Second Lies (The Second Life Series) Read online

  “Jersey Girl,” I heard someone call. I perked my head up and spotted Lou. My heart instantly warmed, but then discomfort took over. When I went to Lux, Lou implied feelings for me. I responded by running in the opposite direction, and now, there was nowhere to run. “I almost thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been a slacker lately,” I stood to my feet. How could I let this slip my mind? It was Lou who actually referred me to this place. He’d been working out here for years. Of course, I’d run into him. “I’m trying to get back into the swing of things.”

  For a few awkward moments, neither of us said anything. Finally Lou choked out, “I’m sorry about the other day at Lux. I shouldn’t have said anything. Your relationship isn’t my business. It wasn’t my place to open my mouth.”

  “Walk with me?” I cocked my head to the side as I asked this. Lou put down his weights and followed me up a set of steps. A track had been built above the workout floor, extending around the perimeter, hanging by cords. It was pretty cool to see it erected. Besides one guy with ear buds in, we were alone. I braved on as I confronted the issue. “You insinuated something the other night. We need to talk about that.”

  “What do you mean?” Lou kept his sight away from mine, looking completely bewildered. “What did I insinuate?”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, searching his face for some truth. The runner started pounding towards us, so I moved to Lou’s side of the track to make way. “Do you or don’t you have feelings for me?”

  Lou started cracking up hysterically. My eyes grew in shock. Eventually, he slowed down. He wiped a tear from his eye, “Jers, are you serious?”

  My voice came out childishly. My cheeks burned. I bit my lip. “Isn’t that what you meant? You said I deserved someone who accepted me for me. I thought you were talking about-“

  “You thought I was talking about you and me? Together?” He laughed again. This time louder. A few people from the gym floor looked up at us. I started taking several, speedy and deliberate steps away. “Hey, wait for me!” He grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. “I love you, but you’re like a sister to me. That’s it. That’s all I meant. I was being protective of you. I’m always protective of you.”

  “I feel like a complete moron,” I buried my face in my hands, fighting the urge to cry. This was stupid. Why did I say anything? Of course, Lou didn’t have feelings for me. Not every man with a working cock had to fall for my boobs and ability to work a pole. “I’m sorry, Lou. I’m so sorry for saying anything.”

  “Don’t be,” he hung his arm around my shoulder and guided me around the track, even refusing to let go when the runner started pounding towards us again. The man was forced to squeeze by on my side, utterly annoyed. “Look at me. A guy my size has to have a weight limit, and you just don’t make the cut.” He poked my stomach. “You need more meat on you.” I couldn’t help but laugh. There was a reason why I loved him so much. He started laughing again. “That explains that look on your face.” He mocked my reaction from that night with large eyes and a hanging jaw.

  “Fuck you,” I gave him a hug and started seeing the humor in everything. Good, at least one of my friendships didn’t have to be complicated. “How’s Gloria?”

  He shrugged, “She’s not the same. She misses you, but she won’t admit it. She’s got everyone, but me, convinced she hates you. I know she doesn’t though. Gloria could never hate you.” My heart ached for my best friend. She was everything to me. Once I started working at Lux, I abandoned most of my other friends from school. I didn’t want them to have anything to do with my current life. I couldn’t risk them finding out what I did for a living. Gloria was pretty much the only real friend I had left, and now, I didn’t even have her. “What happened to you guys anyway?”

  It felt like a million years had passed since that damned photo shoot. I could clearly remember the look of pain and betrayal on her face when she realized I was on something. Gloria loved me. She loved me and wanted to be with me. What the fuck could I do with that? I didn’t even know she was gay.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I started heading for the stairs, picking up my pace again. “I think I’m going to head to her place after I leave here. She should be done class soon. We should finally talk and figure all this out.”

  “Good luck,” Lou called. I turned around to wave at him. “Give me a call the next time you’re here. It was good seeing you.”

