The song wound down and they finished it the way they always finished it, pressed together, Jaslene's mouth on Mireya's, Mireya's hands moving over her, both of them giving the man exactly what he'd paid for and then a little more. When the last beat dropped they pulled apart slowly, foreheads touching, eyes open. Jaslene's lipstick was gone. Mireya's chest was still rising and falling.
The man in the chair wiped his palm along the armrest, slow and deliberate. He let out a low breath, then reached down and adjusted himself, fingers working at his zipper, and tugged it back up. He smoothed his slacks across his thighs and straightened in the chair, settling back into himself. Then he dug into his pocket and came out with a folded stack of bills. He held them out between two fingers, not quite extending his arm all the way, making them come to him.
"A little extra for that show," he said.
Jaslene stepped forward and took it from him with a smile. "Gracias, papi."
Mireya winked, already stepping back toward the door. "Come back and see us."
They walked out of the VIP side by side, pulling robes off the hook by the door and shrugging into them as they stepped into the hall. The mansion spread out around them. High ceilings and old wood floors worn smooth, chandelier light that had gone amber at the edges where the bulbs had aged. Somewhere below, a crowd surged and ebbed, the bass traveling up through the walls in slow, steady pulses. The runner rug muffled their heels as they turned toward the staircase.
Jaslene tied her robe at the waist without breaking stride. Her shoulder bumped Mireya's once, and Mireya let it stay, their arms pressing together for a second before the movement of walking pulled them apart. Jaslene's hand grazed the back of hers near the bottom step, fingers light.
At the top of the stairs, tucked into the corner where the hall narrowed before it opened back up toward the rooms, they saw her.
Sydney was on her knees in front of a man leaning back against the wall, one hand braced flat on the molding above him, the other on the back of her head. He tapped out a thin line of coke onto the back of his wrist and angled it down toward her. She bent forward and snorted it clean. She straightened, wiped the back of her wrist across her nose, blinked once at the ceiling and got back to work. The man's head rolled back.
Jaslene said, "Espero que esta vez les cobre."
Whatever warmth Mireya had been carrying out of the VIP was gone before Jaslene finished the sentence. She watched Sydney for a half second and then shook her head once.
"Les dije que ella era demasiado débil para esto," Mireya said.
They turned away from the corner and continued down the hall toward the dressing room. The sounds from behind them faded back into the general noise of the house, voices and music from the floor below bleeding through the walls.
"It's fucking with the gueritas," Jaslene said. "They can't get enough of that."
Mireya pushed a strand of hair back from her face. "I guess. Taking her with us to private parties gotta stop though. She's gonna get us into some shit."
"Gonna cut into our money to not have her there, though." Jaslene's chin dipped toward her shoulder in a small shrug. "They like the variety."
"Que se joda." Mireya's voice was flat. "We did fine with us, Ale, Haylz, Bee, Mari and Liana. One more bitch ain't worth it if she's causing shit."
Jaslene pushed through the dressing room door with her shoulder and held it open. Mireya passed under her arm without slowing.
Mireya pulled out her stool with the side of her foot and dropped onto it, robe falling open. Jaslene settled into her own chair beside her and reached down to adjust the loose knot of hers.
Jaslene peeled off a few bills from the tip and set them down in front of Mireya. Mireya added them to the rest of the money from the VIP, squared the edges of the whole stack against the countertop, and started pulling it apart. Her fingers moved fast, pressing out the creases. Her nails clicked lightly against the counter as she worked.
"You can't worry about what she's doing, mi amor." Jaslene drew her own pile toward her across the surface, spreading it out with her palm. "Solo preocúpate por mantenerte a salvo."
Mireya's thumb flicked through the bills, moving them from one hand to the other. "Y tú," she said, not looking up.
Jaslene looked over at her. She held it there for a moment, the side of Mireya's face lit up by the vanity bulbs, jaw still and focused. Then she looked back down at her own money and started to count.
"Y tú."
The fan moved through its slow arc. The bass from the floor below came up in steady rolls, the house still running at full noise around them. The only sound between them was paper against paper, the quiet rhythm of the count.
~~~
The apartment was quiet except for the fan and whatever the street pushed up through the window. Sara had her knees on either side of Devin's thighs, her weight settled into his lap, and they'd been at it long enough that the kiss had moved past the careful part. His hands were on her back, one palm spread between her shoulder blades, the other at her waist, and she could feel the warmth of them even through the fabric.
