It Wasn't Always Like This (2 page)

He opened his eyes—blue, bloodshot—and grinned at her. “How the hell do you still look so good?” he drawled.

Matt
. His name was Matt.

“Habit,” she told him, pushing harder now until he rolled off the bed and hit the f loor with a thump. She didn’t need a glimpse in the mirror to know they were both right. Emma O’Neill might be a tad rumpled and head-throbby right this second, but that would fade soon enough. A hangover would never make a dent in the overall picture. Toxins of any kind didn’t have any real effect beyond an initial jolt or a groggy wake-up. Even toxins less pleasant than questionable street tacos. Hadn’t in longer than she preferred to remember.

Matt sat up, rubbing his backside. “Now why’d you go and do that?” He scratched the side of his face. His gaze was bleary. He was cute—thick blond hair and a stubbly chin—but pasty under his tan.

He’d looked better last night. They all had.

Emma thought of her friends, Coral and Hugo. Well, mostly Coral. Coral Ballard. The girl who looked like the other girls. The girl who looked like Emma.

THEIR MEETING HAD
been a random thing.

The Ballard family—Coral and her little brother and her parents and a mop-like mutt named Bernie—lived in a one-story house down the block from Emma’s apartment. Emma might not even have spoken to Coral had it not been for Bernie. Stupid cute dog.

Emma had always wanted one, but a dog was a responsibility she couldn’t assume. A dog might call attention where she needed anonymity. Even if it was lovable. Even if it was loyal, which dogs mostly were, unlike lovable humans, who had a bad habit of betraying girls they were
supposed
to love.

Maybe she was over-identifying on that last one.

Either way, a dog was just one more thing that would die before she did.

The pup padded closer and sat on her foot.

“You live around here?” the girl asked.

Emma’s gaze shifted. Coral, she noted now, was medium height, like she was. Pale like Emma, too. A slew of brightly colored vintage pottery bracelets adorned her milky arms. Her wavy hair was streaked with lots of red and a bit of blue. Underneath it looked to be blonde . . . maybe. But even, then Emma suspected it could have been brown. Like hers, too.

“Yeah,” Emma said. The pup was still sprawled across her foot. She hoped he wasn’t about to pee. “Over there.” She waved toward the bits of downtown Dallas skyline visible beyond the trees on her left.

The girl yanked on the leash until the puppy moved. “Sorry about that. He likes you. You should be f lattered. Bernie’s particular. He doesn’t like a lot of people.”

“Good to know.” Emma turned and nearly bumped into a boy.

“Hugo!” Coral scolded, but she was smiling. She turned to Emma. “He never watches where he’s going.”

Hugo had a big grin. Gangly, black-haired, Latino. And friendly. Before Emma knew it, they were introducing themselves. Hugo Alvarez and Coral Ballard were both seniors at North Dallas High School. And Emma could see: Both were funny and quirky and very much in love. It was that last part that slipped through her defenses. The way Hugo casually rested a hand on the small of Coral’s back. The way their closeness reminded her of a closeness she’d once had.

Coral tapped a painted nail on her chin. “Look at her, Hugo. We could be. . .

“Sisters,” Hugo and she f inished at the same time. They giggled.

Bernie nudged Emma’s hand, then signed happily as she stroked his head.

“Seriously, though,” Coral went on, “if I let my hair go back to its own color, which I totally won’t—but if I did . . . Don’t we look alike, Hugo?”

He nodded.

Emma shrugged. “Maybe.” She rolled her eyes to make it not true. But it
was
true. And acknowledging that—even silently—awakened in her a f ierce and sudden protectiveness she hadn’t been able to quell since. So she told Coral and Hugo that she was a freshman at Brookhaven Community College studying for a nursing degree. It was the lie she’d chosen for herself upon moving to Dallas.

But occasionally, she’d wished that this were true: that she was studying to become someone who could maybe save a life.

UNFORTUNATE THAT CORAL
and Hugo had chosen last night—of all nights—to sneak into that same neighborhood bar.

