Skin Deep (Skin Deep #1)

I hit the save button with a shaking hand and finished listening to the rest of the voice mails before I caught Floyd as he was finishing up with another client and let him listen to it. He shook his head and told me to call the police again. I called and made yet another report and then called Luke so I wouldn’t get yelled at for keeping things from him again. I calmed him down enough to keep him from rushing over to the office and sitting with me all day, because I knew that he had booked himself solid with clients to make up for the holidays.

I hung up the phone with Luke and sat there staring at my hands. I felt sick to my stomach, and wondered why this was happening and who the hell it could be. I felt tears well up in my eyes as I thought about how picture perfect everything had been last week. Now I felt like there was a shadow hanging over the memories, the sickening knowledge that someone had watched, intruded on a special moment, tarnishing the glow of that memory.

I sat up in my chair and started replaying the phone conversations and messages that I had recorded and saved, hoping that something would stand out to me, give me some kind of idea as to who this psycho sicko was. I mean, was it just by chance that he was at the bar and saw me? Did he know where I live? He knew what kind of car I drove, but the more questions swirled in my head and the more I listened to his words, I realized that I was no closer to figuring anything out. It was making me crazy and I was beginning to feel a little helpless at the fact that there was this unknown entity watching me and there was nothing I could do about it.

I closed the office at five and walked out with Floyd. He usually is never in the office when I am leaving for the day, but he stuck around to make sure I was okay. He’s such a softie.

Creepy was never far from my mind over the next couple of weeks. He hadn’t called since last week and he didn’t talk long then. In fact, the only thing he’d really said was that it was time for me to come home. I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant but I had called Leah and asked that she stay at mom and dad’s for a bit, just in case.

Luke was beside himself with worry and I think if he could have gotten away with it, he would have set up shop in the office beside me. He and Jackson and Brandon and even Calland, believe it or not, had begun stopping by the office at random times just to check on me and ask if he’d made any kind of contact. I think we were all a little relieved when day after day I’d been able to say no.

When a month went by without any calls from Creepy, we decided to celebrate a little and since he’d been so sweet over the past few weeks, I’d invited my brother to come with. Of course Allie was coming; she’d always been a permanent fixture in my life but she’d been around even more lately. Her, Brandon, and Jackson had become like a trio of best friends who were inseparable, but there was an air of tension around them. In my opinion (and I shared it often) it was all sexual and she should just frickin’ give it up already. Together or separate, whichever, she just needed to fuck them and then maybe they could all relax a little.

The doorbell rang and I answered the door to find Calland standing there, his left arm holding a sleeping bag and pillow, his right thrown casually around the shoulders of a tiny brunette girl. She was really cute in that aww-you’re-so-young-and-have-no-clue-about-real-life kinda way, but I didn’t say anything, just raised my brow at him as I let them in.

We’d decided to have a slumber party, adult drunken style. And before you ask, no, I really have no clue who came up with that idea, nor did I know just what it was supposed to entail, other than the fact that no one was allowed to leave and we had about a million different drinking games written out on index cards in a bowl on the table. What I did know for sure is that we’d gotten so much booze that we could get a small third world country drunk on the fumes.

“Okay!” Allie shouted, standing up on a chair at the kitchen table. “Welcome to the first annual Crimshaw Family and Whoever the Hell Else We Wanna Invite Drunken Fest Sleepover! I really don’t know why I’m standing on a chair and shouting at you like I’m the fuckin’ emcee or something, but it is what it is. So this here’s tha’ rules, yo! You drink? You sleep here. You breathe in the smell of booze? You sleep here. Basically, you sleep here! Next rule. We play games. You don’t play? You’re fired and must sit outside in the cold, naked, for an hour.”

We all laughed at that, especially because of the way Allie was acting. I mean, there was only me, Luke, Brandon, Jackson, Calland, Allie, and Calland’s little woman, who’d quietly said her name was Buffy (WTF?).

She continued, “Now, without further ado, I’m gonna stick my little hand here into this big ol’ bowl of make ya puke games and pick one out. Then we’re gonna play! Oh! One more last rule and it’s a big one. DO NOT GIVE DOUG ANY EGGS! No booze either, but PLEASE! NO EGGS!”

With that, she reached into the bowl and pulled out a card, squealing before she read out loud, “Chooser’s choice! Make your own game! YES!”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Luke in mock horror, knowing that things were about to get really weird and crazy. Allie thought for a bit and came up with a game that involved constantly changing the rules, which meant that within twenty minutes, we were all on the way to being shit faced drunk.

I raised my hand, sure that that was what the new rule was before you could talk. “Umm, okay, so I say its time for a new game. Who’s with me?”

“Uh-uh-uh,” Allie sing-songed. “Drink, bitch. You didn’t say drunk duck before you spoke. Raising your hand was like three rules ago. So HA!”

I rolled my eyes again (for like the sixteen billionth time that night) and chugged my…to be honest, I’d given up keeping track of what I was drinking about four cups ago. It was good, I knew that much. Either that or my taste buds were burned off from the liquor…

Luke and Brandon both spoke up beside me and agreed that it was time for a new game. I stood up and grabbed the bowl from the center of the table, passing it to…ugh…Buffy for her to choose the new game. She held up the card before screaming (really, she whispered but it was louder than she usually whispered so I guess it counted as a scream for her), “Quarters!”

We all took turns for about ten minutes trying to bounce a quarter into a glass before we got bored again. Then Calland got the bright idea to forego the cards and play a drinking game he called, Watch the Movie and Get One. It made sense when he explained it a little more. The premise of the game was basically to watch the movie The Hangover and you had to drink any time one of the following happened in the movie: Someone takes a drink, someone cusses, someone gets hurt, you see nudity of any kind. We made him stop at four because we all knew that just those alone would have us shit faced in the first half hour!

So we moved the bottles to the coffee table and all crowded on to the couches and chairs. Luke and I curled up in the armchair, Calland and…don’t make me say it…sat together on the love seat, while Allie sat between Brandon and Jackson on the couch. Luke grabbed the remote and hit play and true to the name of the game, we were all going to have hellacious hangovers tomorrow.

By the end of the movie (I think it was the end…I only had one working eyeball left), my head was swimming. I’d given up and yelled uncle not even twenty minutes into the movie because I didn’t want to get to the puking drunk point. I hate puking and I avoid it at all costs, so no way in hell was I doing anything that might bring me to that!