Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) (17 page)

“I love you,” she said. It wasn’t the first time she’d said it.

“I love you too,” I said. And I meant it. I pressed myself against the door and pushed myself out of the car with what little restraint I still had.

At the entrance to The Loft a tall girl with dreadlocks extended her hand. “ID, please.”

I fished it from the top of my bag, doing my best to hide the other contents.

She angled it in the neon light of The Loft sign above the doorway. Satisfied, she passed it back to me between two fingers. “Five bucks.” Maybe I look older with all this makeup.

I gave her the cash. She pushed open the heavy metal door as if it were light as cotton candy.

The inside of the club was all smoke, shadows and flashing colored light. A full spectrum of prismatic colors cut through the air in rotation, guided by the colorful balls in the ceiling that seemed to dictate the rays’ trajectories. If Ally, or anyone for that matter, said a word to me, I couldn’t hear it. Not over the chest-thumping bass and techno treble flooding the room in repetitious waves.

Ally pulled my hand, urging me away from the door. We headed for the girl’s bathroom, the only place quiet enough to talk. Umbri and Kyra were in the bathroom already when we came in. Ally checked under the stalls for feet and satisfied it was just us, slid the deadbolt into place.

I pointed at them. “How did they—?”

Ally held up her phone. “I texted them.”

“Very cryptic like,” Kyra said.

Umbri read her screen. “Meet us in the bathroom. Come a-lone.”

Umbri and Ally used to work together at the same coffee shop. Once they became after-work buddies, Ally met Kyra, Umbri’s best friend. They’d been hanging out for almost a year before I came into the picture. Both Kyra and Umbri, our friends for the past year or so, moved forward with wide eyes when they saw me. They tenderly pulled my gauze down with
Ooos
and
Aahhs
.

“Girl, you are so badass,” Umbri said. She was Japanese-American with short spiky hair falling forward into her eyes. Her eyes almost seemed closed when she smiled this big.

“When I saw you on television, I couldn’t believe it. Ho must’ve been off her meds or something,” Kyra said. She flipped her brunette ponytail off her shoulders as she leaned closer to inspect my wound. “You know, it’s not as fun calling her a whore when she’s actually a whore.”

Ally gently pulled me away from them. “Worst part is we don’t know why she did it.”

That wasn’t my “worst part” of that experience.

“Ally says you need a car to leave town for a while,” Umbri said. She turned to the mirror and applied more glittery lipstick. When she moved in the light, I realized that she was covered in glitter.

“Yeah, the cops are watching me,” I said. “They can’t know I’ve left town.”

“Wow, I think this is the most trouble you’ve ever been in, right?” Umbri, having just fixed her eyeliner, abandoned the mirror to give me her full attention.

I nodded. “Hands down.”

“Even more than when that dog ate your finger and we had to wait until it—”

Ally held up her hands to intercept. “They disinfected it before it was sown back on.”

I wiggled my right middle to emphasize that it was as good as new.

Kyra looked like she might puke, though I couldn’t imagine her doing something as unladylike as hurling her guts up. Kyra was the tallest of us with the long, lean body of a dancer. She had tight tendrils compared to my soft waves and her complexion actually had some color to it; whereas I was as pasty white as can be. I blamed my poor circulation.

“You can borrow my car,” Kyra said. “I don’t even care if they arrest you and impound it.”

Kyra was a trust fund baby, so this was probably true.

“I’d rather not get arrested, thanks,” I said.

“Check it. Here’s what we’ll do,” Umbri said. “Kyra will go out and get her car in an hour or so, whenever the crowd gets pretty thick. Jesse can slip through the back exit. They’ll go back to Kyra’s place, drop her off, and Jesse will be on her way.”

“But what if someone sees Jesse get into Kyra’s car?”

Kyra snapped her fingers. “The east door is dark and out of the way. You can’t see it from the road and if I roll down the back window I can pull right up against the exit and you can just leap through the window into the backseat.”

I wasn’t sure about this leaping idea. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I leaped. What was I, a lemur?

“What if someone suspects and follows you?” Ally asked. She tugged the end of her hair.

“If I think we’re being followed, Jesse can hide in the car until it is safe,” Kyra replied. “Or if it looks like it won’t work, she’ll just have to stay the night at my place. She’ll just come inside with me and act like it was the plan the whole time.”

“Sounds good to me,” Umbri said. She moved to unlock the bathroom door, but paused to wait for us.

Ally’s brow was furrowed, signaling an intense internal processing. Finally, she agreed.

At Ally’s approval we left the bathroom, reintegrating ourselves into the throbbing masses.

There were glowsticks in addition to the glitter now. I figured out the sticks were like fire, if moved real fast I could write my name in the smoky darkness.

Umbri was a great DJ. Honestly, I didn’t know much about DJs, but everyone else seemed impressed, which made me impressed. She looked totally at home up there on the speaker throne.

When Ally wasn’t hovering awkwardly beside me on the dance floor, she was at the bar throwing down shots, which was a sight unto itself. Ally rarely drank anything more than an occasional glass of wine with dinner.

At one point, she returned to the dance floor crying, and threw her arms around me. It made us look like we were slow dancing, even though the music didn’t quite suit.

I didn’t know why she was so sad.

Did Garrison say something to her? Was she in trouble too and decided not to tell me? Brinkley? I didn’t know, but did my best to comfort her, wrapping my fingers in her hair.

Then Kyra appeared to our left and squeezed my shoulder. Remembering what I was about to do made my guts churn. With one last desperate hug from Ally, I was off following Kyra out of the crowd to the dark and empty part of The Loft.

