luckie street

chapter 9 »

"I ordered the kid's chicken fingers for you." Harley said as she approached the table seating four.

"Thanks." Riley huffed as she sat.

Sydney and her boyfriend engaged in a surely interesting conversation with Harley about the professor scandal rumors floating around their college, but Riley was too occupied with the previous hour's events to concentrate.

Randy wasn't even in her presence but for half an hour, but she still felt an unexplained draw to him. Yet at the same rate, Vincenzo had persuaded his attention and soft, sweet kisses into her head. Had it been a little over three hours ago, Riley's mind would have exploded at the thought of being kissed by the Italian god of a man.

She smiled to herself a slight bit. Who was she worried about? Randy hadn't even given her the time of day when he rushed off to work, but he did lend his concern.

And just like that, she was stuck between the two again. Riley looked up and the gang was laughing hysterically.

"You're eyeliner wing has completely smudged off on your right eye." Harley breathed through her laughs.

"Fix it!" Sydney screeched.

Her boyfriend laughed and scooted out of the booth to let Sydney out. She followed Harley to the bathroom with one hand over her eye closely. Her boyfriend was staring at Riley.

He was tall, with a thing for leather and long hair. "I'm Steve."

"Riley."

"What's going on up there? You were like a zombie just now." Steve commented.

Riley looked at her glass of water and took it in her hands. "Nothing in particular."

A considerable amount of silence inserted itself into the conversation.

"You're friends with Vincenzo." Steve said cautiously.

She whipped her head up in surprise at the sound of his name. Look at her, already conditioned into him.

"Yes, why?"

Steve smiled small. "He's a friend of mine, always at my place and stuff like that. He's been talking about a Riley with wavy hair."

"Oh, well, I was there, at your apartment, I mean. Vincenzo brought me for some reason..."

Steve looked at her attentively. "That usually never happens."

"What does that mean?" She questioned at his tone.

"You must've seen the coke, then," he continued, "maybe he was too high to discern...Randy should have stopped him. You met Randy, right?"

Riley shifted at his name.

"Ah, so you did. Is he the one making you twist and turn? Geez. Sorry, damnit, I just can't figure out how or why you'd know them."

"What? Why is it a problem to know them?" Riley set her sweating glass back down, becoming irritated.

Steve looked at her, expectantly. "They're dangerous men, Riley. You couldn't tell by the heaping piles of illicit drugs?"

She kept his gaze. "Well, it's your apartment. Wouldn't that make you dangerous, too?"

Of course she'd become defensive, of course. Vincenzo may be a coke addict, but she was still his friend.

He shook his head. "I just let them use it for their business sometimes. I'd never bring Syd around that, though. Yeah, Vin must have been on cloud nine hundred. He's a distributor. You know, in the drug trade. He's pretty high up, actually. But, he's made some enemies on the way to the top, so I'd restrict your involvement with him to a minimum when there are drugs around. For safety reasons. Although, if anything were to go wrong, Randy would see to it that you're okay. Randy, that man, he's a good guy."

Riley tried to soak it all in, but she was just as good as doing that as pouring sand through a sieve would be. Her head twirled, and a panging churn began to stir in her abdomen. Steve looked to his right to see Harley and Sydney making their way back to the table.

"Here's my number, we have to talk about this later." Steve scribbled on a napkin.

Riley tucked it away in her jacket pocket as the two women slid in the booth.

"What'd we miss?" Sydney asked, fresh with a new right wing.

"God, Syd. Why do you talk so loud?" Harley nudged.