CHAPTER 19 #2
The card on top has the male names, and Stu’s is the first one listed.
Whoever originally owned this card has put a large tick in the “yes” column next to his name.
I’m guessing they didn’t accidentally call him Drew, then.
I tap my finger against his name, looking up to the find the others waiting expectantly for me to go through the suspect list.
“Stu and I did not get along. I thought he was a dick.” Laurie waves away the apologetic look I shoot at her when I say his name. The murders have taken away any fleeting attraction she may have had to the wannabe lumberjack.
“He could’ve been pretending to not like you,” Jennifer says, and I can’t help but cringe. At what point do we evolve from thinking yanking someone’s pigtails is still an appropriate form of showing interest?
“It’s not like he was negging me or pulling some schoolyard bullshit. We basically hated each other by the time our group split.”
Jennifer isn’t convinced, though. “You hated him. What if he felt differently?”
That doesn’t sit right. I’m well versed in enemies to lovers, but this doesn’t feel like The Hating Game or even Pride and Prejudice.
There was never a simmering undertone of attraction with Stu, and not just because he wears too much plaid, but because he’s too much of a dumbass.
Not to mention, that setup gets less violent as the relationship progresses.
I glance down at the list, scanning the names and mentally removing Drew and Curtis from the lineup since bleeding out takes you off the suspect list. There are three names that don’t bring to mind any faces when I read them—Ari, Jason, and Michael.
“I don’t remember these three at all,” I say, neglecting to mention that I can’t remember the first three dates after the break because I was still focused on the one I had before it. With Wes.
“Ari was a little weird,” Laurie offers. “He spent our whole date talking about his aunt’s hysterectomy.”
“Oh my god, he told me that story, too,” Jennifer says. “It seemed like he was nervous. Maybe because he was about to… you know.”
It seems like a stretch, but I don’t know if any of us have the skills to tell the difference between normal “first date” nerves and “about to commit a massacre” nerves.
“Michael was kind of quiet,” Dani says after a moment. “So was Jason, honestly. He was the blond one, right?”
Laurie shakes her head. “I thought Jason was the brown-haired one and Michael was the blond.”
Jennifer cringes. “I am just picturing the same person.”
“Michael was blond, Jason had brown hair, and Ari must have been telling everyone about his aunt,” Wes says, and I remember he met all the men during cocktail hour.
I don’t know if their conversations were as robust as the women’s down in the basement, but even if they were, the way men act around other men is different from how they act with women.
While there’s every chance that Ari, Michael, or Jason is Heart Eyes, it’s just as likely that one of them is the dead guy in the hallway on the other side of the mezzanine.
“Who’s next on the list?” Laurie asks once we reach a communal impasse on the guys I can’t remember.
I point to another name.
“Lee and I were figuring out how he could get Nia’s attention—”
“Oh really?” Dani says, and when all eyes turn to her she looks a little disappointed. She tries to shrug it off. “I liked Lee.”
“He was sweet,” Laurie agrees, and when Jennifer nods, I know they’re all thinking that disqualifies him from being the killer.
Being sweet and being interested in another woman shouldn’t make him a suspect, but we also haven’t seen him at all since the night took a sharp turn.
He’s had just as much opportunity as anyone else to be the killer.
“There was John,” Laurie says.
John.
Since he left—since he hasn’t come back—I have to admit the idea that it could be him has bullied its way into my brain.
I can’t tell if the foreboding twist in my stomach is because he hypothetically had the opportunity to kill the guy in the hallway and leave the rose and card in the VIP room, or because he’s completely innocent and probably slashed to pieces somewhere.
“How did that date go?” Dani asks, and I feel the weight of Jennifer’s and Wes’s stares on the side of my face.
My cheeks heat up and I hope no one can see it when I drop my attention back down to the card and shrug.
We had a good date, I told him I liked Taylor Swift’s music, and he’s been missing for so long…
“It was fine.” Then on second thought I look up. Laurie got to experience all my dates after me. If I made such an incredible impact on one of these guys, you’d think she’d be the first to know about it. “How was he with you?”
