“I think that’s pretty obvious. I was afraid you would become cooler than me. The Top Gun high five is my Hail Mary.”
Andy shook her head. “That hurts. I’m devastated that you would deceive me.”
“I’m sorry it had to come to this, but I couldn’t abide you surpassing me in coolness. One day your therapist will help you come to terms with it, I’m sure.”
She laughed. “Gosh, I hope so. Otherwise, I might internalize it and never recover from my high five shame.”
“We could just start high-fiving properly. It might mitigate the damage.”
“Mitigate.” She pulled out her phone. “Mitigate.” She said it slow the second time, sounding it out as she typed. “‘To make something less severe.’ Yes, let’s do that for my psychological damage.”
I parked in front of Dad’s. It was a tiny-ass building with an empty lot on one side and a large brick facade on the other. Both seemed to dwarf the small sandwich shop. The exterior was painted bright blue. Graffiti covered large swaths of it, but it was cultivated graffiti, commissioned graffiti.
Andy held the heavy, metal screen door for me. I’d never seen the inner, actual door closed. Didn’t matter if it was dead of winter or middle of summer, that door was open. We got in line and Andy stared at the menu board scrawled across the entire wall. As if she wasn’t going to order vegan meatloaf like she always did.
“Pick out a soda.” I nodded at the cold case by the counter. Andy sauntered over to study her options. I ordered our food and a beer. After careful deliberation, Andy set a glass bottle filled with pink liquid on the counter.
“You guys sitting on the patio?” the guy taking our order asked. I nodded. He popped the cap off my Lagunitas and Andy’s soda. “I’ll meet you out there.”
We had to cross the sidewalk to get to the patio built next to the curb. If I carried my beer from inside the restaurant to the gated patio, the world would likely end. Those teetotaling five feet of sidewalk were all that separated us from the animals.
Andy picked out a table. A minute later, our drinks were delivered. We discussed astrophysics and came to the conclusion that neither of us knew what astrophysics was. Also, we were bad at science. Andy had the math thing nailed. I did okay with words. Social sciences were fine. But science, science wasn’t our thing. It was the physics part of astrophysics that was really throwing us off. We were cool with stars.
Our sandwiches were delivered. They were wrapped in butcher paper and taped shut. We opened the sandwiches, then traded. I disagreed with vegan meatloaf on principle.
“You sure you don’t wanna try a bite?” Andy waved her abomination at me. Enticing.
I grimaced. “I’m good.”
We started in on lunch. Andy got real quiet. Not just because she was eating, but because she was thinking. Finally, she set the sandwich down and took a long pull from her soda.
“Hey, Cash?” She spread her hands on the table and studied them.
“Yeah?” I drank some beer and leaned back. Whatever was going on was serious. Andy was rarely nervous like this.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For what I said to you and Laurel.”
“Are you apologizing for what you said or how you said it?”
She looked up at me. “I don’t know. What’s the difference?”
“If you’re apologizing for what you said, then you didn’t mean it. You just wanted to hurt our feelings. If you’re apologizing for how you said it, then you meant what you said, but you probably could have said it better.” I did my best to keep my tone neutral. I wanted to know how she really felt. And I wanted her to figure out what she really meant, not just base her answer on my perceived approval or disapproval.
“Well, I guess I kinda meant what I said.” Her gaze dropped again. She gathered whatever feelings were rolling around and readied herself. “I’m really mad at the whole system or whatever. You know, the police and the laws. But I’m more pissed that you guys are just going with it.”
“You mean that we are complying?”
“Yeah. It’s like you don’t respect yourself at all.” The kid had courage. I’d give her that.
“Okay. I can see why you’d think that. Why else are you angry?”
“I mean, you’re a drug dealer. That’s pretty dumb.”