His fingers found the hem of her shirt and he started pulling it up, slow and unhurried, giving her time to feel it happening. The fabric rose, cool air touching the skin of her stomach, and she went still.
Devin stopped the moment she did. He held where he was, his eyes coming up to her face, waiting for whatever she was going to decide.
Sara looked at him. The light came through the blinds in thin, even bars across the couch cushions, striping his shoulders. She held his gaze for a beat, reading his face, and then she lifted her arms.
He pulled the shirt over her head in one easy motion and set it on the cushion beside him.
Sara sat in front of him and let him see her. "You're not going to disappear on me after this, huh?" she asked.
Devin shook his head. His hands moved back to her waist and he looked at her. "If I was gonna do that then I would've done it a long time ago." The edge of a smile crossed his mouth. "You haven't exactly made this easy."
Sara leaned back from him. Her arms came up and crossed over her chest, forearms pressing flat against each other, and her chin lifted a fraction.
"That's not a way into a woman's cucos, Devin."
He laughed, and his hands moved up to her forearms, wrapping around them gently. She held for a moment, then let her arms drop. He took her hands and held them lightly at her sides, his thumbs moving once across the inside of her wrists.
"I'm just saying I know it's gonna be worth it," he said, "because you made me wait. So no, I'm not gonna run off on you."
Sara studied him.
He let her look. He just sat there under the weight of her attention and waited, his eyes on hers.
The fan turned in its slow arc. A car passed on the street below, bass faint for a moment, then gone. The light through the blinds shifted by a degree and settled again.
Sara nodded once, the movement small and decided.
"I like this," she said.
Something changed in Devin's face. "Me too," he said.
She leaned forward and found his mouth again. He kissed her back the same way he'd been waiting, one hand coming up along her jaw and curving behind her ear, his fingers warm in her hair. She felt the pressure of his palm against her cheek, the care of it, and she let herself stay in it.
His other hand traveled to her back. His fingers worked the clasp of her bra and she felt the tension release, the band loosening. She let her arms fall forward to give it space. The straps slid down her shoulders and he helped it free the rest of the way and let it go.
~~~
The field behind the church was quiet in the late morning heat. Gnats moved in lazy clouds just above the grass line. The air smelled like cut clover. Caine leaned both forearms on the fence, weight forward, chin low, watching the horses on the other side work their way through the grass in slow, aimless circuits. He heard the side-by-side before he saw it. The engine's whine broke through the field noise, growing from somewhere up near the church and cutting a line toward him through the heat. He didn't turn right away. He watched the nearest horse lift its head, ears rotating once at the sound, then drop back to the grass without much concern, already over it.
Caine turned his head when the ATV swung under the big oak at the field's edge, brakes dragging it to a stop in the shade. Blake climbed out, took a second to straighten his cap, and came across the grass toward him, hands in his pockets.
He stopped a few feet away and said, "Marianne's looking for you."
Caine snorted. "Boy, fuck Marianne." He kept his eyes on the horses. "You can go tell her I'm out here."
Blake put a hand on the top rail of the fence, shifting his weight onto it. "You think that's smart to say some shit like that? You know they're looking for a reason to get rid of you."
Caine turned and looked at him then. Blake's shirt was damp under the arms already. His eyes had that glassy, slightly unfocused quality.
"You're the one who started all the shit by not keeping your fucking mouth shut," Caine said. "I should bat the piss out of you."
Blake's mouth pulled into a grimace. "Don't blame me because you couldn't keep in your draws, homie."
Caine waved the comment off with one hand and looked back out at the field. "It's funny ain't nobody worried about the motherfucker banging dope in his veins," he said, "but I'm public enemy number one for some shit everyone do."
Blake straightened off the fence. "It's different."
Caine's eyes cut back to him. "Different how? Because you Tommy's brother?" He shook his head. "You still a fucking dope fiend."
Blake's jaw moved. He looked out toward the tree line at the far edge of the property instead of at Caine. "I'm trying to get clean."
Caine snorted a laugh, the sound short and dry. "You ain't shit." He let his eyes travel down to Blake's arm. He looked at it a second, then looked back at Blake's face. "That's fresh track marks right there. When you shot up? This morning when you got to this bitch?"