But that’s what happened when you made friends. You ran into them.

Emma kept one eye on the guy she’d followed, and the other on Matt, whom she matched bourbon for bourbon. She didn’t indulge that often, but it was the holidays, and he was cute enough. Besides, the guy she’d followed, one of Elodie Callahan’s classmates, seemed to be guilty only of a bad fake ID. Like she’d f igured: a dead-end. And the bourbon was reminding Emma that at the end of the day—in point of fact, a century of days—she was still alone in all this.

A potent combination.

She should have left the moment Coral and Hugo sauntered in. Or told them to leave. They were underage, after all. She didn’t. Among a long list of reasons why: they thought
she
was underage, too. (In a way, she was.) And cute-enough Matt? He thought otherwise. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. Or sit on your foot, like Bernie.

“You like him,” Coral whispered to Emma after bourbon number four. Or f ive. “Don’t you?” Coral was a romantic like that.

“He’s all right,” Emma whispered back.

“You’re cute, too,” Matt said, leaning across Emma to wink at Coral. He’d heard them, obviously. Then he pressed his mouth close to Emma’s ear. It had been a long time since she’d felt a boy’s lips brush her skin. “But not as cute as you.”

She should have known better. She
did
know better. Just sometimes . . .

At least Coral and Hugo hadn’t stayed long. A party somewhere, Coral said, eyes bright—and then they were gone. Emma told her to have a nice holiday if she didn’t see her; Emma was going to be spending it with some of her fellow nursing students, studying for their practicums. (Translation: investigating why a girl named Elodie Callahan had been murdered.)

It was just Emma and Matt after that, his arm draped casually over her shoulders, and some mixture of anthem rock and Christmas songs . . . and four or f ive bourbons too many. Matt was not Charlie. Could
never
be Charlie. But Matt was there
.
Sometimes
there
was enough.

And now here they were.

“I DON’T HAVE
coffee,” Emma said to move things along. She did in fact have coffee, two neatly stored packages in the side door of the fridge: Dunkin Donuts dark roast and a vanilla-f lavored one from Whole Foods. She liked them mixed half and half. In Portland, she’d favored espresso. Dallas seemed to require something sweeter. And as soon as Matt was out the door, she would brew a pot. She would sip a mug on her little balcony while she scribbled notes, and she would decide if there was anything about the Elodie Callahan case worth pursuing. Anything she might have missed.

“You look awfully young,” Matt said. He stood slowly, frowning, a thin wrinkle furrowing his brow.

Matt was
not
young. Not old, either, but somewhere in the middle. Surely no more than thirty.

“I’m twenty-one,” Emma said. It was the age on her current ID, basically the youngest possible age to be licensed and accepted without suspicion as a private investigator in the state of Texas, though eighteen was the off icial minimum. Besides, the age on her driver’s license was even true, from a certain perspective. She had
def initely
lived twenty-one years. And as far as the other minimum requirements to be licensed as both a driver and private investigator—she’d met them, too, though not in any way that could be explained to the authorities.

She remembered bringing Matt home now. Remembered eating those greasy tacos. “Give me a bite,” he’d said, grinning. But she hadn’t shared the taco. Even drunk, Emma was particular about her food.

He’d tried to kiss her a few times on the walk from the bar, and she’d giggled, batting him away. They’d stumbled into the apartment, and her mood changed. The air was fresh inside from the little Christmas tree she’d put up this year—her small acknowledgement that it was the holiday season, fa-la-la. She’d f lipped on the tiny Italian lights and forgotten to turn them off. They were still twinkling in the branches. She’d been very drunk. It had been very late.

She should have focused on the case. She should have trailed that guy she’d followed, Elodie’s classmate, back to his house. Or made sure Coral got home from that party. But it was just after Christmas, almost New Year’s. And even after all this time, all that loss took a cheap shot at her, and there she was: bringing someone home, someone who hadn’t looked at her carefully. Who tried to kiss her while she shoved tacos in her mouth and let her pretend the pain wasn’t there, who had no clue that the world hurtled forward while she stayed
exactly the same.

