Lady Killer (Dead Girls Club #2)

14. Luz

Chapter fourteen

Luz

T rue to Alister’s word, I had a new phone by the end of the day. But that wasn’t all.

The day after, I got an email from campus that I’d received a number of packages, too many to be left at the dorm, and I would have to come pick them up.

Under Nixon’s watchful eye, I’d rushed over to find boxes upon boxes from Lululemon, Nike, and other high-end activewear brands stacked and waiting for me. All of them from Alister. All of them full of warm, sleek winter running gear .

What was I supposed to do with that?

“Putain de merde,” I muttered under my breath as I nearly burned my forehead wrapping the last strands of my hair around the barrel of my curling iron. As I winced and poked at the hot spot where the iron had almost made contact, there was a familiar rapping sound from my door.

“Coming,” I yelled, trying to quickly fluff the pieces of hair around my face into place. When I opened the door, Autumn was dressed to kill, like always.

Today, she had on a periwinkle faux suede parka lined with white faux fur, under which she wore a pleated skirt in a vibrant plaid of white, black, and neon pink, white knit tights, and white platform boots that seemed ambitiously high, given that there was snow on the ground again.

She’d gotten bangs on her last trip into the city, and while I thought they looked adorable on her, she was currently experiencing a bout of regret.

Her eyes were locked on her phone, and she didn’t seem to notice me standing right in front of her

“Earth to Autumn?”

“Mmm?” She looked up with a dazed expression before shaking her head and meeting my eyes. “Yes, sorry, was just chatting with Simone. ”

“And how is the beautiful Simone?” I said with a smirk, baiting her.

Autumn turned scarlet, twisting the silver ring she had worn on her thumb today. “She’s good," she said coyly.

As we headed for the elevators, I surreptitiously looked around. Since the woods, I was all too aware that there were more sheep lurking on campus.

Nothing out of the ordinary caught my eye as we went down to the parking lot beneath the building where Autumn kept her custom lavender Audi RS7 Sportback. I knew next to nothing about cars, but I collected details like pennies for a rainy day.

“Have you heard from Melody?” Autumn asked as we pulled out of the underground lot.

“Not since before winter break.” It was true.

Melody’s body still hadn’t been found. Or if it had been, the police weren’t saying anything, even to the Blackwells.

Regardless, it wasn’t as though I could tell Autumn that our former friend had been brutally murdered by the same serial killer I believed she’d been working with to stalk and harass me.

“I hope she’s okay,” Autumn said, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. “I’m worried about her with Aaron’s death. By the way, Hale was asking about how you’re doing. ”

“Hale?” I couldn’t remember speaking more than five words to Melody and Aaron’s friend, having only met him once, so him asking about me was weird. I tried to remember if he had been in the photos from Halloween night.

Add him to the list.

We parked behind Dos Hermanas, Shady Harbor’s one and only Mexican restaurant. As someone who’d spent half of her childhood in Texas, it was a stretch to call it authentic, but it was tasty nonetheless.

It was a Wednesday night and the restaurant was slow, so the hostess was happy to put the two of us in a cozy booth, placing a basket of freshly fried tortilla chips and pico on the table just minutes after we were seated.

Picking up the simple laminated menu, I read it over as though I didn’t have it memorized and hadn’t looked up it on the way over as well just to be sure.

“What are you getting?” asked Autumn, her eyes on her own menu as she picked at the cracking plastic corner.

“My usual, the chicken enchiladas. What about you?”

I’d learned this was part of the routine of going out with a friend. We both pretended to read the menu and consider our options and even asked each other what we were getting, but we both ordered the exact same thing every time .

“Carne asada tacos and an elote.”

The server returned, took our order, and let us know it would be out shortly.

Sipping on my fountain soda, I savored the burning of the bubbles on my tongue while I figured out how to begin talking to Autumn about Alister. “Someth—?”

“Simone and I are dating,” she blurted out.

I stalled for a second, processing her words. When I didn’t react immediately, Autumn blanched, and I realized how my silence sounded to her.

“Merde, Autumn, sorry. I’m so incredibly happy for you,” I said quickly. “I just kind of assumed you already were, and my brain was somewhere else. But this is so exciting. Seriously.”

A small breath left her, taking some of the tension with it.

“She seems to make you happy,” I added with a sincere smile. I meant it. Mostly.

“She does . . .” Autumn said, her eyes dropping.

“Is there a but?”

“No!” She looked up at me with big eyes. “No,” she repeated. “Simone’s perfect . . . It’s . . . it’s me. I’m the problem.”

I nearly choked on my soda .

I liked Simone. I liked her for Autumn a lot. My gut told me she wasn’t a threat, but I hadn’t forgotten her odd reaction when she saw me and Aaron together at the party.

