Chapter 54: Smart Girls Have One Helluva Phone Conversation

Marley

Meanness, jealousy, and pure possession make me answer Arabella's call on Bodie's phone.

"Hey. It's Marley," I say coolly.

A long moment of silence greets me. Then a tearful, "Can you put Bodie on?"

The simple, respectful thing to do would be comply. She's obviously upset about something.

"He's...not nearby. And he's a little busy. I'll make sure he knows you called—"

"I really need him. What's he doing?"

No, you don't need him, Arabella. You need a good therapist and parents. Speaking of parents, my son is the one that actually needs Bodie.

"Bodie's teaching Darius how to take down a drum kit," I say. I don't know why I even tell her that.

That's a lie. Dr Watkins knows well that I'm flaunting our son—our family—in her face.

Her voice sounds shaky. "Okay. Well, please have him call me as soon as he can. It's urgent."

Something in her voice makes me inhale and try to wrestle control of myself away from Jealous Jasmine.

"Arabella, if this is related to your sobriety, you have a new specialist—"

"It's not that. It's...a family matter."

Family matter? Then you are definitely calling the wrong man, Bells.

Shit...unless...the family matter is about Cain Priestly.

Now I have to know.

"Arabella, if you will tell me what's going on, that might make a difference in how soon Bodie chooses to call you back. If it's an actual emergency—"

"It is. The police in Tennessee keep calling me. My stepfather missing. The police say there are signs of a struggle at his place and the lock was blown off his gate with a weapon. They think...they suspect foul play. They want to interview me and my mom...I don't know what to do..."

I sink slowly to my knees on the carpet.

I am extremely good at reading people. It's my job. The tension in her voice? It's not grief. It's not confusion for where he might be. It's not worry for her stepfather.

It's fear.

Why is she afraid?

"Arabella. Are you scared of a press problem? Is that why you are calling Bodie?"

"No, it's not that. Avery can handle that. It's...just...I need to talk to Bodie, okay?"

"You need to tell me why you are so upset."

"Goddamn you, Marley. You are not his fucking gatekeeper, okay? Put Bodie on the fucking phone!" she yells at me. "I need to talk to him. I need to warn him—"

She stops. But it's too late.

Warn him, she says.

My heart takes off—it runs clear away from me.

She knows. Something.

I reach out from somewhere deep in my gut and grab my heart, forcing it to slow, stopping it from running my body.

All at once—the parts of me? The shady girl and the doctor? They fuse.

I become a woman who will use every tool she possesses to protect what she loves.

"I'm sorry your stepfather is missing. I'm not sure why you think Bodie should be involved in this, but the most important thing you can do is tell your truth to the police. You don't anything about what happened to your stepfather, right?"

"Wrong," she says tearfully. "I know he's dead, and I know Bodie killed him. He...he said so."

Goddammit Bodie. I love you, but you really fucked up this time.

I don't react at all. No intake of breath, no hammering heart. Only my brain firing, seeking the right way to bring Arabella in line to protect Bodie.

I'll give undermining her reality a try.

"Why on earth would you say that, Arabella? Are you high right now? Delusions can be very confusing during drug use. I'm not judging you. Let me help you, okay? Give me your counselor's number. "

My voice is a mask concern. I feel sort of guilty, using Dr. Watkins to turn this around on her, but there is no fucking way I'm letting her sling accusations at Bodie. I have to discredit her...

"Listen to me, Dr. Geriatric Bitch. I know Bodie had something to do with Cain's disappearance. You can pretend all you want that Bodie wasn't my boyfriend--that he didn't spend months in Thailand high as fuck with his dick inside me—but you would be the one that's delusional. We shared a lot shit there. A lot more than sex and needles."

I feel sick at the images she's building in my head. They make me want to hit something—preferably Bodie. But I master my revulsion and my jealousy.

"I'm sure you did. But none of it was real. Not his feelings for you, not any drug delusions you have of what happened there—"

"The fact that he's the father of your kid is real, isn't it?"

My breath catches this time, but I pull the phone away too late, and she hears it.

"I thought so. He kept ranting about how he wasn't sure. How he thought your son might be his."

I say nothing.

"Well!?!?!? Is he!?!?!" she demands.

There's no point in lying to her. She's SCIC, and they all know the truth but her...

"Yes. Neither of us knew for sure, actually. We had a paternity test a few days ago. Darius is Bodie's."

