“Take it up with your mother,” she said cheerfully.
“Why don’t we play a game where we sit in silence for the entire ride back?”
She grinned and wrinkled her nose. “I’m just trying to make the point that Label has historically been at the forefront of change. You led the transition to digital without making a giant plummet out of the black. Why not consider inclusivity as your next history-making foray?”
“We sell a fantasy. Clothing that reminds readers about illness or disabilities isn’t fantasy. It’s real life, and they’ve got enough of that.”
She frowned thoughtfully.
I didn’t like defending Label’s brand. Not when I was still learning all the subtleties of it. Fantasy and image were essential to our brand. “Don’t you have something else to do, like find a new victim’s life to ruin?” I asked, changing the subject.
“You talk a good game, Charming, but I think you don’t hate me nearly as much as you pretend to,” Ally said airily.
“Wanna bet?” I sighed.
“Sorry. Broke.”
A shrill ringing erupted from the depths of her backpack.
“Christ, what is that?” I asked as the sound pierced my eardrum.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she frantically pawed through her bag.
“Hello?” she answered, breathlessly clutching her idiotic phone.
Her entire body seemed to go rigid while she listened.
“Is he okay?” she demanded. The hand gripping the phone to her ear went white-knuckled.
She looked pale as she shoved a hand through her hair.
“Okay. What hospital? Is it a precaution or…” she trailed off, nodding.
“I can be there in—” She leaned over Nelson and glanced at the GPS display. “An hour. Two tops. Hello? Can you hear me?”
She pulled the phone away from her ear and peered at the screen. “Dammit! Of course it goes dead.”
“What’s wrong? Where do you need to go?” I demanded.
She gripped the door handle like she was going to vault into traffic, and I clamped my hand over her knee to hold her in place. She was trembling, and it was killing me. “Ally.”
“Family emergency,” she said, a catch in her voice. “Nelson, could you pull over? I need to catch a train.”
“We’re five blocks away from the closest subway station,” I told her.
“I can walk. I need to walk.” In short, jerky motions, she was zipping her backpack and then trying to shoulder it.
“Take the car, Ally,” I said.
She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. Really looked at me. Her brown eyes were wide. She looked scared, and I decided I fucking hated that look on her.
I squeezed her knee, hard. “Breathe,” I commanded.
She took a slow breath and let it out. “I can’t take the car. I’m going to Jersey,” she said, her voice calmer.
“Nelson loves Jersey,” I told her.
“I live for it, sir,” Nelson chimed in.
That got a shaky smile out of her.
“He’ll take you to Jersey, and he can wait and drive you home,” I said.
She started shaking again and reached for the handle. “I can’t. The train will be faster. But thank you,” she said.
“Ally,” I said again. I couldn’t let her just jump out of the car and disappear.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” There was nothing in her tone that remotely reassured me.
Nelson signaled as he changed lanes, inching toward the subway station.
“Here. Take this,” I said, yanking out my wallet. I threw a fifty at her. “Take a cab when you get to Jersey.”
She looked at the money in her lap and started to shake her head. Newly and temporarily poor but permanently, stupidly stubborn.
“I c—”
“If the next word out of your mouth is ‘can’t,’ I’m going to insist on personally seeing you to your destination,” I threatened.
She looked at the bill in her lap again then up at me. I dared her to defy me.
“I’ll pay you back,” she said. Her voice was tight, and those golden eyes looked a little watery to me. I didn’t want her to go.
“I’ll fire you if you do. Take the car. Please,” I added, not liking how the word felt in my mouth.
“Train’s faster.”
Nelson roared up to the curb. He hopped out from behind the wheel.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked her.
“Everything’s fine. I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you, Dom.”
I didn’t expect the thank you. Or the chaste, friendly kiss she pressed to my cheek after.
Nelson opened my door, and Ally climbed right over me and hopped out.
I watched until she and that ridiculous backpack disappeared down the stairs.
“Back to the office, sir?” Nelson asked, sliding behind the wheel again.
I was still staring at the space that Ally and her backpack had occupied. “Actually, I have a stop to make.”
15
Ally
“Dad?”
I poked my head around the curtain that provided a sliver of privacy in the small room. It was like every other hospital room. Beige tile, industrial gray walls, and that stomach-turning smell of antiseptic and illness.
Dad’s bed was next to the window, and he was staring listlessly at the gray world beyond while a nurse fussed over him. He was conscious, upright. And some of the knots in my stomach loosened.
An untouched tray sat in front of him.
His roommate on the other side of the curtain let out a tremulous snore over the Judge Judy episode he’d left on at full volume.
Thank God for health insurance. Judging from the IVs and brace on my father’s leg, we’d already be bankrupt otherwise.
“Mr. Morales?” the nurse tried. This time my father glanced up.
His weight loss had slowed, thankfully. But he’d never be back to the pleasingly plump guy he’d been just a few years ago. The mustache he’d had forever was gone, too. They shaved it for him weekly at the nursing home.
I missed the man my father had been even as I tried to build a new relationship with who he was now. It was mostly bitter and not enough sweet in this new dynamic.
“Do you recognize your visitor?” the nurse asked.
Dad gave me a cursory once over and a careless shrug. “Should I?”
Logically, I knew it was a disease. But every time the man who raised me, the man who’d handsewn sequins on my jean jacket in fifth grade, the man who’d corralled six female neighbors in our living room the day I got my first period didn’t recognize me, it felt like I lost another little piece of both of us.
The man who loved me most in this world was gone. And most days I was erased from his memories. Like we’d never existed. Like I’d never existed.
“Hi, Mr. Morales,” I said, pasting on a bright smile that I didn’t feel. “I just came to see if there’s anything you needed from home.”
“Home?” he harrumphed.
I nodded and waited.
He shrugged. “See if Bobby mowed the lawn. I pay the kid ten dollars a week, and he does a five-dollar job. Oh, and bring me my term papers. I can at least grade finals while I’m stuck here.”