Page 32 of My Fault
“Yeah,” I said, leaving my drink on a bar table. “I’ve got to get up early tomorrow to keep working on the case.”
My father nodded.
“Noah already went home, so don’t worry about it. You look tired. Go on home.”
I nodded, satisfied, and walked out with Anna at my side.
11
Noah
My mind was cloudy. The only thing that mattered to me was payback. Major payback. I kept thinking over and over about Dan’s and Beth’s lips touching. It was disgusting. Just imagining it made me want to throw up. I saw everything in red. I was blinded by hatred, pain, and a profound need for revenge.
I was in my closet taking off my clothes, and on the other side of the wall was a boy I’d just met two hours ago who was patiently waiting on my bed for me to finish. I couldn’t show up at the races in a ball gown, let alone in stiletto heels. I put on a pair of jean shorts, a blue tank top, and some ordinary sandals. You couldn’t look like a Goody Two-shoes in a place like that, so I was happy to have on all that makeup, even if it wasn’t my usual thing. I pulled the goddamn bobby pins out of my hair—I must have had a hundred in—let my long hair down, and then pulled it back in a ponytail.
I had exactly one thought in my head: hooking up with the hottest and baddest guy there. That would make me feel satisfied, less used, less deceived, and like less of an idiot, even if deep down I knew none of that could erase reality: I was destroyed and struggling to hold my heart together.
Had Beth told Dan everything I’d confessed to her? Had they laughed at me while I was still trying to give it my all in my first and only relationship? Had they planned this?
I took a deep breath and tried to swallow the pain.
When I stepped out, Mario, the bartender I’d just met, stared at me admiringly, and I knew I’d achieved the effect I was going for.
“You look good,” he said. He smiled, and I responded in kind but unenthusiastically. I wasn’t in the mood for stupid compliments.
“Thanks,” I said, grabbing my bag off the bed and heading for the door. “Shall we?”
Mario stood up and followed me, and soon, we were climbing into his car.
Half an hour later, Mario turned off onto a secondary road surrounded by dry fields and red-and-orange dust. As we drove on, I could no longer hear the cars on the freeway. Instead it was just repetitive music getting louder and louder.
“You ever done something like this before?” Mario asked, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the back of my seat.
“I’ve been in quite a few races, yeah,” I said in a surly tone.
He looked over and then back at the road. Then I saw tons of people in the distance and neon lights around a deserted area full of badly parked cars.
The music was deafening. The people there were between twenty and thirty. Everyone was drinking, dancing, and partying like this was the last day of their lives. Mario stopped close to where most of them were and got out, waiting for me to do the same.
“What is this place?” I asked him, and he chuckled.
“Don’t worry, these are the spectators. The important peopleare the ones over there,” he said, pointing to the left, where a big group of guys and girls were lying on the hoods of fancy souped-up cars with god-awful music blasting from their trunks.
I saw fluorescent fabrics all around, and beneath the headlights—which were the main source of light out there—they glowed brightly. Many of the girls had painted their bodies and even their faces in fluorescent paint.
“I see you pay attention to the details,” Mario said. I had no idea what he was talking about. But then he pointed at my chest, and I saw that whatever my mother had sprayed all over me was now shining on my pale skin like a thousand little fluorescent dots. Ridiculous.
“Honestly, I had no idea,” I said.
“Still and all, it’s for the best,” he said, looking at my shorts and my shirt. “Not just anyone can come here, and no offense, but you’re dressed a little more modestly than most people here.”
Modest! The girls there could have been strippers if they’d just taken off their micro-minis and bikini tops.
“I don’t know if you know the deal here, but there are gangs or groups. Your brother is the leader of one, and it’s important he beats Ronnie,” Mario said when we were close to the cars that would be racing.
Nick was a gang leader? That was unexpected, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. From what little I knew of him, it made sense he’d be involved in something like that. He was violent, frightening, and a hard-ass, and he hid it with amazing aplomb whenever he was hanging out with the people he’d grown up around. But he was a rich kid! This kind of thing didn’t happen in his world. What was a dude whose father was one of the most important lawyers in the country doing running a gang like the one I was looking at right now?
Mario stopped next to a couple of guys who could have givenme nightmares for a month straight. They had tattoos on their arms and were wearing baggy clothes and cross pendants and all kinds of silver and gold chains. The girls beside them were dressed provocatively, but that was nothing compared to the ones near where we’d parked.