"That wasn't the only thing Bodie confessed.Maybe he doesn't remember the things he ranted about when he was doped up on heroin. Apparently my high recall is better than his."

"What did he tell you?" I whisper.

"That he thought my stepfather molested me as a child, because of the way Cain always upsets me. That he wanted to kill him for it. He said he went to see my stepfather. He raged about the eyes of a dying man and the smell of his blood."

"He also cried about the Angel that washed him clean of the grave dirt he couldn't get off. That was you, wasn't it? He killed my stepfather and he lost his shit over it and you put him back together, didn't you?"

"What do you want Arabella?" I say coldly. "Are you calling to threaten him? Extort something more from him?"

"You aren't fucking listening to me!!!" she screams. "I'm calling to warn him!!! The police are searching Cain's property. If he buried the body behind the fucking trailer—"

Oh, wow. That changes things a bit. It's hard to believe that Arabella and I are on the same side of anything, but apparently we are both in the business of protecting Bodie.

"Arabella, you need to hear me," I say quietly. "Bodie did not murder your stepfather."

"You don't have to lie for him—I don't care. My stepfather didn't rape me, but he was a worthless piece of shit. I don't care if he's dead. So let me talk to Bodie—"

"No," I hiss. "You aren't listening. What happened was not murder. Bodie went there to talk to your step-father. To convince him not him not to contact you anymore. He took some friends with him, in case things got violent. Your stepfather called him racist names and shot at them. Almost killed Bodie. One of the other guys fired back in self-defense. Cain was shot. He died. But it was not murder."

She's silent as she processes this. "Actually, that makes more sense to me. Bodie is too good to be able to kill in cold blood. But what do you mean...he took guys with him? she whispers. "Not...the guys? Oh god, not Adam—"

Oh. Wow. That's telling. Not Adam. She cares about him. Well, I can't say I blame her. The guy is admirable in every way.

So Arabella cares about Bodie. She cares about Adam. I can work with that.

"No. Jesus, Arabella, do you think he would involve them? Bodie has other friends besides the Soundcrush guys. Surely you know that."

"His old gang, you mean?"

I say nothing.

"So...they don't know. Soundcrush."

"No, but if you want to keep this from hurting Soundcrush, from hurting Adam, from hurting Bodie, we have to be smart right now, okay?"

"That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to warn Bodie. There's a body out there somewhere. That means...evidence. He needs to...dig it up. Completely destroy it or something..."

Wow. Bells is tougher than I realized. She's really thought this through.

"He doesn't," I say calmly—much more calmly than I feel. "It's been nearly nine months. There shouldn't be much more than bones left. Certainly not any evidence that can link him to the crime."

Well, except the gun with his fingerprints. But that's a separate issue.

I don't think Daemon would undermine he's budding empire to rat Bodie out, but that gun is a variable in play that we need to control, not Daemon. And Bodie is having no luck getting anywhere with finding it. No Sixmob members, except Bodie's little buddy Preston, are anywhere close to turning on Daemon. And Preston doesn't know anything about the gun.

Bodie keeps talking about having DevBlue come toss the neigborhood randomly, then break into Daemon's house as well, but he keeps dragging his feet. It's not hard for me discern why...because he's ashamed to drag his Soundcrush family into his thug life.

Arabella is talking again. "Are you sure? Because if they find Cain's body—"

"They won't," I say, more confidently than I feel. "Do you think Bodie is stupid? He found a very remote place. Very hard to get to. Hours away. The...remains...are nowhere near where they police are looking. There's no murder here, because there is no body, and there won't be. There is only a missing person."

"Oh my god," Arabella whispers. "He did tell you everything."

"Of course he did," I say calmly.

"Like...in therapy?" she asks, her voice going high.

"No. Not like in therapy. More like he told you, I imagine. In a drug haze, while I held him on a bathroom floor.

"He was...devastated by what happened, Arabella. He didn't pull the trigger but he feels responsible for Cain's death. He is not ready to cope with it. He has too much on him right now. The only way he can function is to wall it off. He can't be connected to this investigation. Because if the police question him...Arabella...I don't know how he might react. He might...break. That's the one thing that might break him. And if he confesses...there is no way to prove what actually happened. They could try him for murder. Do you understand?"

She's silent. Finally, she says, "You love him, don't you? Like really love him?"

