Chapter 13
thirteen
BILLIE
We’ve improvised a dance floor at the back of Tilly’s pub.
I feel young— like I’m going to live forever.
My hair whips around my shoulders. I’m moving in a way I haven’t moved since college.
Alana is next to me, dancing like she’s been cast as the lead in a music video, and I swear she’s so good at dancing it’s making me look better.
Alana spins, catches herself, laughs at her own laughter. She has her phone in her hand— she keeps picking it up, typing something, then putting it face-down on the table when we take breaks from the music.
“He keeps texting,” she shouts over the music, holding the phone up briefly so I can see the notification before she dismisses it with one swipe of a perfect nail.
“Rodrigo?” I ask.
“He’s literally saying he’s going back to Spain,” she says, mildly exasperated.
“Work thing. Very sudden. But he is just—” she makes a gesture with both hands— “texting me every twenty minutes like he has not just gone to another country but to the actual moon. Now he wants to come home. He misses me so much it’s honestly almost inconvenient how much. ”
“The curse of being adored,” I say.
“Exactly,” she says. “You’ll get it when someone adores you properly. It’s a lot.”
I decide not to think too hard about what she means by that. I take a sip of my own drink.
Then, my phone rings, and for a moment I think it might be Tyler, actually realizing I’ve been gone way too long and worrying about me for once. Instead, Melissa’s name appears on the screen.
“Hey, Mel?—”
“Are you with her right now?” Melissa’s voice is the voice she uses for serious things. “Alana. Are you with Alana?”
Something in her tone moves up my spine. “Yeah, we’re at?—”
“Go outside,” she says. “Don’t make it weird, don’t say anything. Just go outside and take this call.”
I look at Alana. Alana is checking her phone again, thumbs moving, smile doing its full-wattage thing. She doesn’t look up.
“Just give me two seconds,” I say to her, pitching my voice casual. “I have to take this.” I hold up my phone, the universal signal for nothing interesting, just a call. Alana waves a hand— of course, go— and turns back toward the bar.
I push through the door.
The cold hits me the way only a Chicago winter can. Behind me, through the glass, the warm amber blur of Tilly’s continues. In front of me, the street is dark and quiet under the streetlights. I put the phone back to my ear.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m outside. What’s going on?”
There’s a tense pause.
“Rodrigo called me,” Melissa says. “He called me tonight, from the plane.”
“Oh yeah, Alana said he went back to Spain for a work thing?—”
Melissa cuts me off. “He said he doesn’t have much time, and I know that sounds weird, but Billie— I need you to listen to me.” Her voice is steady. “Alana is not who she says she is. Rodrigo said she’s been— she’s involved in things.”
My mind whirls. “Things? What things?”
“Dangerous things. He said international crime. He said arms dealing. He said—” a breath— “he said she has a record of pulling people in who she likes and keeping them there in ways that are not—” she pauses, selecting the word— “safe.”
I stand on the sidewalk outside Tilly’s and look at the streetlight.
“Mel,” I say, carefully. “You’re eight months pregnant. You’re not sleeping well, you’ve been under a lot of stress?—”
“Billie. I’m pregnant not crazy?—”
“—and Rodrigo only met me for a few minutes at a baby shower, during which his biggest communication was a single nod and a rude comment. Why would he care what I’m doing? Alana says he’s super intense. He’s probably insecure and totally in love with her and just wants to know where she?—”
“Billie.” Her voice is quiet. “Look at your email.”
I pull the phone from my ear. I navigate to my email with cold-stiff fingers. There is a message from Melissa, sent eleven minutes ago, containing a forwarded bank statement. I zoom in.
There it is. A charge from the West Loop yoga studio for $75. The morning, eight o’clock class, times two. The class Alana and I went to together. I check the name on the statement— this is Melissa’s card.
“You paid for our yoga class yesterday?” I say, trying to make sense of what’s happening. “That was nice of you Mel, but you really didn’t have to?—”
“She used my account!” Melissa shouts, her tone communicating that I am the world’s biggest idiot.
“Without my permission. She’s been using it since I met her three weeks ago and I didn’t notice because I go there all the time, too.
Apparently she told the woman at the front desk I was treating her because I owed her for saving my life, and in exchange, I gave her perpetual yoga classes.
She made up some insane story and she’s been going to yoga for free ever since.
She’s a grifter! A con artist! And if Rodrigo is to be believed, maybe even a murderer. ”
I stand in the cold and look at the amber blur through the glass. Alana. Is. … a murderer?
