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“Don’t think he has much patience left,” she says and runs her hands down her weary face.
It’s supposed to be that sober folk have more energy than the drunk ones, but Billie’s finding this whole sober thing to be the most exhausting part of her life.
Kate folds her arms over her chest, a nervous gesture to Billie’s trained eyes, but to anyone else it would be obnoxious or confident.
“Spill it,” Billie says.
And Kate doesn’t waste a second, “You’re both so young.”
“Preston’s twenty-five. I’m only a year younger. It’s not like we’re gettin’ hitched at eighteen.”
“I mean,” Kate emphasizes, “You only knowhim, Billie. You haven’t gone out there and lived outside of Preston.”
“What’s going on?” Billie cocks her head to the side. “Seriously, Kate—tell me what you really wanna say. You’ve never had a problem with this before, and now you do? You haven’t even pretended to like him since Dosserport…”
Kate cuts her gaze away to the door, the gloss of a Leo DiCaprio poster looking back at her, with those damn poster eyes that seem to follow you no matter where you go, just… watching.
Billie swallows back the sudden swell in her throat. Hits her like a log to the head. Everything changed. Trevor’s gone, Kate’s ties to that world were severed, and she wants Billie back into her fold. She wants Billie single and free, under her own wing, not Preston’s.
That’s all that makes sense. It’s jealousy.
Billie’s in front of Kate in just two strides, and she throws an arm around her shoulders.
Kate leans in but doesn’t embrace Billie back.
It’s a half-assed hug. The kind that suits them both. The kind that Billie thinks is reassurance for her oldest friend, her last friend standing; and one that Kate can use to hide the suspicion darkening her eyes—suspicion aimed at Preston, suspicion she doesn’t voice.
Kate knows Billie isn’t clever enough to figure it out herself, but the timeline of the night at Trevor’s just doesn’t add up. It’s the accepted, official story… buthowTrevor could scramble so much in just the four minutes between her call to the cops and the cops arriving on scene, it just doesn’t make sense. Not to Kate. But if someonehelpedTrevor…
Nowthatwould add up. And Kate has her suspicions on who.
“I really do need to go,” Billie murmurs before she draws back from the half-hearted, lazy hug. Her arm drops to her side. “I can get a cab from out front the campus, yeah?”
“On the road,” Kate agrees with a faint nod.
Billie turns and makes for the door with the poster shining at her, the late afternoon light shimmering over its gloss. Those creepy poster eyes follow her.
“Oh,” she stops herself, pausing on the spot. “Met your roomie yet?”
The smirk on her freckled face betrays just what she thinks of the whole dormmate situation Kate signed up for, when she could have so easily afforded a place of her own after the hush money hit her pockets.
But Kate’s determined to make as many connections as she can while in her last year of studies. So she chose the whole ‘living with a stranger’ deal that—just the thought of—grates on Billie.
“Suppose she’ll come tonight,” Kate says, “what with classes starting tomorrow.”
“Well good luck, then,” Billie says with a wicked smile.
With that, she leaves.
True to her word, she hails a cab on the main road out front of campus. With the shiny black credit card Preston gave her, and the roll of cash stuffed into her fluffy white bag, she’s not shy about the price of cabs compared to the buses and subways around the city. It’s only with Kate she’ll go on the trains. But on her own, there’s something that feels safer about the cabs.
Besides, it gets her back to the apartment quicker than the subway can, and in just a twenty-minute drive, she’s stumbling out of the cab and onto the perfectly paved sidewalk of the Upper East Side’s Madison Avenue, right in front of the friendly face of the doorman she’s come to know these past (almost) two weeks.
“Thanks, Charlie,” she mutters as the doorman reaches out to steady her. Damn heels, they might be platformed but they’re sure not easy to move in. “Is he in?”
“Mr. Preston hasn’t arrived yet,” Charlie tells her.
Mutely, she nods, her eyes glazed over and her mind working. As Charlie escorts her up to the glass doors that lead into the foyer, Billie’s tongue drags, almost absentmindedly, over her bottom lip. And before he can fully open the door for her, she stops and looks up at him, a sudden determination setting her face.
