Valiant (Modern Faerie Tales 2)

"Your friend," Ruth looked back at Lolli skeptically. "She answered your phone."

Val reached automatically for her bag, even knowing that her phone must not be inside of it. "I turned it off."

"I know. I tried to call you a zillion times and your voice mail is full. I've been freaking out."

Val nodded, at a loss as to what to say. She was conscious of the ground-in dirt on her pants, the black half-moons of her fingernails and the stink of her body, the smells that scrubbing in public rest rooms with your clothes mostly on didn't really make better.

"Listen," Ruth said. "I brought someone to meet you." She held out the sack of flour. It had eyes outlined with heavy black liner and a tiny, pursed mouth shaded with glittering blue nail polish. "Our baby. You know, it's hard on him with one of his mommies gone and it's hard on me, being a single parent. In Health class, I had to do all the worksheets alone." Ruth gave Val a wobbly smile. "I'm sorry I was such an asshole. I should have told you about Tom. I started to, like a million times. I just never got the words all of the way out."

"It doesn't matter anymore," Val said. "I don't care about Tom."

"Look," said Ruth. "It's freezing. Can we go inside? I saw a bubble tea place not too far from here."

Was it freezing? Val was so used to being cold when she wasn't using Never that it seemed normal for her fingers to be numb and her marrow to feel like it was made from ice. "Okay," she said.

Lolli had a smug expression on her face. She lit a cigarette and blew twin streams of white smoke from her nostrils. "I'll tell Dave you'll be back soon. I don't want him to worry about his new girlfriend."

"What?" For a moment, Val didn't know what she meant. Sleeping with Dave seemed so unreal, something done in the middle of the night, drunk with glamour and sleep.

"He says you two made it last night." Lolli sounded haughty, but Dave obviously hadn't told her that Val had looked like Lolli when she'd done it. It filled Val with a shameful relief.

Now Val understood why Ruth was here, why Lolli had lifted her cell phone and set up this scene. She was punishing Val.

Val guessed it was just about what she deserved. "It's no big deal. It was just something to do." Val paused. "He was just trying to make you jealous."

Lolli looked surprised and then suddenly, awkward. "I just didn't think you liked him like that."

Val shrugged. "Be back in a while."

"Who is she?" Ruth asked as they walked toward the bubble tea place.

"Lolli," Val said. "She's okay, mostly. I'm crashing with her and some of her friends."

Ruth nodded. "You could come home, you know. You could stay with me."

"I don't think that your mom would be down with that." Val opened the wood and glass door and stepped into the smell of sugary milk. They sat at a table in the back, balancing on the small rosewood boxes the place had for seats. Ruth thrummed her fingers on the glass top of the table as though her nerves had settled into her skin.

The waitress came and they ordered black pearl tea, toast with condensed milk and coconut butter, and spring rolls. She stared at Val for a long moment before she left their table, as if evaluating whether or not they could pay.

Val took a deep breath and resisted the urge to bite the skin around her finger. "It's so weird that you're here."

"You look sick," Ruth said. "You're too skinny and your eyes are one big bruise."

"I—"

The waitress set their things down on the table, forestalling whatever Val had been about to say. Glad for the distraction, Val poked at her drink with the fat, blue straw, and then sucked up a large, sticky tapioca and a mouthful of sweet tea. Everything Val did seemed slow, her limbs so heavy that chewing on the tapioca felt exhausting.

"I know you're going to say that you're fine," Ruth said. "Just tell me that you really don't hate me."

Val felt something inside her waver and then she finally was able to start to explain. "I'm not mad at you anymore. I feel like such a sucker, though, and my mother… I just can't go back. At least not yet. Don't try to talk me into it."

"When then?" Ruth asked. "Where are you staying?"

Val just shook her head, putting another piece of toast in her mouth. They seemed to melt on her tongue, gone before she realized she'd eaten them all. At another table, a group of glitter-covered girls exploded in laughter. Two Indonesian men looked over at them, annoyed.

"So what did you name the kid?" Val asked.

"What?"