“Alana,” I repeat. “Who wears the pink beanie caps. Is a murderer?”
“Correct,” Melissa says.
“And… Rodrigo called you,” I say again, slower. “He called you specifically. To warn me.”
My heart pounds in my chest, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m afraid of Alana, or excited that Rodrigo thought to try and help me.
I think about Rodrigo’s face at the baby shower— that chiseled jaw, the deep, brown eyes that— upon further reflection— seem warm, now, when interpreted in a different light.
Come on, Billie, wake up. I shake myself out of my musings.
“Rodrigo saw the photo Alana posted of the two of you just now. On Instagram. He knew you were together and he—” Melissa pauses— “he left her, Billie. He broke up with her. They’re done. He got on a plane to get away from her.”
Something happens in my chest. Something I have not given permission to happen.
“Wait,” I say.
“Billie—“
“Does that mean,” I say, very carefully, “that Rodrigo is single right now?”
The silence that follows is long. And I can tell that Melissa— who is eight months pregnant and has just delivered a comprehensive international criminal warning— is using this silence to judge me. Heavily, as only best friends can.
“That,” Melissa says, in a voice of extraordinary restraint, “is what you took away from everything I just said. That Rodrigo is single?”
“It’s just, he’s really kind of handsome and— I mean, like you saw him, he’s?—”
“Billie!” Melissa says with a tone that’s attempting to snap me back into reality. “Get away from Alana or you are going to die! She is an international arms dealer who will kill you if you make her mad. Dating her ex-boyfriend seems like a bad idea, right? Wake up!”
Right, I think. I’ve got more pressing issues than Rodrigo’s amazing biceps, which were super-toned, by the way. Pull it together, Billie.
“I’ll tell her my stomach hurts,” I say, reaching for the lamest possible excuse. “I’ll say I got food poisoning.”
“Just get out of there without tipping her off,” Melissa whispers. “Rodrigo said you can’t let her know that you’re aware of who she really is. He says he thinks Alana took a hit out on him?—”
“Like, to have him killed?” I say, shocked at the idea. I still can’t reconcile the blonde Barbie doll I’ve come to know with a dangerous criminal. “Or maybe just a firm talking to?”
“Yes, to have him killed, Billie.”
My skin prickles, and it’s not the cold. A sticky sense of dread washes over me. Rodrigo can’t get hurt. It’s not fair.
“We have to help him—” I start to say, but Melissa cuts me off.
“Trust me, I’m on it. And Rodrigo’s a grown man. He can take care of himself. Right now, we need to get you out of there. Go back inside and act completely normal, then make some excuse and escape. Call me as soon as you get home.”
“I will,” I promise. “Going back inside now.”
“Be careful,” she says, and it is the simplest, most urgent thing she has said all night.
* * *
When I go back inside, the bar looks the same. Tilly’s is exactly as I left it, amber and warm and filled with people who came here on purpose. It should feel like relief. Instead, It feels like a stage set— and I’m about to give the best performance of my life.
Alana is already turned toward me. She has two fresh drinks on the small table, and she looks so hopeful that I almost feel bad for what I’m thinking right now, which is: I’ve got to get the hell out of here.
As she moves toward me, she looks different— changed, somehow.
For the first time, I notice that her incisors are a little too pointy, almost as if they belong on a dog.
Her eyes— which I thought were a cheerful, cool blue— have turned cold, and there are dark circles around her irises I never really noticed before.
“Everything okay?” she asks when I reach her.
Her voice carries exactly the right amount of gentle concern.
It's the warmth I fell for in the first place. It hasn’t changed, but suddenly I notice it isn’t just concern.
There’s a sense of accountability in her tone— as if I’m not living up to a standard she’s set.
“Fine,” I say. “Melissa. Baby stuff.” I wave a hand in a vague direction.
“She’s okay?”
“She’s great. She’s just—” I shrug— “close to the end. Everything feels like an emergency when you’re that close to the end.”
Alana nods. She does not push. She doesn’t ask the follow-up I’m half-braced for. Instead, she sets the two drinks— light beers— down in front of us and leans in.
And then Alana says: “Okay, I need to tell you something.”
Her voice has shifted— not dangerously, just privately.
“Oh sure,” I say, trying to act as if I really care. “But before you do that, I should warn you my stomach is really upset and I think I might have to head out soon and head home because?—”