Vile by Debra Webb Page B

furniture she owned except that comfy mattress had come from a thrift store.
    After disarming the security system and unlocking the deadbolts, she opened the door to a beaming Sylvia Baron who, as usual, looked exactly like a cover model half her age. Those new red highlights she was sporting didn’t hurt either. Jess had meant to ask her about the subtle change in hair color last week, but she and Sylvia hadn’t been on the best of terms. Still, if Jess didn’t like her so much she would hate her for looking so good all the time.
    Sylvia held up a pizza box and a bottle of wine. “Dan said he was going to be late tonight. We thought we’d bring you dinner.”
    Gina Coleman, dressed in workout clothes, elbowed her way around Sylvia and pushed right past Jess. “Drop the ruse, Sylvia. Tell her why we’re really here.”
    Jess looked from one to the other. “Tell me later, I’m starving.”
    Sylvia marched to the table with the food. Jess locked up and tried to come up with an explanation to give these two for why she wouldn’t be partaking of the wine—no matter how tempting. Before she could summon a clever excuse, her attention settled on Gina. She sat on the sofa, slumped over her smart phone. This was totally out of character for Birmingham’s award winning celebrity journalist—and one of Dan’s ex-lovers. Jess hadn’t seen her looking this depressed since she found out her younger sister was involved with murder.
    “Okay, I change my mind. What’s going on?” As hungry as Jess was, something was up with these two and, for once, she suspected it wasn’t trouble related to her.
    “Dinner is served,” Sylvia announced, ignoring Jess. “Where’s your corkscrew, Harris?”
    Jess walked over to the kitchen side of her apartment. Like her office, it was just one big room. She opened a drawer. “Really,” she said, “what’s happened?” Gina Coleman was intelligent, hardworking, gorgeous, and had a nose for a story. Tonight, for some reason, she looked very much the way Jess did when she woke up in the morning—like hell.
    Sylvia grabbed the corkscrew and went to work on opening the wine. Jess gathered a couple of bottles of water from the fridge and offered one to Gina. The last Jess had heard, Gina had decided to back off her alcohol consumption. Gina accepted the bottle without looking up or even saying thanks.
    Since no one wanted to talk, Jess went for a slice of pizza. It smelled wonderful and was loaded with everything but the kitchen sink, the way she liked it. She sank into a chair at the table as she tore into the slice of hot, spicy perfection.
    Sylvia didn’t sit until she’d tossed back a glass of wine then she promptly declared, “Gina is gay. That asshole Stevens just outed her on Facebook.”
    The sound of Gina’s phone hitting the wall made Jess jump. The reporter stamped over to the table, grabbed a slice of pizza and started devouring it.
    “Wow.” Jess wasn’t sure it was safe to say anything else. And she’d thought she had a big secret. This was the Bible Belt, folks were still behind the curve on tolerance and acceptance when it came to alternative lifestyles.
    “Precisely,” Sylvia acknowledged, and then she frowned. “Haven’t you seen the news tonight? It’s on every damned channel.”
    “I try not to watch.” Jess shook her head and focused on her pizza. The truth was she didn’t care to see or hear anything the reporters had to say about her. She was okay with the expose Gina had done, there was a mutual goal behind that move. The rest Jess had no desire to filter.
    “Stevens set the whole thing up,” Sylvia stated with complete certainty. “Someone comes on his Facebook page and asks why he hasn’t done anything as a TV reporter on being gay in Birmingham. He raved on for a bit before suggesting Stevens was intolerant or else he’d report on the city’s other minority. In his reply, Stevens goes on endlessly about how he believes everyone has the