A man was standing over them. Looking down and smiling a broad smile. The smile was . . . Allie couldn’t quite decide. Reassuring? Oily? A little of both? And he wasn’t moving along. Just standing there.
He was at least in his late thirties. Maybe even forty. He had pale hair that could have been blond or it could have been gray. Or it might have been transitioning from one to the other. It was long and sparse, combed along his head so its length mostly showed where it touched his collar in the back. His skin was tan and divided with smile and frown lines. He wore an expensive-looking black leather jacket despite the warm night.
“Well, here are a couple of lovely ladies,” he said.
Please don’t let Jasmine start flirting back with him, Allie thought.
Jasmine leapt to her feet and threw her arms around his neck. They kissed. On the mouth. Not briefly, either. Long enough that Allie would have squirmed uncomfortably no matter who these two people were.
When they finally, finally broke off the kiss, Jasmine turned to Allie, her arms still around this nearly middle-aged man’s neck.
“Allie, this is Victor. Victor, Allie.”
Chapter Fifteen
Knowing for What, Exactly, You’re Not the Type
Allie woke suddenly, jolted out of a dream she could not remember. It took a minute to orient herself—to know not only where she was but where she expected to be. Neither half of that equation was a given anymore.
She sat up, wincing into the light.
She had been sleeping on the backseat of a vaguely familiar car. She looked out the window at her surroundings. The car was parked in the fenced-in front yard of a neighborhood Allie assumed to be Sherman Oaks. Because that’s where Jasmine had said Victor lived. The house was a two-story stucco, a sort of faded salmon color, and huge. Not well cared for. The vegetation was ridiculously overgrown and the house hadn’t seen a decent coat of paint in decades. But still, it was not a cheap property nor a bad neighborhood.
Allie rubbed her eyes and tried to pull together what she could recall.
Victor had ordered three glasses of wine, winkingly swearing to the server that all three were for him. The server had delivered them, though he must have known better. Allie had been encouraged to drink one, and she had. Normally she would not have, but her nerves had been jangly and raw, and she had felt stuck in a nightmare with no exit. And as most any adult will tell you—or at least betray by their actions—alcohol is the exit in a fully closed and locked room.
There had been another glass of wine, and the drive here. Allie had sat in the backseat to stay away from the energy of them, and to give them something like privacy. Jasmine had ridden with her arms around Victor’s neck. Every few minutes Victor had turned to kiss her with an intimacy and focus that not only embarrassed Allie but made her want to shout, “Watch the road!”
Then it had all caught up to Allie. The fear. The stress. The lack of sleep. The near starvation, at least of protein, followed by the groggy solidity of her first decent meal in days. The wine. She must have fallen asleep before they arrived home.
Still, it seemed strange. They couldn’t have wakened her and asked her to come inside?
She opened the door of the car and stepped out into the green jungle of yard. The morning was dense, the air close. It was already warm.
She walked to the front door as if it were a bomb she had just been ordered to defuse. If she’d had any other place to be, she would have run from this house in that moment. But life had been stripping Allie’s options. There was nowhere else to go that she could think of.
She tapped lightly on the door.
She had no way of knowing what time it was, and didn’t want to wake anyone. Her senses told her it was early.
A split second before she gave up and collapsed onto the stoop, probably in tears, Allie heard footsteps on the other side of the door.
It clicked open, and a girl stared out at her, blinking into the light. A girl Allie had never seen before. She was older. Maybe nineteen or twenty. She had blonde hair done up in a style that might have been fancy the night before, but had devolved. Her dress was turquoise, tight, and surprisingly short. She wore a lot of makeup, and under her eyes it had smudged.
“I think I have the wrong house,” Allie said.
She meant it in that moment, but it made no sense. Because it would mean Victor had parked his car in somebody else’s yard.
“Who were you looking for?”
“Jasmine.”
The girl’s face fell slightly, as if she’d just heard sad news.
“Oh, sorry. Jasmine’s gone. She got popped and had to spend five months in juvie, and then the county sent her to live in one of those group homes.”
“No, she’s out. She got out of the group home last night.”
“Really? Oh. Okay. Maybe she’s here, then. I just got back. Come on in.”
Allie stepped inside.
She followed this strangely calm girl into the kitchen as if walking through a dream. Which might have been wishful thinking on Allie’s part.
“I’m Desiree,” the older girl said.
“Allie.”
“Want some orange juice, Allie? I was just about to have some.”
“Um. Sure. Thanks.”
Allie sat on a high stool at something like a breakfast bar. Her feet didn’t touch the floor, which made her feel small and young, which made her feel helpless. She looked around. The inside of the house appeared lived in and then some. Maybe lived in by an army. Clothes and purses lay strewn over furniture and on the orangey-colored shag carpet. The counters and sinks were mounded with used dishes nobody apparently had the time or inclination to wash. It made Allie’s skin crawl.
“I live on this stuff,” Desiree said.
She set a huge glass of orange juice on the bar in front of Allie. It looked like an iced tea glass. Probably held twenty ounces or more. Allie sipped at it. The acid made her stomach flinch.
“When you work with the public like I do,” Desiree continued, “it kinda saves your ass. I used to get sick all the time. Now not so much.” She paused in her own gulping. Stared deeply into Allie’s eyes. Or tried to, anyway. Allie looked away. “You just here to visit Jasmine? Or are you new?”
“New?”
“Are you, like . . . here here?”
“I don’t know,” Allie said. “There’s a lot I haven’t figured out yet.”
Desiree cut her gaze away and bustled off to the refrigerator. Apparently her appraisal of Allie was done. She seemed satisfied.
“Happens to all of us. Don’t feel bad. We all have those crossroads in life.” She pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge. Turned and considered Allie again for a squirming, uncomfortable length of time. “I gotta say, though, you really don’t strike me as the type.”
“The type?” Allie waited, but nothing happened. No answer. She sipped at the juice again, but her stomach rebelled more forcefully. “The type for what?”
“Got it,” Desiree said. “There is a lot you haven’t figured out.”
Allie waited, watched the girl scramble eggs, and thought Desiree would say more. She never did.