Blake pulled his sleeve down over his arm. He shook his head, the motion tight and deliberate, and kept his eyes on the ground between his feet. When he spoke, his voice had come down to something quieter, something he was choosing each word of. "If anyone knows that you don't go telling people's business, then it's you. So we can just keep this between the two of us."
Caine stepped back from the fence and turned to face Blake fully. He put his foot flat on the ground, let his hands hang easy at his sides, and looked at him without hurry.
"I ain't got no loyalty to you, motherfucker. You a junkie. It ain't in my DNA to go run to the people and fuck your bitch ass brother, so I don't even care enough to say nothing."
He raised one finger, pointing it once. "But what's crazy is I can't imagine being the type of man that would choose a needle over his child."
Something moved across Blake's face. His eyebrows pulled together and he raised one hand, pointing back at Caine like the words were already loaded and coming. They didn't come. He stood there with his arm up and his mouth slightly open and the sentence went nowhere. He shook his hand instead, two, three times, jaw still working at the air. Then he let his arm drop and turned away without saying a word.
He walked back across the grass toward the side-by-side with his shoulders set, climbed in, and put both hands on the wheel. He sat there for a second before he looked over.
"I'll let Marianne know where you at."
Caine had already turned back to the fence. The horses had drifted further down the field, moving slow through the high grass, their backs catching the light in broad patches of gold and brown.
"You fucking do that," he said.
~~~
Trell walked in the moment she pulled the door back, shoulder brushing the frame. Cass pushed the door shut hard behind him and moved ahead of him down the hall with her arms already folded tight over her chest. The silk robe shifted against her thighs as she walked, the hem catching the light from the kitchen at the end of the hall. He followed at his own pace.Cass stopped at the counter and turned, leaning back against it with her weight on her palms behind her. He looked at the kitchen, at the dishes in the rack, at the pot on the stove, then his eyes came back to her. They dropped to the robe once, the way the silk moved when she breathed, the way the tie pulled at the waist, then came up to her face.
"You must not still be too mad at a nigga," he said, "if you wearing something sexy like that for me."
Cass sucked her teeth, the sound sharp in the quiet kitchen. "Nigga, I was waiting for one of my best eaters. He should be over any minute, so make it fucking quick."
Trell snorted. He moved past her toward the refrigerator, pulled it open with one hand and let his eyes move over the shelves, the condiment bottles, the Tupperware stacked two high on the second shelf. He reached in and grabbed a water bottle from the door, let the refrigerator swing shut behind him.
Cass watched him. "Yeah, just help yourself, nigga."
He didn't answer. He cracked the cap and tipped the bottle up, swished the water once before he swallowed, then set the bottle on the counter beside him and looked at her.
"I need you to find out who Tiff's cousin is working with in Memphis," he said.
Cass let her head tip to one side, chin lifting just slightly. "Why the fuck would I do that for you?"
Trell leaned back against the counter across from her, arms crossing over his chest, weight settling easy. "Cause that weird ass nigga just muddying the waters. I ain't interested in that small time shit and I ain't interested in working with country ass niggas."
Cass shook her head once, slow. "Jackson, Montgomery, all them niggas country, too."
Trell lifted one shoulder and let it drop. "I can't argue with that. But the point stand. I can make more money just going straight to the niggas in Memphis than working with some nigga in Little Rock who don't know what he's doing and don't know the people he need to know."
Cass held his eyes for a moment. A car passed on the street outside, music bass-heavy, the sound swelling and fading through the window glass. She glanced down at the tile between them and then looked back up.
"You still ain't told me why I should help you with this." She kept her voice flat. "Send your Mexican up there to fuck the information out of him."
"I could do that, too," Trell said. "But I figured you'd want in on this money."
Cass sucked her teeth again. She pushed off the counter and crossed her arms tighter. "Nigga, I don't trust you not to snake me on this."
Trell's mouth stayed even. "Cause you got your ass beat?"
"No, nigga." She held his gaze. "Because I don't fucking trust your ass." She said it the same way she said everything, no spike in the volume, just the words sitting there where she'd put them.
The knock came from the front door before he could answer. Her phone buzzed on the counter at the same time, the screen lighting up with a text, the vibration dragging it an inch across the laminate before it stopped.
Cass looked at the phone screen, then back at Trell. "You gotta go now, nigga."
Trell pushed off the counter and shook his head, a low laugh coming out of him. He walked back out of the kitchen, and she fell in step behind him. The hall felt narrower with him moving through it, the air a little tighter.
