“I don’t either.” He sits down adjacent to me in the armchair, forearms resting on his knees. There’s a hard, angry expression in his mismatched eyes.
I take a tiny sip of my tea, wondering if my stomach is about to revolt. Everything stays where it’s supposed to, thank god. Next to me, Rush is still sunk in angry silence. “Don’t you need to take that contact out? You’ve had it in all night.”
“I don’t wear contact lenses,” he says, placing his fingers around the rim of his mug but not picking it up.
“Oh.” Jasminta was right, then.
If he’s trying to find a nice way to fire me, he’s only going to make this worse. Tomorrow I’ll be handing my resumé in at restaurants, hoping someone is desperate enough for a waitress that they won’t look at it too closely. “Can you just get it over with, please?”
“Get what over with?”
“Firing me.”
He looks at me for a long time. “You must have a pretty shitty opinion of me.”
I freeze, the mug of tea halfway to my lips. “You? I’m the one who spent the night in the ER while you had to babysit me.”
If he’s not firing me, then what is he doing here? He’s wasted enough of his weekend on me already.
I study him, noticing the way his hand clenches on his mug and then lets it go again. “You’re angry with me.”
Rush sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “If I’m angry with you, it’s because we’re sitting here and not in the police station while you tell them exactly who put fucking ketamine in your drink!”
His voice gets loud at the end, and I wince. “You believe that I didn’t take it?”
He rears back in indignation. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”
My insides feel like they’ve been sucked away by a vacuum cleaner. Through numb lips, I whisper, “Because no one ever believes me.”
I haven’t checked social media to see if there are pictures of my stumble through Baroque. If I’m recognized, everyone will suppose that the messy girl who was fired by Palatine is back and causing more mess.
“Did one of your friends spike your drink? Did they think it was a joke?”
“No! God, no.”
“Then who was it? Was it someone you trusted? Was that why you were so upset? I know you remember who it was.”
I feel sick all over again as I remember Striker watching me beadily as I sipped that glass of champagne. He must have laughed so hard when I walked away. I wonder if he and his friends watched me stumble around the club. Tears fill my eyes again and I press my palm against my face.
A warm hand touches my shoulder. “Dree?”
I sit up quickly and shake my head. I’m not crying. I’m not. “Thank you for believing me. That means so much to me.”
I said the same thing to him on the street last week when he told me he liked my dancing. People just used to trust me. Now I’m always trying to second guess how someone really feels.
“But?”
I take a large mouthful of tea while I get a hold of myself. “But there’s no point in me going to the police and making a big deal out of it, given my… You know. Everything that happened.” The police will hear my accusation against Striker, find the tweets about me, and throw me out of the station as a time-waster. If by some miracle they do believe me, I’ll be ripped to pieces online all over again.
I raise my head to look at Rush, wondering if he knows what I mean by everything. He’ll want to know what exactly happened. If he pushes me to tell him now, I’ll probably throw up again.
But his expression isn’t curious, or suspicious. He looks furious, his eyes sparking with anger. “Whoever did this needs to pay.”
“I just want to go to bed and forget this ever happened.”
Rush’s hands clench into fists. Suddenly, he goes to the window and stands there with his arms folded, glaring out at the sunny morning. After a moment, he turns around and sits on the windowsill. “It’s your decision. I don’t like it, though. I fucking hate that they’re going to get away with this.”
I glance toward my bedroom. I just want to sleep, but I can’t think how to ask him to leave without seeming rude.
Rush notices the direction I’m looking, and sighs. “Go take a shower. I’ll wait until you’re in bed and then go. Be careful in the bathroom.”
Alone in the bathroom, I turn the taps on as hot as I can bear and stand under the water. It’s several minutes before I find the strength to lift my arms and wash my hair and the makeup off my face.
When I come out of the bathroom in my pajamas, Rush is in the kitchen and I can smell toast. He follows me into my bedroom with another cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast.