How We Found Us | ✔️

Chapter Fifteen

I was laying my head on the table, crying my eyes out, when Riley came to my rescue. He tapped my shoulder, bringing my attention from the moist linen within my curled arms. I stood up from the table and threw my arms round him, without even trying to explain what had happened.

He didn't ask either.

When I pulled away, he grabbed the check from the table and slid a credit card in with the paper. The waitress, who had been kind enough to not bother me but kept within eye sight to make sure I didn't ditch too, whisked away the payment without a word.

Riley sat in the chair once occupied by King of the Asses, but still he didn't ask me what happened. It was probably obvious. My red eyes, the wet splotches on the linen, all were clear signs of what had transpired on the best first date ever. When the waitress returned, Riley took back his card and signed off on the payment.

"I'll pay you back," I whispered.

He shook his head and stood up. "Don't worry about that right now. Let's get you home."

"Can we stop are the convenience store at fifth and highland first?"

I needed a drink. I needed lots of drinks.

"Why?"

"I just need something there and they don't scrutinize."

Riley said nothing further. He led me to his car and drove the short couple of blocks to the store that I asked. It wasn't the nicest of neighborhoods in the city, far from it. Vagrants of all kinds stood outside the shop drinking their beverages from paper bags. Hookers paced on the street corner in the skimpiest outfits known to man. It was the kind of neighborhood where you locked your doors while being in and out as quickly as possible.

The convenience store was notorious for not checking IDs. When Travis and I first obtained our fake IDs we'd gone there to test them out. I was too nervous to even try, but Travis sauntered up to the person behind the counter, handed the ID, and they didn't flinch. The cashier barely spared it a glance before taking Travis' money and sending us on our way.

That night I wasn't going to take any chances. I lowered the front of my sundress enough that part of my lace bra showed. My hands adjusted the pushup bra to expose the most cleavage possible. I wasn't a super model by any stretch of the imagination, but I did have certain endowments I could use to my advantage as needed. That night, I was making sure my girls worked in my favor.

I lowered the visor on the passenger side and used the mirror to fix my makeup, removing the remains of the raccoon eyes caused by my crying.

"What are you doing?" Riley asked when I started to fluff out the strands of my hair.

I took a breath and looked at myself one last time in the tiny mirror. It wasn't perfect and there was more I could've done, but it was enough that if it were a man behind the counter he'd think I was nothing but a common street rat looking for a score. If my fake ID wasn't enough to get what I wanted, the breasts would be. I glanced to Riley and shrugged.

"Sometimes you've gotta use what nature gave you." I didn't wait for Riley to respond to that. I slid out of his car and walked as sexy as I knew how to the convenience store. Many of the men gathered outside whistled and called out to me, at least with them my mission had worked. When the bell rang to let the clerk know I entered the store, he looked up from the newspaper he was reading. I resisted a smile when his eyes went straight toward my exposed cleavage.

The bell rang again and I glanced back to see Riley following me into the store. Both hands were jammed into the pockets of his thin jacket. I glanced down to see he was wearing his plaid pajama pants. I grinned. The jacket was more to cover up the fact he hadn't bothered to get dressed then to protect against the absent cold.