Then I opened my eyes.
And saw Veronica Farrell, looking beyond impeccable and perfect in a white pantsuit, standing there, right behind James, and staring straight at me.
. . .
It was kind of like in horror films, when something so terrible happens that all the sound gets sucked out of the room.
It felt that quiet in my head as Veronica Farrell stared at me, trying to process what she had just seen. She was even more beautiful than in her pictures, but her gray eyes had actually grown harder and icier with age.
I held my breath. But before I could even start to pray that she didn’t recognize me, her eyes narrowed and she said, “What are you doing here, Monkey Night?”
On that day, I found out that no matter how evolved humans think they are, we still have the same flight-or-fight instincts of our caveman ancestors.
Without thought or reason I jumped down from James’s arms and ran. Cut out, no joke, like I was trying out for the Olympics.
James probably called after me, but I’ll never know for sure, because all I remember is running out of the sliding doors and jumping into the first thing I saw, which happened to be a yellow and black Parking Spot bus.
It pulled away from the curb, just as James came running out the arrival doors after me.
I could see him searching for me with a confused look on his face, and I don’t think my heart started beating again until he and the airport were out of sight.
NINETEEN
About an hour later, Nicky’s Escalade pulled up to the curb outside the Parking Spot garage to pick me up.
I climbed into the passenger seat and pulled my satchel around, hugging it to my stomach. I felt like a little kid.
Nicky didn’t speak until we were on Sepulveda and headed toward the 405.
“Your boy called me about three times.”
I hugged my satchel closer and said nothing.
“But I didn’t tell him where you was.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t intend for that to come out as a croak, but it did. My voice was harsh with what had just happened.
“You don’t got to thank me. You may have lost your damn mind, but I guess I still got your back.”
For Nicky, that was the very height of sentimentality.
“It’s over,” I said. “He brought his sister home with him, and she recognized me.”
Nicky nodded. “Of course she did. Women remember shit. Men ain’t good with that kind of thing.”
An electronic version of “Summertime,” Nicky’s ringtone, sounded. James’s cell phone number flashed on the Escalade’s Bluetooth display. “It’s your boy again.”
“Don’t answer it—”
Nicky tapped the Bluetooth connector at his ear, before I could even finish my sentence. He loved me, but he loved seeing me squirm even more.
“Whassup James?” he asked, his voice deep and gravelly and seemingly bored. “No, I still ain’t seen her. But I’ll have her call you if I do. You want me to give her a message?” He listened, then said, “Okay.”
He hung up without saying good-bye and grinned at me. “You want to know what he said?”
Of course I wanted to know what he said. But I answered no in the hardest voice possible, because I knew that Nicky would only relay the message if he thought I didn’t want to hear it.
“He said . . .” Nicky put on an upper-crust accent that I guess was supposed to be James’s Ivy League education, “Tell her we need to talk.”
“Did he sound angry?”
“I ain’t your girlfriend,” Nicky said. “I’m not going to analyze how the boy sounded with you.”
Fair enough. We didn’t say anything else for the rest of the drive home.
. . .
I didn’t realize that I had been both hoping and dreading that James would be waiting for us at the club, until we pulled into the parking lot and it was empty.