Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

“Yet oddly, I find myself dying to check out semiprecious jewels.”

We were rushed out like the trash.

Jin and Mduduzi fell back and stared at me. Jin’s words actually held force. “So you know Abe Krasner?”

I could see the little journalistic wheels spinning in their eyes. Too late for anything but honesty now. “That would be a yes.”

Which meant I would end up in Tanya Jones’s office as soon as she was back.

But before that, I had a party to go to.

* * *

Lucy acted briefly censorious when I asked her and Sabeen if they wanted to come out that night. “I thought you were getting over this guy.”

“I am. I’m just...it’s just confusing. I’m confused. It’s a party! Who turns down a party?”

They stared at me.

My shoulders slumped. “Maybe I shouldn’t go. It’s probably not my scene. I don’t even have anything to wear.”

Lucy shrugged. “This is easy. It’s at Turquoise. You just wear something skanky.”

“I don’t really do skanky well.”

“Are you kidding me? Look at your boobs. You’d do skanky fabulously.”

My lips twitched. “I suppose I should rephrase that to I’m not super comfortable doing skanky.”

“That’s why you have Lucy,” Sabeen said lazily. “She takes all the responsibility and leaves you to the fun.”

Which was as good a theory as any, and led to me sitting on Lucy’s bed as she went through her closet.

Lucy was taller than me, which meant most of her dresses would be longer on me than her, but she certainly wasn’t as busty, so it sort of balanced out. She handed me a piece of cobalt fabric. “Try this one.”

I held it up. “Are you sure this is a dress?”

“Not only is that a dress, it is a piece of magical fabric that enchants and enhances.”

I rolled my eyes. “I can’t wear it. I need something at least vaguely professional because some of the other guys from the team will be there.”

Luce rolled her eyes right back. “Useless. Fine. Oh! You can wear a striped shirt and black short shorts and be a sexy referee.”

I raised one brow and drew the word out. “Professional.”

In the end, I slung on a black dress and spiral earrings. Because it belonged to Lucy, the dress was obscenely short on me, and because of my body, the neckline was a little more revealing than usual. It certainly wasn’t anything I’d wear into the office, given how much it clung to my top and bottom, but it seemed to be suitable club attire.

Another half hour passed before Lucy finished my makeup. When she let me see, I was embarrassingly fascinated by my reflection—rather like the pretty girls on the subway—because it looked nothing like me, but rather like a fashion-slave had taken up residence in my mirror and decided to mimic my every movement.

The subway ride to the club took half an hour. A line crawled out the door, but Lucy confidently strode to the front, past all the other people, and managed to talk our way inside. I tried not to gape as I followed her in. That worked. I couldn’t believe that had worked.

Once inside, I paused. Abe had been right. This wasn’t my scene.

But I was exhilarated with youth and happiness and the idea that I could bypass lines and that rules didn’t apply and that everything was in my grasp at this moment.

&nbs

p; Blue lights flickered through the club. Everything was too dark and too bright, too close and too much.