Someone who wasn’t—would never be—Charlie.

Matt’s lips twitched. “We could go to breakfast . . .” The offer did not sound particularly heartfelt. He scratched the back of his head. The word
BELIEVE
was tattooed in blue on his forearm. Last night it had seemed the most interesting thing about him. Emma had almost called him on it:
“Believe in what?”
But even drunk, she’d known that this question could have led anywhere.

Now she moved toward the window. Clicked off the tiny Italian lights. She felt sticky and tired, but the hangover was already fading, as it always did.

“This was fun,” she lied. He needed to get the hint. She needed to call Coral. She needed to brush her teeth.

Matt took a step toward the bedroom door. Emma watched as he patted his pockets, touching wallet and phone. She could see their indentations against his thighs. There was a spot of something that looked like
queso
on the left knee of his jeans. She tried not to think of tacos, but her stomach was already recovering, too.

He paused, his gaze landing on the ornate gold-chained pocket watch hanging from the wall by her bed.

“Didn’t peg you for the old-fashioned type.”

She shrugged. Maybe he meant that no one wore pocket watches these days, which was mostly true. As far as she could tell, the people in charge of the latest fashion mined the past the way
everybody
mined the past—perpetually and always.

She wanted to snatch it away, wanted him to leave now, but instead she said more defensively than she meant, “It was a gift.”

His gaze shifted back to her, looking her up and down. “You know you could pass for younger. Sixteen, even.”

Good, he was done talking about the watch. Now he was stuck on the age thing. Maybe he was worried he’d broken the law.

“You killed it at history trivia,” he said. He paused, as if trying and then failing to remember any other salient details about the night. In Emma’s estimation, this was for the best for the both of them. Matt hadn’t broken the law, but he hadn’t been good at history trivia, either. Or books. Or movies, except war movies.

Matt could quote every war movie he’d ever seen. Matt had a def inite thing for war movies. “Wanna know what Patton said about winning a battle?” he’d asked and she’d shrugged, which he’d taken as a yes. But the bourbon had muddled whatever his answer was.

“See you later,” she said now, a lie. She handed him his striped dress shirt. It smelled of beer and sweat and some kind of cologne that should have been a deal breaker.
Christ.

Matt tucked the shirt over his arm rather than putting it on.

Then he smiled as if he wanted to say something gentlemanly, but thought better of it. Good for him.

WHEN MATT WAS
f inally gone, Emma stood under a hot shower for a long time, washing the previous evening away. Having grown up before indoor plumbing was a given, Emma had a keen adoration for endless hot water.

Then she dried and dressed and brushed her teeth. She f lossed. Emma was quite devoted to f lossing, thanks to Detective Pete Mondragon in Albuquerque, who had told her you could tell a lot by a person’s teeth.

Pete Mondragon, like Coral and Hugo, had become a friend at a bad time through the unique circumstance of her existence.

They can only hide so much under expensive clothes
, he’d said.

She agreed with him about that. Certainly she’d known enough people who hid their evil under fancy outf its. It didn’t take her long to admit that Pete was right about the teeth, too.

In the kitchen, wearing a peacock-blue silk robe, her dark, wavy hair in a thick, tidy braid, Emma measured out the coffee. When it was ready, she took her cup to the balcony. The weather had turned, the air warm and muggy, the sky heavy with clouds. It reminded her of Florida.

Outside, Emma sipped, the f lavor both bitter and sweet. Underneath the almost tropical air, she could sense there was something unsettled. Texas weather shifted like that, fast and brutal. Or maybe
she
was unsettled. The possibility of that sudden change made her think about the f irst time she’d turned seventeen. What would Matt say if she told him exactly how long ago
that
was? In spite of the sentiment of his tattoo—
BELIEVE
—she doubted he’d believe
that
. In Emma’s substantive experience, people believed lies far more easily than the truth.