“Nice.” She shrugs. “He seemed interested in our conversation. Present. Bare minimum stuff.”
“Our date was really good,” Jennifer says, then she blushes. I don’t think she meant to put that much emphasis on the word. “I mean, it was good, too. Nice.”
“He was nice to talk to,” Dani adds. “I felt more comfortable with him than some of the other guys.”
Nice. Nice. Nice. It’s a unanimous assessment, but it doesn’t take that twist out of my stomach, because if he was standing here now, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
My mind flashes back to when we were all in the basement after Curtis was killed. John was a few feet away from me when we heard that scream, the one I’m sure belonged to the coat check attendant.
Unless he can be in two places at once, there’s no way he did it.
Not to mention, there are five other men who have been gone just as long as he has. I told all of my dates about my music preferences. And John and Jennifer’s date was clearly really good.
The guilt for thinking that he’s a suspect, especially when everyone else is singing his praises, is quickly overshadowed by the guilt that I should have done more to make him stay.
I should’ve gone after him instead of following the sounds of that unfortunate disembowelment.
But then again, Heart Eyes could have found the others if I hadn’t caught him in the act.
He could have snuck up on them and cut everyone down if I’d followed John.
More people would be dead. Laurie could be dead, and I’d never forgive myself if that happened because I was chasing after some guy.
Laurie moves in to look at the card. “Who’s left?”
“Me,” Wes says, and when the other women all glance at the space between the two of us, what little of it there is, I think it’s pretty obvious that for the most part our date could be considered successful.
That could be a strike against him, but Wes was with Billie and Dani in the basement when Heart Eyes crafted his little display.
He’s the only man we know of who hasn’t gone off on his own.
Laurie clears her throat, fully recovered from her spewing spell, and the slight quirk she performs with her eyebrow is a taunt I hear loud and clear.
Eye fucker.
Instead of dignifying or affirming her accusation with a response, I simply purse my lips and go back to the list of names. There’s only one more familiar one left.
“Campbell was supposed to be my last date, but then…”
“Curtis,” Jennifer and Dani say in chorus before we all fall silent.
“He was acting shifty, and he did leave the group as soon as our backs were turned.” Laurie has returned to her logical mode.
It doesn’t fully check out for me, though.
Even though the Norman Bates vibes were strong with him, it feels a bit too anticlimactic for a slasher.
These days the shifty guy is rarely the killer.
“I hadn’t spoken a word to him,” I reason. “I don’t think I even looked at him until after—”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t looking at you,” Wes murmurs. The knife is lying against his forearm again and I watch the tendons of his hand shift as he grips it tighter. “If this is a rom-com, like you said, and he saw you from across a crowded room…”
Then we’re looking at love at first sight.
Moulin Rouge! Titanic. Romeo + Juliet. Whether it was from a trapeze, or the deck of a doomed ship, or through a fish tank, the male lead decided they were meant to be before the female lead had even spoken a single word. None of those films had a happy ending, though.
I know beggars can’t be choosers, but I don’t want that.
I don’t want this. I can understand seeing someone and having an instant attraction, but not falling in love with someone before you know anything substantial like their last name or their birthday or if they actually do appreciate mass killing as a way of being wooed.
Wes blows out a sigh. “Look, I still think we need to assume it could be anyone, but—”
There’s a squeal of shoes against vinyl that makes everyone jerk their attention down to the lower level.
For a second, I’m struck by the horror of my name traced out on the ground, as if I’m seeing it for the first time again, but then a figure appears from the shadows.
He stops short, chest heaving, hair disheveled, eyes locked on the artful tangle of insides, which must look like a mess of red without the vantage point we have, before he tears his gaze away and turns it skyward.
When he sees us lined up against the railing, his sigh of relief is audible. He rolls the broken Midori bottle from one hand to the other, then lifts his free one in greeting.
“Hey.”