Starlight (Peaches Monroe #2)(48)
Author: Mimi Strong

Curiosity got the better of me, and I stepped out of the car. There on the grass was a bright green plastic ring with a pretend diamond.

A memory danced through my brain. Mitchell, holding the ring up and pretending to propose to me. I said yes, then he swallowed the ring and chased it down with Jack Daniels, straight from the bottle.

We’d bought the rings and some other kids’ toys from vending machines, right outside the…

My body turned icy cold, like a cloud just passed over my whole life.

“Mitchell, where did we go last night after they kicked us out of the club?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have taken those pharmaceuticals.”

I wiped my mouth, because the inside of it tasted like how I imagine an organic fertilizer factory smells. Something sat in the corner of my memory, but when I tried to reach for it, instead of the detail from last night, I got perfect recall of a news story about a woman who heard a scratching noise inside her ear that turned out to be maggots tunneling toward her brain.

I bent over and blasted the grass with bile, champagne, and what tasted not unlike pool water. Wait. It was pool water. “Gotta hydrate yourself,” was one of the things I’d said the night before as I stuck my face in the pool water and took a good drink.

Okay, that was gross, but why hadn’t I gone into the pool and washed my sticky body off? I love being in the water.

And why did I have something crinkly inside the waistband of my panties, just above where my pubic hair started?

I pulled up the hem of my dress at the front.

“Whoa, not here!” Dalton said. He’d gotten out of the car to either help or laugh, and he hadn’t held my hair back when I chucked, so clearly he was there to laugh at me.

Ignoring him, I pulled out the waistband of my underwear. I had what looked like a paper towel, folded in a square, taped to me.

Right. The vending machines were right outside a tattooist’s shop. And the boys had gotten temporary tattoos in their prize packs, but my plastic bubble had a bracelet that broke when I tried to put it on. Then I’d started crying about having big wrists. (Shit, man. Why couldn’t I have forgotten that embarrassing detail?) Daniel cheered me up by offering to buy me a tattoo.

I dropped my green sundress back down. The sun was high overhead, and the smell of someone’s stomach contents was getting to me. The square of paper taped to me was only two inches wide, so how bad could it be? Knowing me, the tattoo was probably a cartoon peach. I could work with that.

Dalton was hovering and had already come to the same conclusion as I had. “You got a tattoo?” he asked.

“Yup. Team Connor. I’m switching sides now for when One Vamp to Love comes back in the fall.”

“No, you didn’t.” He looked amused.

“It’s totally Team Connor, dummy.”

He frowned. “Dummy? That’s not nice. I picked you two up, and I could have kept driving.”

I remembered his sensitivity about being called a meat puppet, and the reputation of good-looking actors being dumb.

Mitchell asked Dalton, “How did you happen to be exactly where you were? Peaches told us last night you don’t live in Malibu.” He was still hunched over, but appeared to be finished being sick, by the way the pink had returned to his cheeks.

Dalton gave me a devious smile, his green eyes as mischievous as ever, and that million-dollar dimple in his chin mocking me. “My little secret.”

I tossed my purse down on the ground. “You had a tracking device implanted in my bag! You weird-ass rich f**ker!”

He started laughing, then doubled over, and finally fell back on the grass, rolling with laughter.

Mitchell looked over at me. “That’s a little paranoid.”

Dalton sat up, still grinning. “Show me your tattoo, and I’ll tell you how I knew you were in trouble.”

“No f**king way.”

Mitchell got my attention and pointed to the nearby water fountain. We both dragged our bodies to the water like zombies, and drank deeply.

Normally, public fountains gross me out, but I would have wrapped my lips around this one happily. Sweet, sweet water.

I was still enjoying the water when Dalton grabbed my arm. “Come on, we gotta go.”

Pulling my arm away, I snarled, “Don’t touch me.”

He held up his hands. “I’m done.” He backed away slowly, hands still up. “You’ll look awesome in the paparazzi photos. Really. Good luck with that, and have a nice life.”

Photos? I spotted a car rolling into the near-deserted park, a long camera lens visible behind the front windshield. Paparazzi.

Mitchell and I ran toward the car, Mitchell muttering about Team Drake all the way, and me apologizing in between curse words.

Dalton let us into the vehicle, and we took off, kicking up gravel with the tires. Mitchell clapped his hands. The windows were tinted, and nobody could see in, but I still slouched down low in the front seat, covering my face with my hand.

“Let’s get brunch,” Dalton said.

Mitchell squealed and started back into fanboy mode again.

When Mitchell finally stopped to breathe for a minute, I said to Dalton, “Are you seriously inviting us for brunch?”

“I have the time off. You and I were supposed to be spending this whole week together.”

“Right.” I felt about three inches tall. Meekly, I said, “Sorry I snapped at you. I’m a little hung over.”

“No shit!”

“Can you lower the volume of your sarcasm before you make my ears bleed?”

“Someone had a fun night.”

“And can we pull over at a gas station so I can take a whore’s bath at the very least?”

He turned to me, one dark eyebrow raised magnificently.

I explained, “That’s where you get a wet paper towel and just… do your armpits… and… oh, never mind.” I covered my face again. “Stop looking at me. I can feel your eyes groping me, Dalton Deangelo.”

Mitchell piped up from the back set. “We could swing by my apartment and freshen up. My roommate has some dresses that would look great on Peaches.”

I turned back to face Mitchell, who was looking peppier by the minute. “I thought your roommate’s name was Steve?”

“His drag name is Luscious Hilda Mae Sparkles. She’s inspired by this plus-size vintage pin-up girl from the fifties, plus Mariah Carey. Of course.”

“Of course,” I said, trying to wrap my dehydrated brain around the concept.