“Prospect.” He grabbed the kid’s shoulder and dragged his ear in close; Littlejohn staggered, but caught himself manfully, and didn’t complain.I like him, Mercy thought.He says Sir and he agrees with me. Next year, I’m voting “yeah” to patch him in.“Listen to me.”
“You’re not whispering,” Walsh informed him, helpful as always.
“Fuck you. Listen, prospect, I need you to do something for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need you to keep your eyes glued” – miming of eyes gluing with his fingers – “to the shifty pussy. If he breathes wrong, I want to know about it. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“Good boy.” Mercy turned him loose and clapped his shoulder hard.
“Yes, sir.”
The prospect went back to his post, and Mercy looked at his two brothers. RJ was grinning. Walsh looked like someone’s mother.
“I want my drink back,” Mercy said, and Walsh moved the glass even farther away.
“Well that’s not happening.”
Ava ordered her second Jack with Coke, but by the time she’d finished it, she realized her mistake. The room became fuzzy-edged and slightly mobile, the lights amber orbs that swayed over the top of Ronnie’s head. Ronnie himself had become a sort of impressionist version of a person, the lines of his face indistinct.
Ava rolled her glass between her palms, watching the amber droplets cling to the bottom, a dazzling spectacle with the light passing through the tiny beads. “I should drink whiskey more often,” she said, in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “It’sgood.”
“You hate whiskey,” Ronnie reminded her. “And I think you may have had alittletoo much of it.” He gave her a slender grin.
She aimed the mouth of the glass at him. “Let me amend my former standing: Ilovewhiskey.”
He coughed a hollow laugh. “You ready to head out?”
She glanced at the basket of wing bones and the burnt ends of French fries left over, and nodded. “Yep.”
But when she moved to stand, the floor shifted under her pumps. “Oh.” She threw out a hand and steadied herself against the table. She smiled a smile so wide it hurt her face, one she didn’t intend, and knew she was good and tipsy. “Shit. Okay. You were right.” Her laugh was high and unlike her.
Ronnie came to her side and pulled her arm through his. “Little too much?” he asked, still with that small grin.
“A lot too much. For me, anyway. I’m a lightweight.”
“Not from where I’m standing,” he joked as she leaned against him, and she stomped on his foot on purpose with her next step. “Ow.” He chuckled.
In her alcohol haze, she almost forgot to glance over at Mercy on their way. Almost. And when she did, she wished she hadn’t.
He was sitting with Walsh and RJ, an empty pitcher on the table, and he was saying something to the same brunette waitress that Ronnie had been eyeing, something that brought a gleam to his dark eyes and flashed his canines in a way that was half-smile and half-snarl. He looked predatory and gorgeous, and she wanted to burst into noisy tears.
She must have made some sort of sound, because Ronnie’s arm slid around her waist and he said, “You okay?”
“No.” She dropped her eyes away, staring down at her feet. For a second, the room spun as she tried to rectify the sight of prim black pumps and pressed skinny trousers. Where were the heavy boots? The jeans?
This is me, she reminded herself.The new me. Because the girl in the jeans and boots had died the night Mercy had come knocking at her door in Athens.
She wanted to howl. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to curl into a ball on the greasy barroom floor. She’d had too much to drink, and she knew that was part of the problem, but not the whole of it. The most painful thing of all was this realization that she’d left her home, her life, herselfbehind, because it hurt too badly to be the girl who Mercy didn’t love.
“It’s too hot in here,” she muttered, and Ronnie steered her toward the door.
The crisp night air, faintly damp and smelling of the river, flooded her lungs when they stepped outside, cooling her heated face, whispering through her hair. The street was dressed in big dollops of lamplight, smaller, cozier pinpricks flickering in windows of restaurants and closed-up shops. Up above, stars winked in the velvet indigo drape of night. Autumn was coming, that first faint brush of Canadian snap in the breeze.
It was home. It was her city, her place, her smells and sights and sounds…and she wasn’t Ava, not anymore. She was grieving, grieving for the girl she’d been, and wishing she could go back there.
