Chapter 13 #2
“Sure, sounds good,” she interrupts me, apparently not having heard a single word I’ve said. She leans forward on both forearms. “So,” she says, “It’s about Rodrigo. And the Spain thing. I have to admit, I kind of invited you here tonight under false pretenses.”
“You did?” I gulp, my heart pounding in my chest.
“I didn’t just need a night out,” she smiles at me again. “I’m going to Spain. I’m going to surprise him!” She says it as if going to Spain is like heading for the deli three blocks away. “I’m going to fly to Barcelona and just— show up. He’ll love it. He loves when I do things like this.”
I have a very alarming thought, which is: Rodrigo is running away from her, and she is chasing him. Run, Rodrigo, I mentally cheer him on. It’s becoming clearer by the second that Alana’s story doesn’t match reality.
“That’s uh, very— spontaneous,” I say.
“That’s me,” she agrees, the way you agree with something you’ve always been proud of. “And maybe… you, too?” Then, she reaches into the cream canvas bag on the back of her chair. She puts two airline tickets on the table between us. They’re printed, and folded once.
I look at them.
“I have one for you,” she repeats as if I didn’t understand the first time. “A plane ticket.”
I just stare at her.
“Before you say anything,” she says, both palms up— “hear me out. It’s eight hours.
The flight leaves at—” she checks her phone— “two in the morning. We go, we stay a few days, we see Barcelona, we eat the food Rodrigo keeps going on about—” she looks at me with that recalibrated smile— “and then we come home. Easy. Fun. The kind of trip you tell people about forever. Plus, Tyler will get the chance to miss you!”
I notice, for the first time, that Alana is an excellent salesperson.
If Melissa hadn’t called me, I’d be seriously considering saying yes to this.
Alana would have found me angry at Tyler, embarrassed by my life, and looking for a change.
The perfect victim. Thank God, for Melissa and Rodrigo, I think.
“I can’t go,” I say. “I have work.” A pause. “And Tyler. I can’t just leave so suddenly.”
Something crosses her face. It’s fast— faster than a blink, really, more like the shadow of a cloud that has already passed by the time you think to look up.
It is there, and then it is gone, replaced so swiftly by warmth that I almost tell myself I imagined it.
Almost. But I caught it: the stillness, the microsecond of— not anger, exactly.
Not disappointment in the ordinary sense.
Something colder than that. Something about not getting her way.
Then she laughs, easy and fond. “Tyler,” she says, as if he is a problem to be addressed at another date. “Right.” She picks up her glass. “Well. I tried.”
“I tried with you,” I confirm. I pick up mine.
She tilts her glass toward me. “To friendship,” she says, with full conviction. “Wherever it takes us.”
“Wherever it takes us,” I say.
Then, a terrible, insane thought occurs to me.
What if she drugged my drink? I shake off the idea.
Why would she do that? There’s nothing to be gained.
What’s her plan… to knock me out and steal my wallet?
Still, I know better than to accept an open drink from anyone I don’t trust, even if that person is a woman.
But Alana is staring at me, waiting for me to drink our toast— she still hasn’t sipped her own beer.
“Oh my gosh!” I exclaim, pointing behind her to create a distraction. “That woman is wearing the same heels as you!”
“Where?!” Alana gasps, like I knew she would. She looks over her shoulder and sets down her drink at the same time, and I use the moment to switch our glasses, accidentally spilling on the table in the process. I hope Alana is too tipsy to notice.
Luck is on my side. When she looks back at me, she’s laughing. “Billie,” she rolls her eyes. “You are so basic, it’s honestly cute. Her shoes are knock-offs. Mine are the real thing, obviously.”
She raises her glass— the glass that used to be mine— in the air and says, “Where were we? Cheers.”
We clink the glasses together, and I take a sip, knowing that I was probably overly cautious. But hey, when you’re dealing with international criminals, you’ve got to be careful. Alana watches me drink, delaying her own sip by just a couple of seconds?—
But that’s all it takes.
The first thing I notice is that the warmth comes too fast. That’s not the right way to describe it— it’s not the warmth of alcohol, which I’ve been drinking all evening and know the feeling of.
It’s something else— a warmth that spreads from the center of my chest outward and goes immediately to the backs of my eyes, and I blink. I set the glass down.
The table is there. I can see it. I can see Alana across it, smiling with her full face— but something is wrong with the number of times her face appears. I grab the table’s edge. The grain of the wood is sharp under my fingers, very real, as everything else is beginning to go soft.
Did that bitch drug me? I think, or maybe say out loud. I’m not sure, because I can’t feel my tongue.
I look at the glass on the table. I look at Alana, who has not moved. She is watching me with her hands folded and her face perfectly, beautifully composed.
I think, ridiculously: Rodrigo is single.
An image of his face— warm and unforgettable— floats before me like a painting.
Then the amber light goes flat and the table’s edge stops being an anchor and Tilly’s, blurry and full and entirely indifferent to what is happening in a small corner between two repurposed tables, continues humming.
Alana is beside me— unhurried, efficient, her hand at my arm and her voice saying something to the room around us, something plausible and concerned, in the tone of a woman whose friend has had a little too much to drink and needs a moment.
Her face, when I look up at it last, is the same face it always is.
Radiant. Present. Perfectly, completely sincere.
That bitch?—
I go down.