Another teaser from Fire & Brimstone

       “What happened?” Melanie, her best friend since the second grade and roommate, asked as Rebecca quietly closed the door behind her.

            “He fired me again,” she admitted as she tried to go for casual while she walked through their loft-style apartment and headed towards the bathroom.

            “Going to be sick?” Melanie asked around a yawn from where she lounged on the couch with a magazine, a Coke and her reason for living, a double chocolate fudge Pop-Tart.

            “No, no of course not,” she lied, barely resisting the urge to place her hand over her stomach, dive for the wastebasket by the kitchen island and finally find some relief from the damn nausea that had been plaguing her since breakfast.

            “Really?” Melanie asked, cocking a brow as she continued to thumb through her magazine.

            “I’m fine,” Rebecca said, forcing herself to stop a mere twenty feet from her salvation.

            “Really?” Melanie asked, not sounding as though she really believed her, which of course was a problem since Rebecca really didn’t want to go to this appointment, but unless she was able to convince Melanie that she was fine, she-

            “You’re not getting out of this appointment,” the bossy woman announced with a bored sigh, making Rebecca regret offering to share her juice box all those years ago.

            “I’m fine,” she bit out, outraged that her best friend refused to believe her.

            “Then explain why you’re pale,” Melanie demanded, still not looking up from her magazine, but then again she probably didn’t need to after all these years to know when Rebecca was sick.

            “Because I’m Irish,” she reminded her inconsiderate friend.

            “And the trembling?”

            “Left over adrenaline surge from my meeting with Lucifer,” she explained with a small sniffle, hoping to play on her best friend’s sympathetic heart to get out of this since the last thing that she wanted to do was waste her day at another doctor’s office just so they could tell her that it was all in her head.

            “Nice try, but you’re not getting out of this,” Melanie, the cold hearted bitch, said, sounding bored while Rebecca stood there, bottom lip trembling, eyes tearing up as she hugged herself, making sure to look appropriately traumatized.

            “It was so t-terrifying,” she said, waiting two crucial seconds before she added a little sob at the end there, hoping that it would be enough so that they could end this charade so that they could get on with their lives.

            “Uh huh,” Melanie mumbled, still not bothering to grant her the courtesy of a glance as she sipped her Coke.

            “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” Rebecca whispered harshly, taking a discrete step in the direction of the bathroom, praying that the traitor hadn’t noticed.

            “First off,” Melanie began only pausing long enough to take another sip of her soda, “you are probably the only person alive that isn’t terrified of Lucifer Bradford.”

            Rebecca began to argue, simply to argue, but the damn woman wasn’t done yet. “Secondly, you’re not fooling anyone with that pathetic lip tremble. If you’re going to be sick then get it over with, because you’re not getting sick in my car, again,” Melanie announced on another bored sigh that earned a glare.

            Rebecca continued to stand there glowering at her friend, a thousand arguments running through her head, but her damn stomach decided that it was time to take this to the next level and start cramping, nearly knocking her on her ass and guaranteeing that Melanie won this match.

            That didn’t mean that she planned on going quietly to this appointment, because she didn’t.

            She’d get out of this appointment like she’d gotten out of so many before. All she had to do was-

            “Tick, tock,” the annoying bitch that she hated more with every passing second, said mockingly, forever earning her hatred.

            “This isn’t over!” Rebecca snapped, simply because it was and they both knew it.

            “Whatever you say, sunshine,” Melanie said in an annoying singsong voice just to piss her off even more.

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