I trusted my intuition, which was why she wasn’t on the list. But now that they were dating, I might have to revise that. Or at least dig a little deeper.

“You’re one of the sweetest, most bubbly people I know, Autumn. Please tell me, how are you the problem?”

She started picking at her manicure. “You know my parents are . . . difficult.”

Uh-oh.

“They, uh, they wouldn’t take me being with Simone very well, like, at all. They’re not like, conservative, per se,” she stammered on. “Like, they voted for Hillary and everything.”

I wanted to reach across the table and hold her hand, but I wasn’t sure if I should.

“But what’s okay for others isn’t okay for a Morgan. In their eyes.”

I nodded. Lots of people were hypocrites. “Can I ask a tough question?” Asking was good, right?

Autumn made a bitter scoff I’d never heard from her before. “They wouldn’t love that she’s Black, but they would probably be too polite to ever say anything. ”

No, they would just subject poor Simone to microaggressions for the duration of her relationship with Autumn.

“They wouldn’t be crazy about the fact that she’s a woman either,” she added, shocking me not at all. “But that’s not what their biggest issue with her and me would be.”

Well, now I was confused. It couldn’t be because Simone was British, right? This wasn’t 1776.

The server returned to top up the basket of chips that had seemingly disappeared in front of me. Autumn and I sat in silence wearing polite smiles as she started to pick at her nails again.

I gave her a second to compose herself.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, I do, I just want to say it. I should just say it, I just, like, don’t want you to, like . . .”

“Just say it, Autumn,” I commanded, not unkindly.

“I’m ace!” she blurted out.

I blanked on what she was saying but remembered to smile encouragingly this time.

“Ace, like asexual,” she went on.

Ohhh .

Suddenly, all sorts of pieces about Autumn clicked into place.

“It means I don’t experience sexual attraction, or at least, like, that’s how I experience being ace.

“But I’m not, um, aro, like aromantic, that’s the term. I still want romance, relationships, affection. It’s not, like, super complicated but a lot of people mix them up. Technically, I would say I’m panromantic, so I experience or, well, want to experience romantic love with someone based on the person, not their gender. I mean, oh gosh, that’s like a lot, isn’t it?”

I reached out and gently separated her fingers from where they were massacring her cuticle and held them tight, giving her a squeeze. “No, it was exactly right. Thank you for telling me.”

A fragile smile formed on her face. “It would be nice to not have to, like, write an essay to explain what feels normal to me, but people, well, they assume things, right?”

I nodded, remembering what she’d said once about everyone having a "something" in their lives that made them not okay sometimes. I wondered what it cost Autumn to live in a world that constantly demanded an explanation from her that it had no right to.

“Your parents?” I ventured.

Her lips pursed and her eyes fell. “They think it’s nonsense, a phase at most. Me being too stupid to even know what I really want. ”

The hurt in her tone cut me, and I had the sudden urge to go visit the Morgans.

As if you need to add more bodies to the mix right now .

“They said that?” I asked carefully.

“Not those exact words, but more or less. Simone,” she began, a wistful look flashing through her eyes, “Simone’s family is different. Her father is big in publishing and her mother is an artist. She came out to them as ace two years ago, and while they didn’t know what it meant, they doubled down on supporting her immediately. My parents . . .” She trailed off with a shattered look in her eyes. “They would never accept me being publicly out.”

“Oh, Autumn.” I was rarely at a loss for words, and I never wished I had the right ones to say more than I did at that moment.

“It’s okay,” she started to say, wiping her eyes with the back of her other hand.

“No, it’s not. It’s a parent’s job to love you unconditionally. Yours failed you. And that sucks.”

I wish I had something more eloquent to say, but that was the truth of the matter. I may not be the best at being a friend, but I understood having shitty parents more than Autumn would ever know.

“It does,” she said quietly. “But that’s why it’s not fair to Simone. We just started dating, and she’s understanding about keeping it quiet for now, but I can’t . . . we can’t be a secret forever.”

I opened my mouth to console her more, but her phone started vibrating and her eyes widened as the screen lit up. “Sorry Luz, I’ve got to go make a call.”

“Yeah, of course, no rush.”

“It’s my parents.” Standing up too fast, she banged her knee on the table, causing us both to wince before she hurried outside.

Our server returned, placing three steaming-hot dishes down on the table with a frown. “Where’s your friend?”

“She just had to make a call.”

The server smiled and asked if we needed anything else before leaving me alone.

I wanted to dig into my enchiladas and I looked to see if Autumn would be long.

From here, she looked harried, pacing and back in front of the restaurant on the phone.

She had said it was her parents but I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more she wasn’t telling me.

Frowning, I shook my head. Autumn was my friend, I trusted her.

And we were all entitled to secrets, weren't we?