I fought a smile. She was right. It was dumb. “That’s valid.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. I’m realizing that maybe I’ve gotten too good at lying to myself.” That was vague. She wasn’t going to get it. “Lying about what I think is right and wrong and why. I had convinced myself pretty thoroughly that my dealing was harmless. I was wrong.”
Andy nodded. Slowly. For a full minute. “Okay. So what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I need to figure it out. I think it’s pretty clear that I can’t continue. So there’s that.”
“That makes me happy. Is that weird?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them.”
“Actually—” Her eyes were back on her hands. “Do you think I could have Laurel’s number?”
“Laurel’s number?”
“Yeah. I want to talk to her. I mean, I need to say sorry for the way I talked to her.” Andy met my eyes and grinned. “But also like other stuff.”
“Other stuff?” I was nailing this parrot thing.
“Yeah.”
“Umm, sure. Yes. Let me run it by your mom and Laurel first though,” I said. Andy gave me a strange look. “Because she’s a random adult. I want to make sure it’s not weird that you’re texting her.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Andy picked up her sandwich again. “So where are we getting jumpsuits?”
“We?”
She blinked at me. “We.”
Right. “Are we wearing them out? Like is this a regular clothes thing?”
She rolled her eyes. “We’re cool. We’re not ghost fighting slash jet plane flying cool.”
“Okay, so where are we wearing them?”
“Why are you so concerned about where we’re going to wear them?” she asked.
I sipped my beer. “I don’t know. I guess Ghostbuster style jumpsuits are a lot harder to pull off when you’re just walking around. Fighter pilot jumpsuits we can fold down and it’s like wearing army cargos. But like better.”
“I feel like you’ve thought about this too much.”
“Are you seriously judging me? This was your idea.”
“Was it?” Andy was total deadpan. And a little judgmental. The little shit.
“Whatever. When I get a jumpsuit, you’re going to be jealous.”
“Am I?” The look morphed from judgment into pity. This kid spent way too much time around me.
Chapter Twelve
At the beginning of summer, the vapidities of college parties had annoyed me. I was astounded that said vapidity had grown so impossibly large in the intervening weeks. It didn’t matter that I was the one who had changed. It was no less underwhelming to watch undergrads imbibe booze and attempt to fuck each other and regurgitate the lecture they’d attended three weeks before.
“I don’t know how I used to do this,” I whispered into Laurel’s ear.
Laurel shook her head. “I don’t know either. Come on.” She dragged my arm around her shoulders and leaned into me. Heat poured off the bare skin of her arms. I felt greedy soaking it up. But if the only contact I’d get from her was residual summer heat, the possessive pull of her fingers wrapped around my wrist, statue-tight muscles pressed against my chest, then I would be gluttonous.
“Where are we going?”
“Outside. I can’t think in here. There’s a backyard, right?” She dragged me through the house. We stepped around a couple aggressively making out in the hallway. When we got to the back of the house, the hallway split and spread in both directions. Large windows showed the backyard, but I could
n’t see a door out. White twinkle lights were strung over the patio and through the trees. It gave the yard an early aughts romance movie vibe. It was bad enough that suburban children went to college in the city. Bringing their suburban culture with them just seemed excessive.
“Oh, down there.” I finally was able to see cement steps leading to one of the windows. When I looked closely, I realized the window was a sliding glass door. I pointed out the anomaly.
Laurel turned down the hallway. She flung the door open with her free hand. Her other was still gripping my wrist, keeping me close. The backyard was only marginally less crowded than the house, but the sky was clear. Stark white moonlight nearly drowned out the lights in the trees.
There was a small portable fire pit set up in the center of the lawn. Well, it was an attempt at a lawn. Summer heat and lack of water had destroyed whatever grass had once existed. A loose ring of white plastic chairs were set around the fire pit. Sacramento County and City had plenty of regulations about fires. These kids were violating all of them.
