“It’s fine,” the guy growls. “I’m out of here.”
The door swings wide as he shoves through it, and Veer pushes through her friends to go after him. That’s fine. That’s good. I didn’t want her to see me, and now she won’t.
But she helped you with your car, an intolerable urge hisses. You may not owe her much for that, but you at least owe her this.
I make it to the door about a half step before she does. She doesn’t quite stop, tries to shoulder me out of the way before she recognizes me. I can trace the red lines of exhaustion in the whites of her eyes.
“I know you,” she says, painfully loud. “You work at Sunrise. I jumped your car.”
“Yeah.” Adrenaline makes all my fine motor movements too large, too sudden. “Hey, don’t go after him. It’s not worth it.”
Her glare burrows into the hollow center of my chest. I want to bite into the softness of her throat, want to feel my claws on her skin and her tongue in my mouth. I want, I want, I want.
No. Not here. Not her. That’s the kind of thing to bury deep, because even glancing at it might tip me off the edge of the world and leave me for drowning.
“Veer, you stupid bitch,” one of her friends screeches, and right, I’m in a bar and there are other people here, there’s a whole world around me. But she’s still staring.
“Ellis,” she says quietly. “Right?”
I nod, and for one more electric second my curse and I both want the same thing.
“Let’s go.” The tattooed friend uncrosses her arms, and I seeLavender Menacescrawled across her shirt in big pink letters. “I paid our tab.”
“You should come too,” Veer says.
I shouldn’t. I have too many issues of my own to get tied up in anyone else’s.
“Are you paid up?” It’s the other friend, the green-haired one, from over my shoulder.
I nod again, a little unwillingly.
“Then what’s the holdup? Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite. Unless you’re into that.”
It would be heaven to have one night where I’m not at the mercy of my mom or a patient or anyone at all. To put aside all the shit I’m supposed to be dealing with and try to remember how to be alive. Have some fun, like Uncle Bill wanted. Don’t I deserve that?
No, I don’t. But those are just words, and the want’s in my bones, and when Veer backs out the door, I find myself swept after her.
7
I LEARN THAT THE TATTOOED ONE IS KELSEY AND THEgreen-haired one is Lasso, and we’re heading to someone’s friend’s old roommate’s house party. Kelsey’s car is clean enough, but there’s a lingering smell of rancid oil and hot sauce.
In the passenger seat, Lasso kicks their sneakers up on the dashboard. “Vera. Veronica. Veruschka. We can’t take you anywhere, girl.”
Veer mutters, “Then don’t.”
“Be nice,” Kelsey warns in her low gravel voice.
Lasso clicks their tongue. “Just saying.”
Veer scrunches herself up against the door, forehead pressed into the window, and ignores them both.
Kelsey says something about a job interview, and Lasso giggles and folds forward and launches into a story. But there’s a scent in the air, faint under the takeout-and-plastic odor of the car. Worry. Unspoken, unheeded. Kelsey is gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles blanch white.
Veer keeps her face to the window as we speed past flickering streetlights and neon-lit liquor stores. All the lights seem to be green.
A Chinese restaurant flies by in a flash of yellow and black, and Kelsey grumbles, “Worst fried rice of my life.”
Lasso cackles. “Okay but, hear me out, have you ever been to this place downtown called Nice Restaurant #2? The fried rice there will drive you literally insane…”
