Over The Limit by Lacey Silks Page A

made a face. The thought of food
made me feel queasy.
    “Come on.” Mike pulled me off the dance floor, grabbed a
plate off the dessert table, and stacked it with some fruit and cake. The tempo
picked up again on the dance floor.
    We sat down at the table and he fed me a tasteless piece of melon
with a fork. I chewed it like gum.
    “I don’t like it,” I mumbled.
    He pressed his hand to my forehead, “You’re burning up, Val.
Are you sick?” His forehead creased, and the dark chestnut eyes I loved so much
turned almost black. Or maybe it was my inability to focus.
    “I don’t think so.” I fought the nausea that hit when the melon
plummeted into my stomach.
    “I think you are. Let’s go find Nurse Kelly.” He took me
under my arm and we made our way toward the entrance where most of the volunteer
chaperones hung out.
    As soon as the door behind us closed muffling the music, I
bent over in pain from the clutching around my stomach. “Ouch!”
    My scream drew everyone’s attention. Mike lowered me to the
red carpet and I curled in a fetal position. The pinching sensation stabbed
continuously, and I could no longer concentrate on the buzzing of people around
me.
    “It hurts.”
    Beyond the sound of my short breaths, the rush of people
around me hummed in my ears. Someone placed a wet cloth on my forehead.
    “I know, Val, I know.” Mike smoothed my hair. “Help is on
the way.”
    A few minutes later, sirens sounded in the distance. The
hall blurred behind my eyes as the room spun. Strong arms rolled me over onto a
flat surface. Once in a while I saw Mike’s face over mine, mouthing words I could
no longer hear.
    The last thing I remembered saying was, “Don’t leave me,
Mike, please don’t leave me.”
    “I won’t,” he repeated. Or perhaps it was just the movement
of his lips that told me he wouldn’t.
    As the paramedics whisked me away on a gurney, I didn’t
realize I wouldn’t see Mike again for over a decade.
     
    Twelve years later
     
    Blue and red lights flashed in my rear view mirror. My gaze
flew to the display of my Miata, which showed twenty over the limit.
    “Shit! Where did he come from?” I hit the brakes.
    Since when did the cops patrol the middle of nowhere? It had
been over an hour since I’d left the town limits, and I hadn’t passed another
car for almost fifteen minutes. Getting a break was not in the cards tonight. As
I raced with the hood down, all I wanted was to drown my soul in the wind
instead of in another bottle of wine chilling at home.
    The music on the radio vibrated the front windshield and I
turned it down, pulling over onto the gravel shoulder. The pebbles crunched
under the wheels as I stopped. I popped a mint in my mouth. Behind me, the
cruiser’s headlights outlined the silhouette of an officer pushing through the
dust cloud toward my car.
    Good. It’s a man . I brushed my fingers through the
tangles in my hair.
    He paced with confidence. I hoped it wasn’t an old geezer
that I’d have to persuade to let me weasel out of a ticket. Looking at this
cop’s body, I assumed he was young. All the old ones were fat, with beer
bellies that hung over their belts.
    I pouted my lip out before applying raspberry lip gloss, and
quickly checked my makeup. Flustered, I pushed up my bra, squeezing the only
assets that had gotten me out of trouble in the past. “OK, girls, do your job.”
    I rolled down the window. “Can I help you, officer?” I
shined my most innocent smile at him, but he kept his gaze on the pad of empty
ticket forms. His cap covered his eyes.
    “License and registration,” he barked, as if I’d just
disturbed him from a nap.
    Knowing I had to lift my behind and flash a piece of my
thigh at him, I reached over the front seat to the back and grabbed my purse.
There was no way he’d give me a ticket after I used my charm. This strategy
never failed. When I sat back in my seat, he was flipping through a notepad,
scratching something off on each page.