He said, over his shoulder without turning, "Just think about it, Cass. That's all I'm asking."
He reached the front door, wrapped his hand around the knob, and pulled it back.
A man stood on the other side with one hand half-raised, already partway through his knock. He was tall, thick through the chest, dressed in a clean shirt. He looked at Trell standing in the doorway, took in the full picture of him, the posture, the water bottle still in his hand, and his eyebrow climbed. He looked past Trell down the hall to Cass standing there in the silk robe, then back to Trell.
Trell looked him over the same way. His mouth pulled up at one corner and he stepped out past the man, shoulder passing close, down onto the first porch step. He said, "Don't worry, my nigga. I ain't fuck her. Today."
The man's eyebrow stayed exactly where it was. Trell snorted a laugh and kept moving down the steps.
~~~
The banging hit the front door three times, hard and even. Mireya's eyes opened. She lay there a second, the ceiling fan turning slow overhead. The city noise came through the window, distant and steady. The knocking came again, the same three beats, and she pushed herself up to sitting.She reached for her phone on the nightstand. Three missed calls from Angela. A string of texts underneath them, the last one just her name with a question mark. She read the first message, then set the phone face down on the mattress and dropped her head back against the pillow. She pressed her palm flat over her eyes and held it there for a moment, then pulled her hand away, sat up the rest of the way, and put her feet on the floor.
She went to the dresser, pulled a shirt from the top drawer, and tugged it over her head. She walked down the hall, the wood warm under them from the heat coming through the walls, and put her eye to the peephole.
Angela and Paz stood on the other side of the door.
Mireya exhaled through her nose, then reached for the deadbolt, turned it, and pulled the door open.
"My bad," she said, already turning away from them and heading toward the kitchen. "I went to sleep when I came back from dropping Camila at daycare and forgot I told you to come over."
Angela came in first. Paz followed a step behind and her eyes went to Mireya's back, to the shirt, to where the hem sat on her thighs as she walked ahead of them. Paz pulled the door shut behind her with a click.
Mireya picked up the coffee pot and took it to the sink, filled it to the line, and carried it back to the machine. She slid it in and turned back to the counter. Angela pulled out a kitchen chair, the legs scraping the floor, and sat down, dropping her bag on the table in front of her. Paz stayed in the doorway, not moving toward a chair. Her arms came up over her chest and she stood there with her weight back, watching Mireya at the counter.
Angela leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin tipping up toward her. "Girl, I've gotten so many compliments on those clothes you gave me. I might never shop on my own again."
Mireya laughed, the sound short and easy. She reached up for the cabinet door, arm going up. "I got enough of it to give away some."
Paz's eyes dropped to the hem of the shirt, to where it had risen when Mireya's arm went up. "You should try wearing some of it."
Angela turned in the chair, looking back at Paz, her chin pulling down. "Don't start, Paz."
Mireya took the coffee out of the cabinet, the bag heavy in her hand, and set it down on the counter. "I'm in my own fucking house." She pulled the filter basket out of the machine and shook out the old grounds. "You lucky I got this on."
Paz sucked her teeth. "I guess we're not doing modesty anymore in the big '27."
Mireya spooned the coffee into the filter, slid it into the machine, and hit the button. The machine started with a low hiss and a click. She turned around and leaned her hip into the counter, her hand settling flat on the edge beside her. She looked at Paz across the kitchen.
"Are you mad because I'm comfortable," she said, looking at Paz, "or because you like looking?"
Angela stood up fast from the chair, scraping it back against the floor, both hands coming out flat in the space between them. "Y'all gotta chill."
Paz's chin came up and held there. Her arms stayed folded, fingers pressing into her own sleeves. "I'm not a fucking lesbian like you."
Mireya pushed off the counter and walked into the living room. She came to a stop a couple of feet from Paz with Angela still between them, the three of them in the small space together. She looked at Paz straight.
"Clearly," Mireya said. "Because you're taking enough dick to worry about being pregnant."
Paz opened her mouth, then shut it. She looked at Angela instead.
Angela's hands were still out, palms turned up, voice coming out careful. "You did have like twenty tests in the garbage."
Paz's arms came back up over her chest, fingers pressing hard into her own sleeves this time. She pulled her chin up and kept it aimed at Mireya, holding it there. "I was making sure the fucking Plan B worked." Her voice came tight, each word separate. "I'm not a stupid fucking whore like you."
