Not You It's Me

CHAPTER FIVE

SOMETHING

I'm running.

Which isn't the easiest feat in a skintight satin dress, let me tell you.

For the billionth time, I curse Boston's cobbled, winding streets and crummy weather, which are making an already miserable moment even more painful. The sky is doing that half-rain, half-snow, not-quite-sleet-not-quite-hail thing, leaving me drenched and shivering in less than a minute.

I don't care.

I'd rather be out here — I'd rather be in the seventh circle of hell — than spend another freaking moment in the stadium with every set of eyes locked on me and my dickwad, now-officially-ex-boyfriend. And Green Eyes. And the three security guards who swooped in as soon as Ralph went airborne.

I didn't stick around to see the aftermath. I grabbed my jacket, turned on one heel, and bolted — out of the arena, into the cold April night — without so much as a thank you to the man who saved me from public humiliation.

Belatedly, I realize I should've just hopped on the subway — aka "The T" to everyone but tourists — at the Garden and headed back to my apartment, but I must've left my brain behind along with my shredded self-confidence, because now I'm out in the cold with a too-thin spring jacket and I'm not sure whether the moisture on my face is leaking from the sky or my eyes.

Plus, even if I go back across the river to my tiny, fifth-floor, one-bedroom in East Cambridge — the small neighborhood crammed between the MIT campus and Charlestown — I'll never be able to relax. Not when a single glance across the hall will make me think of Ralph, and the questionable things — girls — he did somewhere in my apartment.

Before I deal with that, I need several more beers and at least two bottles of Lysol to scrub every surface where his bare ass potentially rested as he boinked Susie from 3B. I just hope they did it somewhere unoriginal. Like the kitchen floor, which can withstand a thorough dousing of bleach.

And if not...

Come to think of it, I've wanted to move for a while now. And redecorate. And maybe burn every possession I own in a large sacrificial fire.

But that's a problem for another day.

Right now, I need to get inside, preferably somewhere with a change of clothing and a lot of alcohol. And there's only one place close by where I might find both of those things.

Chrissy's.

I duck under an awning and peek into my wallet but, to my disappointment, no cash has magically appeared in the hours since I left my apartment. I know the funds in my bank account are dangerously low — too low to splurge on a cab, even if it means getting there faster and not having to take the subway in my current sodden state.

Alas... I'm broke.

Head tilted forward against the rain, I hug my arms around my torso and trudge onward to the closest T-stop. My Chucks are soon soaked through, the grimy puddle-water seeping through the soles so they make a sickening sluewp! noise with every step I take.

At this point, my night really can't get much better.

Five minutes later, I finally spot the Haymarket station across the street. With a quick glance in either direction, I bolt across an empty intersection and beeline for the entrance. I'm nearly there, so close to making it out of the driving rain I can almost taste it, when a black town car slows to a stop on the curb by my side. My eyes swing involuntarily in its direction just as the darkly tinted back window slides down with an audible buzz.