  When I got to Gloria’s apartment building, I took the elevator to her floor with my forehead pressed against the wall. The door chimed and slid open. I gulped and started down the hallway. I knocked on her door, three hard raps. A few moments went by, and the door opened.

  Gloria answered the door with a smile on her full lips which quickly faded. Her bright eyes dimmed and her forehead creased with a frown. She looked different. Her hair wasn’t red anymore; it was black. She brushed it back with a center part running through. She was wearing an indecently short denim skirt and a pink blouse that complimented her curvy figure. She seemed to be a lot less depressed than Lou described.

  “Can we talk?” I asked. A long second went by, and then she motioned inside her apartment. “Thank you.” When I walked inside, I was mildly surprised. The lease was almost up. I thought she’d have things packed up for her move away from her roommate. I spun around and faced her. “Gloria, I’m sorry. You’re my best friend in the world, and I can’t lose you. I don’t know how we’re going to figure this out, but we need to. I know you miss me. We used to see each other every, single day.”

  She lifted her hand for me to stop and exhaled. She wrapped me into a hug and just held me there. Very few things in my life had ever felt so good. She pulled away, and my skin tingled with her absence. “I’ve missed you, too. I almost called you a hundred times.”

  I burst into tears. Fuck, I felt like such a girl. All these emotions roamed rampant inside of me. It was like as soon as I confronted one, all the feelings from everything else poured out. I hugged her again and whimpered, “Can we be friends again?”

  “Yes,” she cried back, and we just stayed there, crying and laughing like two idiots. Finally, we pulled away from one another and wiped our tears. “Let’s do something tomorrow if you’re free.”

  This felt like it needed to be more complicated. Our friendship was simple and easy, but there was still that hurdle we were dealing with. Gloria loved me. I didn’t want to hurt her again. “Should we talk about…?” My voice trailed off.

  “They were misplaced emotions,” she gazed at me with a weak smile on her face. “You made me realize that.” She started throwing some things in her purse. “I’m a lesbian, Adriana…Duh.” She laughed. “Zoe wasn’t my roommate. She was my girlfriend. We broke up just before I met you when things were at their worst. That’s why she was never at the apartment and fucking me over with bills. You and I had fun together. You made me smile again. I thought I was in love with you because I was so angry with her, but then you gave me what I wanted…and snatched that all away from me with your next breath.” I ran a hand through my sweaty, oily hair, completely uncomfortable. “I’m glad you did it though. You woke me up, forced me to get my shit together.” She watched me. I felt like I was going to fall apart. “Thank you, love bug.” There was a knock at the door. She grinned. “And that would be my first real date in God only knows how long.”

  Gloria sauntered over to the door. When she opened it, a tall, slender woman greeted her. They gave each other a short kiss, and I gulped at the sight. My nerves pricked. Gloria took the woman by the hand and smiled, “This is my best friend, Adriana. Adriana, this is my date, Vicki.”

  Vicki was pale white with bleached blonde hair that was shaved on one side and left choppy and long on the other. She was dressed in baggy jeans and a t-shirt with a band logo I’d never seen before on it. A vine tattoo wrapped itself around her arm. If Zoe was Gloria’s ex, then she was looking for a complete change in looks with Vicki.

&n
bsp; “Hi,” Vicki put out her hand, and I shook it. “Good to meet you.”

  “Yes,” I looked back and forth between her Gloria. I gulped, seeing my opportunity to exit. “I should let you guys get to your date. It was great meeting you, Vicki.” I nodded at Gloria, thinking so many thoughts I couldn’t say out loud. “Call me tomorrow. We should meet up. Bye Gloria! I’m glad we’re friends again!”

  “It was the most awkward moment of my life,” I groaned as Wes hovered over the stove, heating up ground meat. “How did I go all this time without knowing my best friend is a lesbian? I mean, I have nothing against her lifestyle choices, but I just wish I knew. She shouldn’t have kept me in the dark.”

  “And you kept me in the dark,” he seasoned and stabbed at the meat. “Why didn’t you tell me you and Gloria got into a fight?”

