Read Online Heroine Addiction by Jennifer Matarese - Free Book Online Page A

her there and let her find her own way home, too. We screeched back and forth like angry parrots, she caught her things as I pitched them out the bedroom window at her. Just like that I was living alone again, and we remain prickly around one another to this day.
    “Get out of my kitchen.”
    I dart a surprised glance in Benny's direction. “Come again?”
    “Get out of my kitchen ,” he drawls, his words slow and condescending. It feels like he's talking to an obnoxious child crawling around underfoot, except it's just me, little old misbehaving me. I squirm as he advances on me with a cheese-stained spatula. “I'm not babysitting my boss. That's not in my job description.”
    “It's not babysitting,” I say.
    Benny grumbles out a peeved growl roughened by too many devoted years of cigar smoking. “Says you. I know how these things go. She sits out there waiting to you to come out and you wait in here for her to leave.” He shuffles back to the oven, shambling along like a sleepy rhino. “Ain't got time to deal with grown women behaving like yellow-bellied toddlers.”
    I smooth my damp hands over the wrinkled material of the chili-pepper-patterned apron I tied around my waist upon stashing myself in the kitchen. I'm not afraid of Hazel. I'm not. I've faced down oversized mutated lizards the size of skyscrapers, so I think I should be able to handle an uncomfortable encounter with my ex-girlfriend. I don't even know why she's here yet. It could just be for something innocuous, maybe just to say hello.
    I mean, it's a wacky thought, but she might just be here to eat. Crazy, I know.
    When I finally steel myself and stride out into the dining room, ducking around Tara as she gives me an encouraging grin, I see that Hazel's changed seats, shuffling herself from the back of the cafe to the snug couch tucked against the unoccupied left front window. She'd plucked one of the books from the shelves in the back, some coffee-table book on modern art that must have been published way before either one of us was born. She curls up on the couch with her coltish legs folded underneath her, the book cracked wide open and cradled upside down in her lap.
    Seeing the upside-down book draws out a slight smile on my face in spite of my reluctance. Hazel likes reading art books like that, saying it makes her reexamine her artistic perspective. According to her, it's how she became such a reliable tattoo artist.
    I let myself take a quick glimpse around the room, uneasy about discussing anything with Hazel in front of a live studio audience, even if that particular audience paid a two-dollar cover charge to listen to Mo and Jake play lovelorn folk rock. This town's occupants have always been respectful for the most part. Occasionally a rotten egg would get thrown at the cafe over godless offenses as simple as holding Hazel's hand, a more prevalent annoyance when we first started dating. Almost everyone with a problem over the two of us sharing a chaste kiss moved on once they discovered that taunting a same-sex couple with horrid names didn't always lead to a morbidly amusing display of woe and misery. Anyone who would expect me or Hazel to burst into tears over anything short of a death in the family clearly has never met either one of us.
    Now we're simply the ones known around town for breaking up badly, who gripe about one another when we're apart and snipe at each other when we're in the same room. We make for a good freak show, the pair of us.
    Hazel lifts her gaze from her upside-down book as I approach. She doesn't smile. “Hey,” she says.
    “Hey.”
    She stares at me.
    I'd like to think it's reflex rather than romantic interest or argumentative instigation when I stare back. “What?”
    Hazel narrows her eyes. “What?”
    “You're staring at me.”
    “I do that.”
    “Stare at me?”
    “As part of waiting for you to take my order? Yes.”
    “Oh.” I blink. “Yes, all right, that makes total sense, actually.”
    Her