Opposite the illegal fire was a massive oak tree. Thick roots lounged on the ground, bragging about where the water for the lawn had gone. We posted up against the trunk. Laurel studied the people around us. She looked entirely casual. But every muscle was still tensed. After about five minutes, a boy came up and asked me for Oxy. Laurel ducked out from under my arm, muttered something about beer, and wandered in the direction of the cooler by the door. As soon as she was out of earshot, I named a price to the kid. He gave me a couple of damp bills, I gave him a baggie of drugs.
Laurel came back and handed me a sweating bottle. She leaned against the tree next to me. “Do you always feel this old at parties?”
“Perpetually.” I took a swig from the bottle. The beer was light and cold and bitter. Offensive in its candid lack of flavor.
“Is it because we actually are old?”
“And not drunk. Or groping each other. Or screaming our inadequacies into the abyss. College students are a strange balance between ill-fated and infinite potential.”
Laurel grinned and nodded. “I’ve never had issues blending, but this feels off. How do we fix it?”
“Aside from making out?” I smiled so she would know I was kidding, but her face reflected panic for a brief moment. It looked like my own panic. Could she possibly realize how much I wanted kissing her to be the answer? But, no. That was idiotic. Kissing her wouldn’t change anything. Besides, we had cheapened that defense mechanism. It seemed like we spent every operation making out. The Sacramento PD probably had hours of us kissing on record.
No wonder someone accused us of a sexual relationship.
“Yeah, aside from that,” she said.
“Loosen up. That’s really all we can do.” I draped my arm over her shoulders again. “Just do what feels natural, easy.”
Laurel shrugged and slid her arm around my waist. “I guess you’re supposed to stand out a little anyway, right?”
“It helps move product, yeah.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. “Don’t look, but there’s a kid to your left who keeps looking at you. I’ll tell you when you can check him out.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Kinda tall, average weight. Dark blond hair. Hipster bro type.” She was describing half the college students in East Sac.
“That narrows it down.”
“Shut up.”
“Can I look yet?” I asked.
“No, he’s sitting and facing us. I’ll let you know when he gets up.”
I scanned the side of the yard I could see. Most of the kids were vaguely familiar. They cycled through every four to six years, but they didn’t change a whole lot. Twenty-year-olds were far less imaginative than they thought they were.
A girl opened the door and stood on the steps, scanning the yard. She squinted at Laurel and me, then made her way down the steps. Damn kid wanted to buy drugs. What was this world coming to?
I tightened my arm around Laurel and pulled her to face me. She leaned back to look at me, which pressed her hips into mine.
“There’s a girl coming this way. She wants to buy,” I said.
“So you think if you’re otherwise involved, she might go away?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Laurel’s eyes locked on mine. She threaded her other arm around my waist. The beer she was gripping was cold and damp through my T-shirt. She was going to kiss me. I knew it. She knew it. The rational part of my brain pointed out that we were working undercover. We had to maintain that cover. It was for our safety. And upholding the law. Yeah, we needed to make out in order to uphold the law.
Laurel pressed her body even closer. Her warm curves and smooth plains of muscle felt exquisite against me. She pressed her fingertips into my jaw, shifted my chin down. My chest went tight. Even the muscles in my lungs seemed to have frozen in anticipation. A tantalizing ache grew between my shoulder blades and spread down my spine. I was wet and all we were doing was staring at each other.
I dipped my head and tried to capture her mouth. She tightened her grip against my jaw and held me still. When I stopped moving, she leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine. I groaned. Which was probably good for that whole cover thing, right?
Laurel opened her mouth. The inside of her lip was soft. She pulled back, kissed me again. Her tongue flicked over my lip. She tasted like cheap beer and warmth.
“Hey, uh, Cash?” The voice was deep and low and probably did not belong to the girl who had been approaching.
Laurel pulled back. I did my best to not look like I wanted to punch whoever had interrupted us. Laurel smiled, then shifted away from me. I looked up.
