Page 39 of The Guilty Trial

“Holding out on me.” Victoria shook her head in exaggerated disbelief. “I tell you everything. Every terrible thing Joey does at three in the morning, every argument Jason and I have about paint colors, and you don't tell me that the man you've been circling around for months finally kissed you?”

“We haven't been circling.”

“You have absolutely been circling. Jason and I have had entire conversations about it.”

“That's horrifying.”

“It's loving.” Victoria reached across the table and squeezed Allie's hand. Her expression had shifted from playful outrage to something gentler, something that made Allie's throat constrict. “I'm happy for you, Allie. You deserve this.”

Allie looked down at their joined hands, then at Joey sleeping peacefully in the bouncer, then at the boxes stacked against the walls of this apartment that had been her refuge for the last year. Everything was changing. Victoria and Jason were moving on to something bigger, something better, and maybe she was too, in her own cautious way.

“It was a good kiss,” she admitted, and Victoria's laugh rang through the apartment, bright enough that Joey stirred in her bouncer before settling again.

They finished eating and turned their attention to packing. Allie wrapped dishes in newspaper while Victoria sorted through a drawer of kitchen utensils, debating which ones had earned their place in the new house and which ones would go into the donation box. They fell into an easy rhythm, the conversation drifting from packing strategies to Victoria's plans for the new kitchen to a spirited disagreement about whether anyone actually needed a garlic press.

The front door opened, and Jason appeared with his arms loaded. He had a tower of flattened boxes under one arm and two bags of packing supplies in the other, a roll of tape perched on top of the stack like a precarious crown.

“Reinforcements have arrived,” he announced, kicking the door shut behind him. He surveyed the kitchen, taking in the pizza boxes and the women surrounded by half-packed boxes. “I see you've been productive.”

“We saved you a couple of slices,” Victoria said.

“Two?” He set everything down. “I was gone for an hour.”

“You should have been faster,” Allie said. “Just kidding. There’s plenty.”

Jason gave her a look that said he wasn't entirely sure about that. He shook his head and grabbed a slice, eating standing up while he surveyed their progress. “You got the good plates wrapped already. Nice.”

“Allie did the plates. I supervised.”

“Delegated,” Allie corrected. “She delegated.”

They worked together for the next hour, the three of them falling into the comfortable dynamic that defined their friendship. Jason hauled the heavier boxes from the bedroom closet while Victoria labeled everything and Allie filled gaps with packing paper and bubble wrap. The apartment gradually took on the skeletal look of a place being left behind, its personality stripped away box by box.

By nine-thirty, Joey was in bed and Allie was taping shut a box of books when Jason appeared at her elbow.

“All right,” he said, plucking the tape from her hands. “Time to go.”

“I can stay longer. There's still the hall closet.”

“The hall closet will be here tomorrow.” He walked her toward the door with the gentle insistence of someone who wouldn't take no for an answer. “We need to be sharp in the morning. We've got a lot to work through on this case, and I can't have either one of us falling asleep at our desks.”

“I don't fall asleep at my desk.”

“But I might. Go home, Bishop.” He opened the door and handed her the jacket she'd draped over a box. “Get some rest.”

Victoria called from the kitchen. “Text me when you get home.”

“Yes, Mom,” Allie replied, and heard Victoria's indignant response cut short by the closing door.

She stood in the hallway for a moment with her jacket over her arm, listening to the muffled sounds of Jason and Victoria talking on the other side of the wall. She could picture them, standing amid the boxes. Tomorrow they would pack more boxes and argue about what to keep and what to leave behind, and eventually they would carry their life across town to a house with a yard and a room for piano lessons.

Allie thought about Ethan, about the gentle weight of his hand on her face when he kissed her. About dinner next weekend and the nervous flutter it sent through her stomach every time she thought about it. She considered the possibility that maybe she was building something too, even if she couldn't discern its shape yet.

She got in her car and started the engine, already thinking about what to wear for her date next weekend. Because she could now, finally, admit to herself that that’s what it was.

A date.

Chapter Twenty-One