Chapter 25 Eff
Take a picture with him on the Santa Monica Pier. x
That is all.
Have fun.
“No!” I slam the journal shut and crouch lower against Reed’s hedge. Take a picture with him on the Santa Monica Pier?
I cannot do that—like this. Santa Monica’s twenty-five minutes away! I have no car. I don’t even have underwear!
I scan the area, heaving in desperate breath after desperate breath. I’m hyperventilating again. I inhale, count to four, and exhale.
I need to get the hell out of here.
I’m going to have to go up to a random stranger’s house—inexplicably naked—ring the doorbell, and ask to use their phone. But I can’t attempt to speak to a human until I at least find something to cover my vag and ass simultaneously.
I scour the rest of the block. There’s a For Sale sign stuck in the grass three houses down. That’ll work.
I’ll have to walk past Reed’s gate to get it. Should I pass the gate, ass to camera? Or head down, boobs and journal-covered vag to camera, ass to street?
I can’t crawl and stay out of shot because it’s a wide-angle lens. Reed would get a notification of a naked woman sleuthing on all fours across the driveway with her hair covering her face like The Grudge.
We’re doing ass to camera. I side shuffle with my body facing the street, and chin to my chest, letting my hair fall forward as I move as fast as possible toward the For Sale house.
Once I’m past his gate, I start running, journal over my lower region, arm flat across my chest to keep my boobs from flailing.
I make it across a second lawn, a third. Breathing hard, I launch myself behind the flimsy cardboard sign stuck into the grass of a dark, quaint, one-story home.
Adrenaline’s thundering through me as I drop the journal, wrench the sign up from the ground, and hold it against my torso. I shiver as trails of cold dirt slip down my skin.
The sign’s just long enough to cover both my nips and vag. I can use one hand to hold it in place and the other to hold the journal over my ass. It’s awkward, but it’s the best I’ve got.
This is going to be okay.
I maneuver to a small bush at the edge of this property and crouch next to it, sign pressed to my chest. I have to pick a house with a light on, bite the naked bullet, and ring their doorbell.
Best to keep moving in the direction away from Reed’s home.
I skim the selection farther down the street. The majority of these houses have gates. Tall, elaborate gates. I can’t stand naked outside a gate, and I can’t climb a gate naked. I’ll get arrested.
There’s a cute gateless red house on the corner of the next cross street, three more houses down, with a light flipped on upstairs. Red houses feel kind of quirky. Maybe they’ll be more accepting of a naked stranger in need of a phone?
Please, be accepting of a naked stranger who needs to use the phone.
I exhale a slow preparatory breath and launch into a waddle-run, grass tickling my feet.
I am Bruce Willis in Die Hard. I am Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, I’m Cameron Diaz in the goddamn Charlie’s Angels movies.
I am . . . one house into my dash when a car comes around the corner of the cross street I’m aiming for.
The bravado blows out of me like smoke on the wind.
Momentarily blinded by the incoming headlights, I take a confused lunge-step forward, and then to the left, toward the house I’m in front of, before collapsing into a squat again behind the sign, body suddenly shaking like a leaf.
Eff. They could call the police. What happens to random naked people running through the LA suburbs? I’ve never seen one! Do they go to jail? Will I have to go to jail naked? Will they let me make a pit stop at a Target?
The car slows.
Oh, please no, don’t slow. I hug myself into a tight ball, arms wrapped around my shins, struggling to condense myself to the point of invisibility.
I can hear the wheels grinding to a halt across the tiny stones scattered over the pavement.
Floodlights wash over me as it pulls to the curb in front of the dwelling I’ve collapsed in front of.
I cringe as the passenger side window zmmms down.
“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice. “Sweetheart, is everything all right?”
I peek my head up. An attractive older-middle-aged white woman with luscious long brown hair is leaning out the window. Slowly, I rise off the ground, clutching the sign, to my front, journal to my back.
I take a tentative step forward. “Um, I’m so sorry—I’m having a weird night.” I’m about ten feet from her window. “By any chance can I perhaps borrow your phone?”
The driver leans forward, past the kind-looking woman in the passenger seat, and I die.
All systems down. Bye forever.
His mouth falls open. “Rikki?”
Reed.
I squeeze my eyes shut as the back window rolls down as well. There’s another guy in the back. Another Reed. He gawks at me and back toward the front seat.
“You know the random naked woman running down our street?”