Page 2 of My Best Friend's Dad

I grasp at my throat, panting and gasping for air.

In the span of half an hour, a good portion of my life has gone straight to shit.

My relationship? Dead. My car? Dead. My phone? Dead.

I resist the very tempting urge to have a full-scale meltdown. While raging would certainly feel good at the moment, I need help, and needing help involves venturing out of this car intopublicto try and hunt down a phone. Or maybe payphones? I can’t remember the last time I saw one. It’s now just past eleven. Most businesses will be closed. I can’t walk into some place with snot running down my face and my eyes swollen shut from crying and expect anyone to want to loan me a phone.

I very unwisely wore my contacts. I don’t have my glasses with me, and even though my eyes feel like mini sandstorms and shitstorms had a baby, I’m going to have to keep them in or stumble around almost blind.

I genuinely try to look on the bright side of the shitty times. I’m lucky enough—if I can even use that word right now—that my car decided to die downtown. I wasn’t even going to drive this way, but traffic was light, so I decided not to take the twenty-minute detour around the normally packed streets. Downtown means there has to besomethingopen. I could be stuck on the side of a road right now with nothing more than a trench coat and towering heels on. There’s no way I can walk more than a few blocks in these shoes without feet death, so my car dying right in front of a number of buildings is a blessing.

Providence has to be one of the most underrated cities in this whole country. I was born here. I thought about leaving to go to college and trying to make my way somewhere else, but I love the old-timey, classic, romantic aura. The pictures of the nighttime downtown skyline with most of the buildings lit up and clustered right on the water, giving off sleepy reflections, stand as the poster child for how picture-perfect this place is.

I can practically hear my mother’s dry voice of reason echoing in my head as I zip my purse back up, throw the strap over my arm, and get out of the car.All this could have been easily avoided if you’d done what I told you to do and picked a stable, soul-sucking career with set hours and a reliable paycheck. Or a stable career with unreliable, wild hours that will exhaust you and leave no room for anything else in your life but will at least provide some semblance of satisfaction.

It could also have been avoided if you’d been responsible, charged your phone, and not gone out with a heaping toolbag of douchey trouble. I’m not the kind of mother who says I told you so, but I saw this one coming from a mile away.

My mom is a doctor. She’s good at giving long speeches and sad mom faces when I inevitably end up disappointing her. My dad’s a lawyer, and he’s perfected the stony, give-nothing-away aura. If he found out about tonight, he’d just shake his head, but even with his face blank, his thoughts would be obvious.

Since the fob won’t work, I lock the car manually and then stand on the sidewalk for a second, glancing up and down the street for signs of late nightlife.

My heart gives a funny little bounce in my chest in a good way when I realize where the car died. I’m only a hundred feet or so from theBellhopHopperbell. My bestie since my last year of high school is the most amazing, badass,fight a herd of stampeding monkeys for youtype of woman, and it just so happens I know her uber duper rich and sort of absentee father owns the place. It’s just one of a chain of many hotels that he runs. Magnate? Dominator? Mogul?

Whatever the right term is for being so crazy rich, thank freaking farge.

I cut a straight line down the sidewalk, my heels clicking noisily.

I went for the total cliché surprise your boyfriend with a trench coat and spicy lingerie underneath, so no, I don’t have anything on under this coat except a bunch of straps and lace that offer my lady bits exceptionally dubious coverage. From the trench coat’s hem on down, I have a professional look going on. Stockings and heels. I also took care to do my hair, straightening my unruly curls. Do you know how freaking long it takes to do that? I even did my makeup dark and sultry. I wish I had looked in the car’s tiny little visor mirror before I bailed. That sultry look is probably giving adrowned raccoonnow.

Double fuck. Fuck on fuck. Fuck with fuck on top.

It’s too bad my bestie is just into goth in a big way, not the devil-worshipping stuff that people always assume goes hand in hand. She knows zero hexes. In the past five minutes, I may or may not have decided that an average member is not a real curse. Shrinkage should occur.

Like many of the buildings in Providence, the hotel’s front is stone, though the sides are brick. The building is only about five floors tall, or at least it has five banks of windows along the impressive sides. The street view is lovely, with one huge stained glass round window as the focus. The massive wooden doors are straight out of a fairytale castle. On the inside, I bet it’s stunning.

This would be a lovely place to get married.

I don’t know why it hasn’t made my list.

Depending on whether or not they let me use a phone, it could end on another list.

The shitlist or the hex-wish list.

The huge doors, with the arch on top and lion-head knockers, swing open surprisingly easily. The lobby is all marble with dripping chandeliers, rich red carpets, and spiral gold staircases. Exactly what you’d expect from an old-timey hotel that wishes it were a castle.

I should approach the front desk and ask if I can use a phone or, better yet, request they call a tow truck for me. I have a twenty. I can pay them for the call if they can’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

I take one step in that direction, but a hefty wooden door, partially ajar, catches my eye. I creep a little closer until I can see that just beyond the door, the place looks like a cave with mood lighting.

There’s always that part in the movies where you know someone is going to get killed for walking in the dumbest direction. Anyone would know they’re going to their doom, but still, they persist. And sure enough, bam! They’re eaten by monsters or chased by a chainsaw-wielding maniac.

Lucky for me, I’m not in a horror movie. This is a classy hotel. Even if the place is haunted, I can’t say my night could actually get any worse. It’s just a lounge, and honestly, you know what? I’m not a drinker, but I think this night calls for one. Even a freaking cranberry juice would be welcome. I’m suddenlyparched, probably from the massive tear fest in the car where I cried out half my bodily fluids.

The lounge might be small, but as I walk in, I’m pleasantly surprised to find that it’s actually not cave-like at all. It’s drenched in the same luxury as the lobby, minus the chandeliers and the marble. It’s a different kind of luxury here. Old gentleman’s club comes to mind. The gold framed paintings, dark upholstered booths, hardwood flooring, cherry-hued wainscotting on the walls, and matching crown molding on the ceilings are a straight throwback to a hundred and fifty years ago. The bar takes up the entire back wall. It’s made of ornate black wood with tufted velvet done up with little gold buttons on the front. The mood lighting along the rows and rows of glass shelves stuffed with bottles behind them offers an almost jarring contemporary touch.

Two things immediately catch my eye: the piano in the far corner of the room, sitting forlorn and lonely, and the man behind the bar.

Chapter two