The guy was wearing denim cutoffs that were a size too small. His shirt was also too tight. It was buttoned all the way up. I hated that. It was suffocating to look at. But it was the hair that finally placed him. The top was foppishly long, but oiled into place. The sides were shaved almost to the skin.
“Dawson.” I put out my hand. He shook it. “This is Laurel.” He shook her hand too.
“Sorry to interrupt. I just…” He broke eye contact. This guy had always been obnoxiously confident. Even with things he had no business being confident about.
“Did you hear about Pedro?” I asked it gently. He had that look like he was going to break any second.
Dawson nodded. “That dumb fuck.” He sniffled. “How could he be so stupid?”
“I don’t know, man. I heard it was an OD.”
Another wet sniffle. “Yeah. Idiot took some pills and…” He shrugged. “I don’t know, bro. It was like what the fuck, you know?”
“Totally.” I did not know.
“Is this that guy you were telling me about?” Laurel asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, awesome kid. Super smart and shit. Really genuine, you know?”
Dawson started actually crying. “He was so fucking smart. Like how was he so fucking dumb?” He leaned in toward me.
I let go of Laurel and held out an arm. Dawson launched himself at me. He was half a foot taller than me. So that was a bit awkward.
Laurel backed away. I put my other arm around Dawson and did my best to comfort him. His body felt wrong so close to mine. I wasn’t a hugger. I wasn’t really into touching other people. But I couldn’t deny this man-sized boy his grief. A few uncomfortable minutes passed before he pulled away. I looked around and realized Laurel wasn’t there.
“I’m sorry, bro. I didn’t mean—” Dawson took a deep shaky breath.
“Hey, it’s cool. This just blows.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, it really fucking blows.”
Laurel returned. She had a stack of plastic chairs braced on her shoulder and a precarious handful of cheap beer. “Here.” She held out the bottles. Dawson and I grabbed them. We unstacked the chairs and set them in a small circle. When we sat, our knees were nearly touching. “I’m really sorry about your friend,” Laurel said to Dawson.
“Thanks.”
“Tell me about him.”
Dawson stared at his hands. “I don’t know. He was my buddy.” He shrugged. “He woke up at five a.m. every day. Naturally. Never used an alarm clock. Just woke up and went for a run. Used to drive me nuts, but like I was never late to class so that was cool.”
“You guys lived together?” Laurel asked.
“Used to.” Dawson drank a third of his beer. “We shared a house with five other guys. But we all moved out last month.”
“What happened?”
“Two of the guys, James and Jimmy—Cash, you remember them?” Dawson asked. I nodded. “They started fucking, which was fine. Like it didn’t mess with our dynamic or whatever. But then I guess they fell in love or some bullshit.” He smiled like he wasn’t going to admit that he was into the idea of love, but he secretly thought it was cool. “They got their own place and we couldn’t find anyone who wanted to share a three-bedroom house with five dudes.”
Laurel cocked her head. “There’s so much to unpack there.”
“Bunk beds,” Dawson said with a measure of pride.
“I’m still stuck on James and Jimmy. So they’re both named James?”
“Not the point, babe,” I said.
“Right. So bunk beds?”
“Me and Pedro had the coolest one. We built it ourselves.” Dawson looked quite pleased with himself. “Out of reclaimed pallets. Chicks were so into it.”
“Chicks were into…” Laurel trailed off when she caught the look I was giving her. “Cool. Out of pallets?”
“Yeah.” Dawson teared up again. “We were going to share custody of it. He took it when we moved out. I was supposed to take it back in six months. I guess it’s just mine now though.”
“Oh, so you guys moved to different places?”
“My girlfriend thought we should move in together. But we broke up and Pedro already had a roommate.” He shrugged. “I should have stayed with him. Maybe then he wouldn’t—”
“Hey, man. Don’t do that. It’s not your fault,” I said.
“But like we were so careful. That’s why we always wanted you and Nate around. ’Cause other people sell some sketchy shit.”
The Price of Cash Page 10