I'm thinking hard, trying to choose my words. If I say yes, does that anger her? Will she want to hurt him? Do I downplay my relationship with Bodie and gain her compliance by pointing out that Bodie is the key to salvaging her career?

Or do I appeal to her humanity? Beg her to help me save the father of my child, the man I love?

I don't know what motivates her. She can be so awful, but I know people in pain lash out. Is there decency beneath all her toxicity?

I reach around inside, pulling the answer from pure instinct.

I tell her the truth.

"I love him like I have never, will never, love anyone else."

"I get it. He's...special," she says. "I love him, too. Not like you, maybe...but I do love him. He's the only person in the world that has ever put up with my shit. Who saw something likable in me even though...I'm not...very. But he doesn't want me any more. I fucked that up." She laughs. "Or maybe you helped with that. Everything changed between us after Labor Day. That was because of you, wasn't it? You were there."

"Arabella, you have to understand. Bodie and I fell in love when we were kids, and we never got any closure on that...because we both went to jail. When we found each other again...it was all...still there. I have a child that we have both just learned is his. What's between us has always been. Darius makes it more powerful than I can really describe. I'm sorry if it hurts you to hear that, but Arabella, you know how your lost your father—your real father—as a little girl? And how it hurt? How it...damaged things? It would devastate Darius to lose Bodie now that he's finally found him. It would devastate me."

"Me too. You think I can stand the thought of Bodie going to jail—losing his life—all because he was trying to protect me?"

I feel tears spring to my eyes. Arabella is not all that different than Darius. She's a spiteful child sometimes, but she has a good core.

"Okay. So we are going to protect him, agreed?"

"Yeah. That's what I'm trying to do, Marley."

"Okay, I see that now. But you have to trust me when I say, the best way to protect him is to keep him out of it. So you are not going to mention the police investigating Cain's disappearance, agreed."

"Okay. I won't tell him. I promise. Not unless I have to."

"Good. Great. You tell the police you don't know anything. You tell them Cain Priestly is nothing to you but an ex-stepfather you haven't seen in years. You make your statement and then you tell Avery Thompson to get you a lawyer to run interference with the police if they have any more questions. Do you understand me?"

"Are you sure that's what we should do?"

"I'm sure." I pause. "Arabella...I know you can handle this. Darius used to watch your show. You're a very talented actress. You got this, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," she says, her voice lifted at my praise. "Sure."

"And you'll let me know if the police find anything that could link Bodie to being there? Which they won't, I'm just saying..."

"Right. Of course."

There's an awkward pause. I feel like, I need to steer the conversation back into normal. "So we'll be in LA in a couple of days. I already told Bodie, I'm not playing sober companion at your appearances. He'll be all yours, then..."

"No, he won't," she says wryly. "Marcy called to tell me Bodie has canceled a third of our appearances because he's planning to take you to some of the more private parties."

"Look, this is not easy for me either," I say. "But I understand that your career is important to both you and Bodie, and I'm trying to be gracious—"

"Yeah, thanks," she mumbles. "Listen...there's no gracious way to say this, but there is something else I needed to tell Bodie. I guess I might as well tell you," she sighs. "I have trichomoniasis. You know what that is?"

My stomach flips. "Yes. The most common STI. A lot of people don't know they have it."

"Yeah, well...I...we...probably got it in Thailand. There were a lot of other girls..."

"Bodie was fucking other girls while he was with you? And you let him?" I hiss, losing all filter.

Another long pause. "We were sleeping with a lot of other girls...he mostly used condoms with them but not with me and we were all...you know...together in lots of ways...he probably has it and doesn't know...my doctor said most men don't have symptoms..."

"Oh my god," I groan. I feel like I'm going to vomit. Or break something.

She makes an irritated sound. "Don't be so fucking pure. He is a rock star, you know."

"I don't want to know," I retort.

"Yeah well, if you love him so much, you better learn to accept the whole man. The freak in the bed, the guy with the drug problem—"

I cut her off with a harsh laugh. "Don't you lecture me about my man. I think I know him better than you ever fucking could—"

The door to the bedroom opens. Bodie's smile fades as he catches my angry words and realizes I'm on his phone. "What the hell?" he says, looking confused.

Dr. Watkins is nowhere to be found right now.

"It's Arabella. She's calling to say she caught a disease from your disgusting orgies in Thailand!!!"

I throw the phone at his head and as he ducks, I slip past him in the doorway and beat it down the stairs.