  “I didn’t want to talk about it,” I looked down at the granite slab that surfaced the island, tracing nonexistent circles with my index finger. “She was my best friend. It felt so private. It felt personal.”

  “You can tell me anything, private or not, no matter whom it involves,” Wes set the table with salsa, lettuce, sour cream and cheese. He put two beers out for us and then began pouring the meat into hard shells. “There we go. I haven’t made tacos in a long time, but these look alright.”

  I topped my taco with the sour cream and cheese and bit into it. Grease slithered down my chin, and I quickly dabbed at it with a napkin. It wasn’t bad, not amazing, but it wasn’t bad for a white boy attempting to make a Mexican dish.

  “How was work?” I asked mostly to change the subject. I didn’t want Wes digging into this. He still knew nothing about the photo shoot, and I’d do anything to keep it that way. As long as Gloria was willing, we could keep that in the past.

  “Hectic,” he shook his head. He took a large bite out of a taco and swallowed. “An order I placed last week was delivered to the wrong bar. Fuckers had no problem charging my credit card but rectifying the situation is an inconvenience for them.”

  “Hey, I have an idea,” I said putting down the food, giving him a seductive look and sticking out my chest. I purposefully wore a thin t-shirt and no bra. I caught him checking me out all night long which was good because I felt ridiculously horny. “How about I give you a massage tonight? I’m really good at it, and I bet you’ve got to be tense.”

  Wes shoved the rest of his food in his mouth and sucked on the tips of his fingers, making me squeeze the muscles between my legs. He placed his dishes in the sink and wiped his hands clean, “I’ll eat more later.” I gulped at the innuendo that heated me to the core. “I’m grabbing a shower, and then I expect you upstairs in fifteen minutes. That massage sounds perfect.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh as I took another bite of my taco. He kissed the side of my head and rushed up the stairs. Within a minute, I heard the shower turn on.

  The kitchen was still a mess, so I decided to clean it up a bit before I went upstairs. As I started putting things away, I heard an annoying buzzing. I ran to my purse, nothing from my phone. It kept going, incessant, maddening. I followed the noise to the living room. On the coffee table, Wes’s cellphone was going off, vibrating against the glass surface. I picked it up. Dennis’s name was glowing bold on the screen. I cursed to myself. I had never called him when I got back to Philly because I had been running around all day. It buzzed again, notifying me of a voicemail.

  As I stared at the phone, a nagging feeling crept into my thoughts. This should be all about business. Hell, Dennis used Wes’s bar to host an event. Of course, that’s what this was about, but something deep inside me told me just to listen. He was still in the shower. I could hear the water running. He would never know.

  I clicked the button and put the phone on speaker, “Hey Holden, give me a call back when you get this. We have business to discuss.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I went to that club you told me to check out and paid off that scumbag owner to wipe his records clean of Adriana. Everything’s taken care of. We still have a lot of work to do. I need you to find out if her cocksucker brother said anything about Isabel while she was away. Call me.”

  The phone went silent, and I dropped it to the floor with a loud thud. Wes told Dennis I worked at Lux? That’s how he found out about the picture. They were working together to cover all of this shit up…for Dennis’s campaign and Wes’s reputation. All my trust for Wes left me instantly. He was no better than any of the assholes in this world I was brought up in. I wondered how I could think any different. I wondered how I could have possibly let my fucking guard down.

  From downstairs, I heard the shower turn off, and his footsteps sound across the length of his bedroom floor. He called, “Adriana, I’m done. Come up here.”

  Jersey took me over. Anger and spite clouded my eyes. I clenched my hands tightly together. My jaw trembled in fury, suppressing any weak emotions that I couldn’t risk feeling right now.

  As I exhaled, I stomped up the stairs and met Wes in the bedroom. He was standing shirtless and wet with his towel wrapped around his waist. I glared at him. Anger was boiling hot on my skin. As soon as he saw me, the smile left his face, fading into oblivion. I didn’t say a word.

  He cursed. “Fuck…you know.”