Mireya stepped around Angela and hit Paz across the face. The sound came flat and hard in the quiet of the apartment. Paz's head snapped to one side, hair cutting across her cheek. She stood still for a beat, head turned, and then her hand came up slow and pressed against her face. When she turned back her eyes were wide and wet.
"Don't you ever fucking disrespect me again," Mireya said. "Puta."
She looked at Paz's hand on her cheek, then lifted her own toward the door, one short flick of her fingers. "Get the fuck out. Both of you. Before I do something worse."
Angela took one step back, then another, hands still up in the space between them, eyes moving from Mireya to Paz and back. Paz pulled herself together enough to turn toward the door, got it open, and went through it without looking back. Angela followed her out backward, keeping her palms forward, watching Mireya's face until the door swung shut behind her and the latch clicked and the apartment went quiet around her.
Mireya stood in the living room a moment. The coffee machine hissed from the kitchen. She turned and walked back in, took a mug from the cabinet, and poured herself a cup of coffee. Steam came up from the surface. She wrapped her hand around the mug and stood at the counter, free hand tapping against the counter.
~~~
The folding chairs had been set up in rows across the cafeteria, and Laney walked past the first three rows and took a seat near the back wall. She set her purse on the floor between her feet and crossed one ankle over the other. Up front, the principal was already talking, his voice carrying over the scrape and shuffle of people still finding seats.She rolled her eyes as the conversation picked up. The same three or four parents at the front who asked too many questions. The same noise about teacher assignments and which kids had which schedules. She kept her eyes on the front of the room and let the words run together.
The empty seat beside her filled fast. A woman dropped into it with the controlled urgency of someone who had been running, breath coming short, one hand going straight to her hair and pushing it back from her face. She took one look at the front of the room and then sat with the resignation of someone who had just missed the bus she'd been sprinting toward.
Laney glanced over once, then back at the front.
The meeting ran its course. Somebody raised a concern about grading standards. Somebody else seconded it. A woman in the second row turned around to agree with them and her chair legs screamed across the linoleum. The principal nodded, patient and noncommittal. Then, twenty-some minutes later, he thanked everyone for coming and the room shifted into the sound of people standing up at once.
The woman beside Laney dropped back in her chair. "Well, fuck," she said, barely above a breath.
Laney reached down for her purse and looped the strap over her shoulder. "You ain't miss nothin'. Just the usual people tryin' to make sure their kid don't got a teacher who grade too hard."
The woman snorted. She looked up at Laney. "I just moved here and I didn't know this was a thing until my mama told me I should probably look into it."
The two of them stood. Chairs pushed back around them, conversations starting up in the aisles.
"Every other Thursday," Laney said.
The woman nodded, then held out her hand. "I'm Emily."
Laney shook it. "Laney. How many you got?"
"One gonna be going here. Two more, twins, just turned two." Emily shifted her bag on her shoulder. "How about you?"
"All three of mine here now." Laney watched a cluster of parents near the door, then looked back at Emily. "You just move to Statesboro?"
Emily laughed, her eyes going a little wide. "How can you tell?"
"I'm from Claxton," Laney said. "Grew up 'round here my whole life. You know who is and who ain't from here pretty quick."
They started toward the aisle. Emily fell in beside her, adjusting her bag again.
"I'm from Quincy down in Florida," Emily said. "My husband. Ex-husband." She said the correction, just a small recalibration. "He worked at a plant there, moved us to Attapulgus then Savannah then decided he didn't want to be a husband any more."
Laney glanced at her. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Emily shrugged. "He was a mean man." She paused, a half-step between that and the next thing. "Anyway, it's cheaper here than Savannah and I wasn't too torn up about leaving Quincy."
Laney nodded. They reached the aisle and she gestured toward the double doors at the far end of the cafeteria.
They moved with the tail end of the crowd, out of the rows of folding chairs and into the hallway. The air in the corridor was cooler. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. A bulletin board with summer reading lists still tacked up on it, the edges of the papers curling away from the board. The double doors at the far end let the night in when a parent pushed through ahead of them, the sound of cicadas coming through for a second before the door swung shut again.
"A lot cheaper," Laney said. She pushed one of the doors open and held it. "You want to go grab somethin' to eat? A welcome to the town meal since I ain't got a casserole for you."
