Page 2 of Push & Pull
Dust immediately swirled into the fog. The back bumper and tires threatened to crash into one of the dumpsters. Instead, the tires crushed Clyde’s foot, sending the large, half-naked man into a new fit of pain and rage. Petra shoutedSorry!through the window as she performed the world’s fastest three-point turn and sped out of the back parking lot, Clyde hobbling after her with his fist shaking in the air.
People had peeked their heads out their motel room doors. The office attendant on duty motioned for Petra to take a side exit before the flashing lights of the local sheriff caught wind of what was happening.
“Just another day in Podunk, Indiana!” Petra gunned the car down a one-lane road. She’d make it to Chicago in record time.
She’d worry about getting the rest of Uncle Michail’s money once she was out of Indiana. The man had enough friends in Chicago to help her ditch the burner car and get some money off Clyde’s card before he successfully canceled it. Or, so she hoped. She had also been hoping that he would stay asleep long enough for him to have no idea that the cash and card were gone.
Either way, she needed the last three hundred to give Uncle Michail before their lunch at noon. The man didn’t care if Petra was family. There was always some way for her to work off her debt, and she hated every avenue.
Nevertheless, she drove five above the speed limit once she was on the highway. At least being in a car, any car, gave her the freedom she craved to survive another day of this life.
Chapter 1
AnothernightinMiami.
Was Simone Evans, the world’s most jaded heiress, aware of what that sounded like? Unfortunately. She knew that hundreds of people would kill to have the view she enjoyed now.
Except everyone close enough to Simone to invite her to parties in Miami had views like this.Purple and pink sky. Palm trees swaying in the breeze.Tranquil seas, even at that time of year. From several stories up, everything looked like a picture-perfect paradise. Like a slice of pie right out of the oven.
God, she was over it.
“There you are.” Hailey Lambert, one of the most decadently spoiled women in Southern Florida, sashayed out of her quarters wearing an impressively audacious linen pantsuit. Her short and curly hair bounced against her bony shoulders, but it was her sleepy eyes that always caught Simone’s attention.She looks like a classic movie star, but I know it’s the drugs.Then again, it had been the drugs back then, too. Either way, those Bette Davis eyes were worthy of one of their DJ friends doing a retro wave cover of Kim Carnes’s most famous song. “I was worried that you had bailed before the party started.”
A representative from Hailey’s catering company walked behind her with a hot dish of food. The bartender was soon to arrive as well. Simone had stayed out of Hailey’s way while she prepped for her big party of the month.Because she has at least one party a month.It used to be two or three before, as Hailey put it,“I got too old to be partying multiple times a month. Or, at least, throwing the parties myself.”The woman was twenty-seven.
“Miss out on all the fun my last night in town?” Simone did her best to sound excited, but that had become increasingly difficult over the years.I no longer know what’s my personality and what’s the drugs.She didn’t only mean the recreational “fun” she partook in until a couple years ago when rehab refocused her mind. She also meant the medications multiple doctors had prescribed her – the kind that suppressed her brain and made her live in an eternal fog. Or end up in the hospital again because they had prescribed the wrong dose or were in such a hurry to get rid of her, they forgot to tell her to not take them with alcohol.
Never her finest moments.
“I may have told a few people you were coming.” Hailey propped herself against the back of the lily-white sofa that sat in front of her floor-to-ceiling windows. This part of the living room was not for conversation or watching TV, though. It was for sipping wine and snorting coke while gazing at the sea at sunset. “Do you remember Daria and Yvonne? The sisters from Nice?”
“The Marseille sisters?” Simone groaned. “Please tell me they kicked heroin. Or at least Yvonne. She was the worst on it.”
“Heroin is so 2009,” Hailey said with a scrunch of her nose. “Everyone does molly now.”“Yeah, I know.” Simone sat on the couch. No drink. No drugs. A lot of sunset. “You know I’m clean now, right?”
A svelte hand appeared next to Simone’s shoulder. “Of course, hon. Trust me, I’m not even allowing smokable pot at my party. No more smoke in my penthouse that I pay too much money for.” She scoffed. “There will be edibles, though. Plus drinks. Plenty of drinks.”
Of course. It’s not a party without some mind-altering substance.Simone also didn’t believe Hailey for two seconds that coke and God knew what else would keep away from one ofherparties. Even if Hailey told her friends to keep it at home, someone would inevitably bring some.Not so long ago, I’d be the first one in there.Simone had long fooled herself into thinking she could manage her drug and alcohol usage. Then one traumatic event happened. Then another. Next thing she knew?ODing on Hailey’s couch.The worst part?
She hadn’t cared if she died or not.
“Promise me there won’t be meth.”
Simone had said that in jest, but Hailey immediately wrinkled her nose. “Meth?Ew.” She walked away, her voice raising above the clatter of the catering company. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but that stuff isn’t worth touching anymore.”
“I hear it’samazing,though!”
Ugh. Simone should have known better than to accept Hailey’s invitation to stay in her guest room while in Miami. Didn’t Simone have enough money to get a decent hotel room nearby? A place she could escape to once things got crazy? Or, more likely, when she was in dire need of some peace and quiet. Her most recent therapist had instilled in her the “power of mindfulness,” and “the ability to accept things she could not control.” Like her mother dying. And her father remarrying an escort he fancied. And then her father dying. And the escort getting most of the Evans estate because shetotallyearned it.
Was it any wonder Simone had spent most of her twenties falling into the wrong crowd? People like Hailey and the Marseille sisters had shoulders to cry on when Simone was at the lowest of her lows.They also fed me a lot of drugs.The crazy thing wasn’t that, necessarily, but they honestly believed that was the answer to Simone’s problems.“Just party, babe.”
Drugs, drink… and sex.
Yet women like Hailey hadn’t been girlfriend material for a long time. Now? She and Simone were “friends,” the kind who were attempting to grow up and use their families’ money to improve and stabilize their lives, not bring more ruin upon themselves.
My father would be so upset with me if I died from an OD. As for my mother…
There it was. The real reason Simone guilted herself into sobriety.
