Page 49 of The Perfect Deception

“Heyyyy, it’s Adam! Leave a mes­sage!”

Dina ex­haled and hung up be­fore the beep sounded, which would have re­quired her to leave a mes­sage. Only she didn’t have one. Be­cause any­thing she said would make her sound des­per­ate and clingy.

Later that night, just as she was about to go to sleep, her phone rang.

“Hey, Di­naaaa…”

Adam’s voice slurred. He was drunk.

“Adam?”

“I called you be­fore,” he said. “No, wait, you called me. Right?”

“Right. But it wasn’t im­por­tant. We can talk to­mor­row.” Hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with him when he was drunk wasn’t fun.

“No, should…should talk now.”

There was si­lence and Dina waited for him to con­tinue. When he didn’t, she sighed. “Adam, let’s talk to­mor­row.”

“You have a pretty voice, d’you know that?”

She sighed. “Thank you.” Why was he drunk? “Are you hav­ing a party?”

“Hah! No, I’m not hav­ing a party. A party would be fun. I’m not sup­posed to have any fun.”

This was new. “Why not?”

“Nev…mind.”

Dina paused. If you got past the fact he was drunk and you ig­nored the slurred, sloppy speech, there was some­thing off in his tone of voice. He was try­ing to be a happy drunk and fail­ing. Why was he call­ing her when he was drunk? Maybe some­thing was wrong.

“Can I come over?” she asked.

“Why do you wanna come here?”

The Adam she knew wouldn’t have asked why. There was def­i­nitely some­thing wrong. “I want to see you.”

“You want to party? The lib…libar…book lady wants to party?”

She’d laugh if he were sober. “Can I come over now?”

“Shh­hur­rrre.”

Throw­ing on jeans and a long-sleeved pink T-shirt, she grabbed her keys, black leather purse, and pea coat and ran out the door. The streets of Mor­ris­town were quiet at this time of night—it was af­ter eleven—and she made it to the lobby of Adam’s high-rise apart­ment in less than ten min­utes. The guy be­hind the se­cu­rity desk in the mar­ble and mir­rored lobby called up to his apart­ment and nod­ded to her.

She rode up in the el­e­va­tor, jig­gling her car keys in her hand and tap­ping her sneaker-clad toe on the gold car­pet as the el­e­va­tor crept up to Adam’s floor. She glanced around briefly at the fa­mil­iar hall­way as she got her bear­ings—black car­pet with sil­ver flecks that was plush enough to deaden her foot­steps; gray walls with white trim; and ge­o­met­ri­cally shaped mir­rors in­ter­spersed along the hall­way—as she won­dered whether or not this was a good idea.

She knocked on the door and it swung open as if he’d been wait­ing for her.

“Di­naaaaa!” He reached for her and stum­bled and she half hugged, half caught him, push­ing him back into his apart­ment and shut­ting the door be­hind her.

He smelled like a dis­tillery and his hair was spiked as if he’d run his hands through it nu­mer­ous times—the way she’d fan­ta­sized do­ing her­self.

“Adam, what’s go­ing on?”

“We’re hav­ing a party!”

She frowned. “No we’re not.”