Emily laughed again, this one looser. "Sure. The babysitter's with my kids for another couple hours."
Laney fell in step beside Emily toward the cars. She smiled as they walked, and it reached her face well enough. But under it she turned Emily's words over the same way she'd been turning things over for months. A mean man. Decided he didn't want to be a husband anymore. She thought about the three kids, the move from Quincy to Attapulgus to Savannah to here, the babysitter sitting with the twins tonight, the way Emily had said ex-husband.
Laney thought about Knox and Braxton and Hunter, and what it would look like to be the one packing their things.
~~~
The bar had settled into its rhythm. Caine sat back in the corner booth with his arm draped along the top of the seat behind Shae, a low amber fixture overhead laying a warm circle across the table. His drink was sweating a ring into the wood beside it. The booth seat had that slight lean forward and the cushion had given up most of its resistance years ago, but it was away from the door and away from most of the foot traffic.
Shae held his hand in both of hers, bent over his palm, her thumb moving in small careful arcs. She had been doing this for a few minutes, not in any hurry about it, studying the lines the way someone reads a page they're going to be tested on later.
"You have such an interesting life line," she said.
Caine laughed. "Yeah?"
Shae nodded, still not looking up from his hand. "They're both longer than you'd expect for someone your age and shorter."
He glanced at his palm from the side, then back at her. "That might just be from me fucking up my hands working and playing football."
Shae shook her head. Her thumb slid along the line again, deliberate. "No, chiromancy isn't changed by damage to the hands. This is the story of your life."
Caine looked down at his palm again. "It ain't that interesting."
Shae looked up at him. She held his eyes for a beat. "I disagree. I could give you a reading if you want."
Caine picked up his drink and finished what was left in it. The ice clicked against the glass when he set it down. "Let me get another drink before you tell me I'm gonna die next week." He lifted his chin toward her. "You want anything?"
"Just an IPA."
He nodded and slid out of the booth. He moved through the back of the bar, past a group standing too close to the hallway, around a chair somebody had pushed out. =The crowd thinned toward this end, mostly people waiting to order, a few nursing drinks alone.
He leaned in with both forearms on the bar rail and looked down the row for the bartender. He scanned past three or four faces.
Rylee was two stools down, her back partially toward him. A guy sat pressed close beside her with one hand working up her thigh. He was leaned toward her, eyes drifting from her face down.
Caine set his elbow on the bar. "It's that kind of night, huh?"
Rylee didn't turn her head. Her jaw tightened once. "Fuck off, Caine."
The guy finally looked over. His eyes were on Rylee's chest more than on Caine's face when he spoke. "Hey, bro. We're busy."
Caine ignored him. He looked at Rylee. "You can't start wilding just because shit ain't go your way."
Rylee turned then. She met his eyes. "Funny comin' from you when you over there hugged up with some weird earthy crystal bitch."
Caine snorted. "That was real close to a racial slur."
Rylee rolled her eyes. She looked back at the bar, at the rings her glass had left on the wood. "You ain't got no business worryin' 'bout what I'm doin' no more. If I wanna get fucked on this bar then I'm gonna do it."
The guy's head came up. He looked between the two of them, then at Rylee with a new angle of interest. "I'm down for that."
Rylee turned to him. "Give me a minute."
He sucked his teeth and shifted back on the stool, turning forward, hand dropping from her thigh.
Rylee faced Caine again. "What you want? You told me you ain't want me."
Caine kept his voice even. "That don't mean that I don't care about you."
Rylee let out a breath through her nose. She looked at her glass on the bar, the condensation beaded on the side of it. "Save it. Just fuck off, Caine."
He lifted one hand off the bar, palm out, and held it there a beat. "You got it, Rylee Jo."
She shook her head once. She turned back to the guy. He had his eyes on her already, attention snapping back from wherever Caine had pulled it. "You got a tab?".
The guy smiled. He reached into his pocket and his hand came back out. Caine watched him pass something across the bar to Rylee between two fingers, small and white. Rylee took it without looking at it, popped it into her mouth.
Caine looked away from them. He shook his head once to himself. Then he caught the bartender's eye down the bar, two fingers raised, and waited.
Hitting .250 is replacement level, Soapito and even that 1 is tenuous. 
Woman continues her friendships with her childhood friends even though such friendships have likely expired like millions of people do the world over="laughable."