  Chapter 5

  “How did you find out?” Wes ran a hand through his wet hair. Fear struck in his eyes. He was being careful with his words. Who knew what else he was hiding?

  “Is that really the important thing right now?” I screamed. Adriana was weak. She was emotional. If she was here now, she’d probably curl up into a ball and cry this out, but that wasn’t me. Just like at Lux, I transformed into Jersey whenever I needed to be strong, fearless, unbreakable. “What the fuck were you thinking? My business is my business! What gives you any right to go to Darth with this? You know what he’s done to my mother!”

  “I was trying to protect you,” he said in a much lighter voice. His skin was so pale. His voice wavered when he spoke. He didn’t make much eye contact with me, and he was so stiff. He was a classic liar. “I told Dennis about Lux because I didn’t want this haunting you in the future. You said you were done with that life, so what does it matter if I had him cover it up? In the future, you’ll thank me. You’ll see it was for the better if you ever want to make anything of yourself.”

  “Don’t fucking lie to me,” my heart pounded in my chest.

  Everything I saw in Wes was gone. Every kiss meant nothing. Every fuck was just a fuck. I should have seen this coming though. He kept rejecting me in the beginning. He didn’t want to sleep with a stripper, and with the help of Dennis Darth, he could rewrite history so he wouldn’t be dating one either. As far as I was concerned, he was lying about our whole relationship, so in essence, everything meant nothing. There was no use mourning over something that never existed.

  I screamed at him, “This had nothing to do with my feelings! What you did was selfish, all for personal gain. This is your last chance to tell me the truth before I walk out that door, and never look back. You have nothing else to lose, Wes…because I’m already gone. You mine as well tell me.”

  The tension was thick in the air. We were both frozen in time, staring, memorizing every last detail of this moment. Wes was the first to break. He walked towards me and reached for my hand. I flinched away. All I wanted was the truth. All I wanted was to know what I was dealing with. My women’s intuition told me he was keeping something from me all along. Now that I knew what, I needed to figure out the extreme and handle it.

  “Adriana, I was worried about you. I was trying to help,” he groaned and slammed his hand down on the end table. “Don’t do this! Don’t leave me over this shit!”

  “Are you going to tell me the whole truth?” I didn’t move a muscle. I was stone, giving away nothing.

  “You already have your truth,” he spat. “I was protecting you. I was protecting us. With Dennis’s campaign, people will eventually start digging. Think about your mom and dad and Nick. Do y
ou want your face plastered on a newspaper as Darth’s stripper stepdaughter? I bought my way out of that misery and embarrassment while there was still a chance.”

  His words sliced into me like a knife. That was all the confirmation I needed. Whether or not he admitted this was about himself, he said it straight out. This all had to do with embarrassment. At the end of the day, that’s what he was, embarrassed by me. Just like Dennis, if he could create his perfect mate with money and lies, he’d do it, and there was one thing I was absolutely sure of…I’d never end up with anyone who was even remotely like Dennis Darth.

  “Goodbye, Wes.”

  He didn’t chase after me which was good because I didn’t know what I was capable of in this state of mind. I did, however, hear him scream something and maybe punch the wall. I’m honestly not too sure. My body started working on autopilot. I went downstairs, grabbed my purse, coat, phone, keys, got into the car, turned it on, and drove. I don’t exactly remember doing any of this. I just know it’s the order of things. Hell, I don’t even remember driving, but in order to end up here, that had to have happened.

  I pulled into the driveway at Dennis’s house and walked up to the door. I rang the doorbell and within moments, my mom answered it. Her cheeks looked flushed. She looked shamed. The last time I’d seen her was at the bar when Dennis had her pinned to the wall. Even after I defended her, she chose to go with him. That was fine. She wasn’t my priority now although I had to admit a small part of me was happy to see she was okay since she’d practically disappeared that night for days without contacting me.

  “Adriana, I wasn’t expecting you,” she fixed her silk robe to shield herself from the cold breeze. “What are you doing here so late?”