down the highway in this hot little convertible, when she saw a man hitchhiking. As she got closer, she saw that he only had one leg, and he was sort of hopping along the side of the road, like a rabbit.” Sasha stood on one foot and hopped. “So this girl felt really bad for him, so she pulled over and offered him a ride. He hopped in, and she noticed that his shoe was falling apart. After only a couple miles, he pulled out a knife and stabbed her to death. What no one knew was that he was a one-legged transvestite and had been looking for the perfect red stiletto forever! Then he threw his old shoe out the window.”

  She held up the dirty sneaker she found with blue fingers.

  “This sneaker!”

  “That was the worst one yet,” I said, shaking with laughter. I stabbed a piece of cardboard and thrust it into the bag. When I stood up, I saw Seth a few feet in front of us, watching me with a strange expression on his face. When he saw me looking, he frowned and turned away.

  On day two, he’d started unzipping the overalls so they folded and hung over his hips, leaving his chest covered by T-shirts that left his arms bare. Arms strong enough to lift my legs around his waist and hold me against his truck. Damn, of course he would be the only one who could make these hideous jumpsuits look sexy.

  I swallowed against the memories and tried to push them away, but instead I found myself wondering what exactly Seth could have done to have wound up in jail. Most petty crimes earned a slap on the wrist and something like we were doing now. Unless he was a repeat offender? Or it was something like drugs. I glanced over at Seth, trying to find any sign that he was a recovering addict. Maybe it was something else. Dealing?

  That would make it worse, because dealers were the scum of the earth. An addict at least had an excuse. The recovery facility that I did a four-week internship at sophomore year made a huge impact on me, but no matter how hard I argued, my father would not listen to me. Those people needed a voice, and I wanted to be the one to give it to them.

  My father would not let me change my major to family law. Corporate law. That’s where the good money was. That’s what he wanted from me. That’s what he expected from me.

  So I caved in like I always did and stuck with what he wanted.

  Still, if Seth had been in prison for drug distribution, it wouldn’t matter how my body reacted to him. I could never be with someone who had such blatant disregard for another human being’s life.

  I shook my head and wiped the sweat off my forehead with my arm. Day one had taught me that the midday sun was relentless, so I’d started wearing a ball cap to keep my face shaded. I didn’t tan, I burned. And I didn’t need any more freckles.

  I kept a bottle of water in one of the huge pockets in my hideous jumpsuit but tried to only drink when I had to so that I wouldn’t need to pee every five minutes. It was a chore because I had to change out my gloves every time I wanted to take a sip.

  Right before we reached the mile marker that let us know we could stop, I saw something pink sticking out from a patch of grass. It wasn’t paper or cardboard, so I set my stick down and gingerly pulled it out with my glove-covered hands.

  “Holy shit!” I threw it to the ground and hopped away from it, shaking my hand like I could get the feel of that thing from my fingers. “Ew, ew, ew!”

  Sasha ran over when I screamed and started laughing so hard she bent over at the waist. “Avery wins!” she shouted over and over, but no one understood what she was saying.

  Everyone came running.

  “Is she having some kind of attack?” Rick asked me.

  All I could do was shake my head. I needed bleach, lots and lots of bleach. Seth looked at me, and I saw concern in his eyes. I was still trying to wrap my head around what I had just picked up.

  Sasha finally stood back up, wiping tears from her face.

  “Avery wins,” she said again. Then she pointed to the ground.

  A huge pink dildo lay in the dirt at her feet.

  “Holy shit,” one of the guys whistled. “That’s like porn star size.”

  Heat climbed up my neck when I saw Seth’s concern change to amusement. His lips quirked up in a grin. I wanted him to act like an asshole again because his smile made me forget. It was easier to remind myself why I hated him when he was a jerk.

  “You have to bag it, Princess,” Sasha said, breaking down into another fit of giggles.

  I backed away and held up my hands. “No way. I am not touching that thing again.”

  “How about the real thing, baby?” an older guy, Theo, I think, said. He grabbed his crotch and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Knock it off, Theo,” Rick warned. “I won’t have any harassment suits on my watch.”

  “Got it!” Sasha shouted, interrupting the tension within the group.

  She had the sharp point of her stick driven right through the middle of the fake dick, and she held it up like a pink toasted marshmallow.

  Every guy there cringed and shielded his crotch.

  “And on that note, everyone back to the bus,” Rick shouted. “Sticks in the barrel, gloves in the trash, on the bus. It’s Friday, and I for one would like to get home and kick back with a cold beer.”

  A chorus of agreement echoed around me.

  By the time we all climbed back onto the bus, the mood was pretty relaxed. We had made it through the first week. Rick had pulled Seth aside, and they sat close to the front.
Something Rick said made Seth nod slowly. When they were done talking, Seth slid across the seat and leaned his head against the window.

  I ignored the tiny fissure of disappointment winding through my chest that it would be two whole days until I saw him again. It was just heat, or maybe exhaustion, that made me feel that way. That’s all. A long hot shower and a bottle of wine would make everything better.

  I rested my forehead against the cool glass window until the bus pulled into the Public Works parking lot. Everyone disappeared inside the locker rooms to get rid of the gross jumpsuits. It didn’t take long for everyone to split. Today had taken us until three thirty to finish up and it was now after four.

  I was the last one out of the changing room, and after I threw my jumpsuit into a huge laundry basket, I headed to the lobby. Rick was behind the desk, and he waved me over before I could leave.

  “Good work this week, Princess. Here’s your form. You need to send it to the clerk of courts. Keep a copy, they aren’t the best at keeping track of things.” I stuffed the paper into my pocket and headed outside. The thick humid air smashed into me as soon as the door opened.

  “Ryan, man, my fucking truck won’t start and if I don’t get to Arnold’s office, I’m screwed. Called you three times already. Call me as soon as you get this. I’ve only got about an hour before I’m royally fucked.” Seth stood next to his truck and he stuffed his phone into his pocket and kicked a tire. He dragged his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up in errant spikes.

  “What happens in an hour?” I asked. “Turn into a pumpkin?”

  Seth swung around and narrowed his eyes at me. Animosity radiated off him. “If I don’t report to my parole officer by five thirty, there’ll be a warrant for my arrest about five minutes after that.”

  My mouth fell open. “Seriously?”

  “It’s how real life works, Princess.”

  Princess. There was no doubt by his tone that he meant it as the worst kind of insult. I glared at him. I knew how real life worked. I’d studied basic law my sophomore year. I was just surprised because I had never seen it play out right in front of me like this.