It wasn’t easy leaping though an open window, even when it was stationary. I banged my elbows, knees and scraped my shins on Kyra’s window sill as I climbed through. I just hoped no one inside the club saw my little shimmy because I think they got a pretty good view of what was up my skirt if they had been watching. I didn’t hurt my neck though.

“Thank you so much for doing this,” I said to Kyra as I squished myself through the narrow space between the two front seats with about as much grace as a three-legged dog.

“What are friends for if not to help you evade the law?” She bat her big brown eyes mischievously.

“Break laws, hide your dead body, and find pets when they’re missing. Those sorts of things I think.”

“Those too,” she agreed. “But Winston hadn’t gone far.”

When I lapsed into silence, Kyra nudged me. “Nervous?”

“A little,” I admitted. “And I hope I’m not doing this for the wrong reasons.”

Kyra shrugged, turning on her blinker with a flick of her wrist. “Your mom died and you haven’t seen your brother in years. What other reasons do you need?”

I meant Rachel. Why was I going back to see Rachel? It wasn’t just to ask her questions, was it?

“Chances are this won’t go well,” I said. “Hello, I’m Jesse, Danica’s zombie daughter. Remember me? Then someone has a heart attack, I replace them and then I’m a corpse on the living room floor.” I’d already envisioned a fabricated version of some distant relative, who looked like a standardized ‘50s housewife, breaking a teacup and fainting when I just pop up and brush myself off, post-mortem.

It’d be cool if I could do that.

Kyra laughed. “Yeah, but I still get why you want to go back. People just have these weird ties to their families, even when their family is crazy like mine.”

Kyra’s parents were art dealers, running a large firm with offices in New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Her family’s income made my cushy-suburban life look pitiful, by comparison. After all, they could afford to pay for her apartment on West End Avenue, a lovely sky rise with a great view of downtown. They were also paying for her Ph.D. in Art History.

“Okay, then I got to ask,” she said, breaking the silence. “It’s killing me and Umbri.”

I was surprised by her playful switch in tone. “Just ask me.”

“Who do you love—Lane or Ally?”

My jaw hinges broke leaving a gaping hole where my mouth should’ve been.

“Oh come on,” Kyra said smacking the steering wheel. “Who are you in love with? I voted for Lane, is it Lane?”

I angled all the heating vents away from my blazing face. “I’m not in love with anyone.”

Her grin got crazy huge. “Oh my god, are you sleeping with both of them?”

“NO.”

She frowned as if she didn’t like this answer either. “It’s obvious they’re both madly in love with you.”

“And it’s obvious that dating either of them is the worst idea ever.”

“But you’ve slept with Ally,” she said. How did she know this? Did Ally talk to Umbri? “So it stands to reason that if you sleep with her again nothing will change.”

Ally must’ve told Umbri. I was going to kill her. “Sleeping with Ally almost ruined our friendship,” I said. “And I don’t sleep with more than one person at a time anyway.

“So you are sleeping with Lane!” she declared. “Is he amazing? I bet he is amazing. He has the hottest ass. It’s so cute I just want to squeeze it every time—”

“Oh, god, Kyra, just stop.” I pretended to count the streetlights.

“And Ally sleeps in your bed. You’ve got a hot single lesbian sleeping in your bed and you don’t do anything?”

“We cuddle but that’s it. Sometimes she reads to me or gives me a massage if I’m sore.”

Kyra smirked.

“What?” I asked.

“That sounds so—” she pretended to search for a word. “
Gay
.”

I remained defiant. “I’m not in a relationship with anyone. And Lane and I have decided to stop having sex.”

“You’ve got two someones, but you’re just not getting laid.” She frowned. “That’s just sad.”

“When was the last time you got laid?”

“Saturday and don’t change the subject. Umbri thinks you should be with Ally and I want you with Lane,” she said. “So you’re going to have to choose one of them because we’ve got money on this.”

I scoffed. “You make it sound so easy.”

We’d just parked in her driveway. She hesitated in her seat, not getting out. “You know what?”

I had my hand on the door handle, ready to get out and switch places with her. “What?”

“I want to come with you. Let’s road trip it.”

My eyes searched the area. It didn’t look like we’d been followed, but I wasn’t any good at this sort of thing. “You could get in trouble if they catch you with me. And don’t you have work?”

“It’s not like I can’t afford the bail,” she said. “And I’m all caught up with work. I can spare the day.”

I must have still looked doubtful.

“I’m serious,” she said.

Ally hadn’t come because Garrison would certainly have an eye her. Kyra was different. Our lives were separate enough that her absence might not raise any suspicions. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, this is a big deal. I don’t think you should go alone and I’m just in the mood for a road trip.”

“You just want to hound me about Ally and Lane.”

“There’s that too,” she said, with a cutesy head tilt.

“And Ally probably begged you to go,” I added.

Her grin widened, but she neither confirmed nor denied this accusation.

I relaxed, unaware that I’d even been tense. Had I really been afraid of going alone? Even if I did want the company, how was I going to get Kyra over to St. Louis to see Rachel?

“OK,” I said finally. I was already formulating a new plan in my mind. “I’ll drive.”

Chapter 14

A
s we pulled away from the tiny two-pump gas station in a nameless town, a large green Interstate I-64 junction sign caught my eye. I had to make my move. Now or never.

“Have you ever been to St. Louis?” I asked.

“When I was a kid,” Kyra said. “I remember going up in the Arch and being terrified because of how much it sways in the wind.”

“You want to go again?” I asked. I think my smile was too big, too urgent. “It’s only 80 miles away.”

“Your mom’s funeral starts in four hours,” she said. “We hardly have time for sightseeing.”

“We can bum around the city for a whole hour or so and still be back in plenty of time,” I replied, smiling. I hoped I wasn’t overdoing it.

Kyra didn’t look interested. “I don’t think we should change the plan.”