Chapter 29
“Can I walk with you?” He put his hands in his pockets, looking at her from under his lashes—a move that often got him what he wanted.
“But why?”
“I’d like to watch the show if Hobo Jim Bob tries anything and find himself needing to fend off your biting wit. Or just your biting.”
“Where are you even supposed to be right now? And how old are you? You don’t look old enough to reek of tequila. You’re tall but—”
“I’m twenty-three, obviously. You must really feel confident saying I stink when you just crawled out of a dumpster.”
He was sure her dress must be foul, but when she’d brushed past him to get the plant, her hair had smelled like fire. Fitting.
“Twenty-three? Bullshit.”
“I’ve got a baby face. Not that you can even see it.” With a very clumsy wink that might have looked more like a twitch, he pulled out his wallet and handed the card over.
She held it an inch in front of her nose.
“This says your name is Jay Garrick. That’s the real name of original Flash in the comics.
And that photo doesn’t even look like you and says you live in Marvelo City, which I’m ninety-nine percent sure is not a real place even if California was spelled with three Is, which it’s not.
” She flicked the ID card back at him like a blackjack dealer.
“I hope you didn’t pay a lot for that. It’s not even what a California driver’s license looks like. There’s this thing called Google.”
“How would you know? You look like you only got half dressed to be a barmaid at a local Renaissance Faire. And you lost your contacts at a fire dance. I could look like this. How would you know?”
“I’m very nearsighted, but I’m not legally blind without them. The guy in the photo is ten years older than you with a buzz cut. And you have a baby face and platinum Shirley Temple ringlets.”
“Platinum Shirley Temple ringlets?” Nicky glared at her, before looking at the fake license. “No one seemed to care at the bar tonight.”
“Clearly. I mean, you’re dressed in thousand-dollar jeans and there’s a recession going on, if you haven’t noticed. People gotta make money where they can, and I have a feeling you spent a lot of it tonight.”
“I thought you couldn’t see.”
She smirked. “Guess my wild guess was right. Thousand-dollar jeans. Yikes. Daddy issues but a black Amex, amirite?”
“They’re not a thousand—”
“Please don’t do that rich people thing of saying”—she affected a reasonable imitation of the kids he’d attended school with—“But the denim trousers are made of the highest-quality fibers and were ooonly five hundred dollars.” She shifted back into her normal usual squeak.
“It’s not the flex you think it is to a girl who was the sixth kid of a lunch lady and a general contractor.
I got my jeans on Fifty-cent Fridays at the Salvation Army until I had a job. ”
“Why are you yelling at me?” Nicky let out a huff. “All I did was help you and your stick, y-you dumpster-diving ginger-haired harpy.”
“Sick burn, dude.” It might be dark, and he might be wasted, but the look of pity on her face was in better focus than anything else in his life.
“Whatever. I’m walking you home because I don’t think even an axe murderer or Hobo Jim Bob deserve the frustration of a conversation with you.”
“Fine. Remember, I have pepper spray.”
“How could I forget?”