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“Shit,” Jules said, storming back into the living room.
“What?” Billie asked.
Jules looked at her with big dark eyes. “That was Alea.”
Billie swallowed but said nothing.
“She needs me,” Jules said as Billie’s heart broke into tiny pieces.
Chapter Twenty Eight
“I have to go,” Jules said, heart still beating hard from the sound of Alea’s voice on the phone.
“Go where?” asked Billie.
Jules looked up at her serious face, her dark eyes, the sharpness of her cheekbones. “Um, it’s a club, about an hour drive from here.”
“Okay,” said Billie slowly, obviously not understanding. “Um, do you have a car? Or do you need an Uber or something?”
It calmed Jules a little to see that Billie was helping, that she wasn’t questioning or anything else, she was just trying to problem solve. Except she hadn’t quite grasped the problem yet. “We have a car. I mean, granddad left us his car.”
“Alright then.”
Jules felt her cheeks darken with heat. “It’s just that, well, I can’t drive it.” She looked down at her watch. “I could ask Am, but I’m pretty sure she’s at the pub by now.”
“I can drive,” Billie said. She grabbed her jacket off the back of the armchair. “Well,” she said. “What are you waiting for?”
Jules, who hadn’t had even a fleeting thought of Billie going out of her way for her like this shook her head. “I, um, it’s just—”
“Listen, is this important or not? I’m not leaving a nice warm comfortable house for anything less than a grade four emergency.”
“What’s that?” Jules asked. “I mean, grade four on a scale of what, like where does a house fire fall on that scale, for example? Or imminent birth?”
Billie’s eyes widened. “Are either of those things likely?”
“No, but—”
Billie sighed. “Listen, do you want my help or not? Because it seems to me like you’re stuck and I’m offering so…”
“No, I mean, yes, I want your help,” Jules said quickly, her brain finally catching up and figuring out this was the only way to get where she needed to go. It was just that the mention of Alea’s name had made Billie’s face go pale and she hadn’t thought that Billie would want to help. Not with, well, with how she’d been going on about Alea before.
Not that that was an issue now. Probably. Or was it? Jules was too confused to think straight. Too confused, and too harried now, to really put pieces into place. What she did know was that she needed help, certainly, but more than that she knew that she’d rather Billie was there. It was as simple as that. Simple, surely, but, something was telling her, that meant something. It was just something she didn’t have the capacity to think about right now.
“Jesus, woman, will you get out of the house,” Billie was saying. “And don’t think I’m doing all of this out of the goodness of my own heart. I can see that you’d try to drive yourself there if I didn’t offer. And I’d rather you remained in one piece.”
“You honestly think I’m that stupid?” Jules began, skirting around Billie and making her way to the front door.
“Don’t start with that again,” Billie said. Her voice was sharp and brittle.
“I’m not starting with anything, you’re the one that said I’m stupid.”
“Implied, not said,” Billie said, reaching around and opening the front door to spill them both out onto the pavement.
“Oh, because that makes a difference.”
“You’d better tell me where we’re going and why we’re going there,” said Billie, ignoring the argument that Jules was attempting to start. “Otherwise I’m not driving you anywhere.”
“I’m not sure you can drive anywhere,” Jules said, a thought occurring to her.
