“If it is, I’m guilty of the same.” He shakes his head. “The universe is such an asshole. Or maybe we just have really shitty luck.” After a minute, he says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if bringing you both here triggered it in some way.”
“Was bound to happen,” I tell him. “I guess it was good to get it over with at least.”
“Freddie?”
We both sit up and turn around.
Viv hovers behind us, a few feet away. “You can still stay here tonight if you want.” She looks at me and smiles. “And your friends, too.”
He looks to me briefly. “Nah. We better not.”
“Um.” I shouldn’t interject myself, but if we don’t stayhere, where are we going to go?
She nods quietly. “Be careful.”
As she walks back inside, and only loud enough for me to hear, Freddie mumbles, “Happy birthday.”
We walk to the car in silence. I glance at the time on my phone. It’s past one in the morning and Freddie and I are both exhausted. Driving home tonight is not in the cards—not to mention that Agnes would kill Freddie for driving home so late. I’m trying to map out in my head what we’ll do for the night. Maybe we can find a cheap hotel or hang out in a diner.
Grace is waiting for us.
Freddie sees her sitting on the curb beside the car with half the contents of her purse spilled out on the pavement, including ChapStick, tampons, her phone, loose dollar bills, and a handful of emptied mini liquor bottles. He turns to me. “I guess neither of our nights went as planned.”
I walk around to the front seat and slam the door shut behind me.
“Grace, we gotta get you in the car,” I hear Freddie say.
I watch in the side mirror as she puts her purse back together one piece at a time. He reaches down to help her up. The minute he closes the back door behind her, she’s snoring.
Freddie sighs and leans his head against the steering wheel after pulling his door shut.
“Thanks for that,” I whisper.
“Yup.”
“Um, I hate to bring this up, but if we’re not staying with Viv, where are we staying?”
“Well, I hadn’t really gotten that far.” He sits up and reaches for his wallet in his back pocket. After flipping through his cash, he says, “I’ve got sixty bucks and Gram’s emergency credit card. Which I’d rather not use.”
I open the center console, where I’d stowed away my wallet, which is actually just a Lisa Frank pencil bag. “I’ve got eighty.” Eighty dollars that I didn’t intend to spend and only brought for serious emergencies. I don’t think Freddie understands what a sacrifice it is for me to fork over this wad of cash, but I don’t think I have much of a choice at this point. Between hotel, food, and gas, what we have won’t get us far.
Vacancies aren’t easy to come by on a Friday night. We end up at a motel in a room with two double beds and a broken hot-pink Jacuzzi. Like, it’s just sitting there in the middle of the room next to the television, which might be older than me and Freddie combined.
Freddie helps Grace into the room and forces her to drink an entire bottle of water before going to bed, while I bring our bags in.
She plops back on the bed. “You’re cute,” she says to Freddie, in between sips. “Can I tell you something?”
“Do what you gotta do,” Freddie says as he helps her pull the blankets back.
“I’ve never dated a black guy. Does that make me racist?”
Freddie looks at me, and I shrug and shake my head. He laughs, because I think it’s all he can do, but I can see the clear discomfort in the way his posture goes rigid. “Not last I checked.”
It’s a gross thing to say, and I would tell her so if I thought she would even remember it in the morning, but instead I roll my eyes in Freddie’s direction.
His lips spread into a thin smile.
“It’s not that I wouldn’t,” Grace says. “Just that the opportunity never presented itself.”
