Page 89 of Cruel Lies

She frowns.

"I'll walk you up," I add. "That's all. Unless you tell me otherwise."

We end up sitting on the stoop.

She lowers herself down beside me on the summer-warmed stone. Then, just as suddenly, she stands back up.

"Stay there," she orders. "Don't move."

She goes inside. I hear her feet on the stairs, then a cabinet opening, then closing. When she comes back out, she's got a bottle in her hand. She sits down again and holds it up so I can read the label in the streetlight.

"This is Todd's," she says. "His favorite. I figured now's as good a time as any to waste it for no real reason."

I laugh as she unscrews it and pours the first shot out on the steps. "To cheating bastards," she mutters, a toast for her and her alone. Then she throws back a slug of the stuff herself, coughs, and passes it to me.

The streets are motionless. It's late enough that the city has mostly tucked itself into bed. This part of the city, at least. It's nice to sit in the silence, among the trees and the buildings, with just me in my suit and Cali in her green silk.

"This is a very confusing date," she says. It's the same thing she said at the aquarium, half asleep against my shoulder. I don't think she remembers saying it.

But I do. I remember all of it.

"It's the second one that's ended on a stoop," I say. "I'm sensing a theme."

"You broke into my house last time."

"That was between dates. Technically."

"Everything's technically with you."

"To technicalities," I say, then take a sip and pass the bottle to her.

She drinks. She makes a face—it's a good whiskey, but she's not built for it neat—and then she drinks again anyway. Stubborn little thing.

"He didn't say anything about the kids?" she asks. "When you talked to him?"

"He said a great deal about the kids. Most of it in the context of himself." I take the bottle from her and let it dangle between my fingers. "He won't fight you for them, Cali. Not really. He wanted them because taking them from you was the point. Now that he can't take everything, they're just an expense he'd rather not have."

"That's horrible."

"Yes."

"You're supposed to soften it when you tell me awful shit like that."

"You told me at dinner you'd rather walk forward with your eyes open than have someone hand you a comforting lie." I look at her. "I took you as a woman of your word."

She hesitates, then sighs. "Yeah. I did say that. Iamthat."

The whiskey's doing its work. I can see the day catching up with her, the adrenaline finishing its long, slow drain out ofher body, leaving behind only the essentials. She's not going to cry. I believe her about that. But she's cracked, and she's tired. Shockingly, she's letting me sit close enough to see all of it.

That's not nothing.

That's a great deal, from a woman who trusts almost no one.

"Can I ask you something?" she says.

"By all means."

"Your parents," she says cautiously. "At the aquarium, when I asked about the worst thing you ever cooked, you said there wasn't anyone to teach you. And you just looked, like, a certain kind of way when you said it."