Page 69 of Love, Lies, and Too Many Guys

She deflates like a sad party balloon. “When will Earl be finished?”

“How am I s’posed to know that?” He stares at her as if she’s the slow one.

“Like I said.” I point to the plastic seats in the corner. “We’ll be over there.”

Nicole fumes as we make a beeline for the chairs farthest from the counter. “He’ll be lucky if I don’t post a Yelp review about the shitty service in here. I should flame them on socials! The Get Laid List account has almost three hundred thousand followers now.”

My chin hits the floor. “Holy shit!”

“I know, right?”

I glance at Earl, whooping it up after getting a strike, and make a mental note to revisit the social media account when I’m not preoccupied. “Shouldn’t the guys be here by now?”

“Now that you mention it . . .” Nicole checks her phone again, furrowing her brow as she stares at the display. “That’s weird. They should’ve been here almost fifteen minutes ago. Jer’s notoriously late, but I’d expect at least one of them to be on time.”

On the verge of freaking out, I scan my surroundings and hope like hell I’m up to date with my tetanus booster. “Can you call him?”

“Uh . . .” She gives me a shaky smile. “I don’t have service in here. Do you?”

I dig my phone out of my back pocket, and my stomach plummets when I realize I don’t have service, either. “Nothing. Why’d you pick the bowling alley in the middle of a freaking dead zone?”

“I don’t know.” She groans. “Jeremy told me about this place. It’s not like I’d ever be caught dead in a dirty-ass bowling alley.”

The irony isn’t lost on me.

“Bowling was your idea!” I shriek, once again regretting my decision to put her in charge of my destiny.

“Let’s go.” She stands, glancing at her phone again as if willing it to ring. “If we drive a block or two north, toward town, we should have service again.”

“Good idea.” I nudge ahead of her, taking the lead as we make a break for it, leaving Daryl and Earl behind.

In the few seconds it takes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, I step off the curb without breaking my neck in Nicole’s sky-high stilettos. With nothing but the single working streetlight on the far side of the lot and the flickering neon sign overhead to light the way, I make it halfway between the building and the car before noticing a newish green truck and a dirty white van flanking Nicole’s coupe. Instead of taking any one of the dozens of other spots, they chose to box us in.

There’s no sign of a driver in either vehicle, but since cars don’t drive themselves, they must be somewhere. My best guess is they’re holed up in the back of the van, doing whatever shady people do in seedy bowling alley parking lots. Rumors of drug deals going down in this part of town are rampant, but I’ve never actually witnessed one with my own eyes.

Morbid curiosity has me inching forward for a closer look. A few steps later, I come to my senses. What the hell would I do if I came face-to-face with a drug dealer? Or god forbid, something worse.

Visions of Law & Order: SVU dance through my head as the shadows between the cars shift, taking a decidedly human shape. I don’t have mace. Or a stun gun. Or even a pair of sensible shoes. So unless I can MacGyver a weapon out of a strip of condoms and a tube of pink lipstick, I’m screwed. Daryl and Earl are looking pretty harmless now.