Page 71 of Reckless Girls
“You clearly have some kind of rich boy fetish,” I tease her, once I catch my breath. She gives a little sheepish laugh and lies down next to me.
“This is weird,” she says, and then raises her voice, shouting, “This is weird!”
That makes me laugh even more, and I look up at the sky, too, the stars tilting and swirling around us. “Everything here is weird!” I yell back, and then I feel like I’m laughing too hard, like at any moment, it will give way to tears.
I don’t want to cry, so I stand up, pulling Amma to her feet, too, our hands sweaty as we clasp each other, turning in a slow circle.
Can’t I forgive her? Haven’t I done the same thing to Eliza? And how can it matter when we’re here in this place where nothing is real?
Across the fire, Nico sits alone, and Jake is sitting there with Eliza, and it’s just like our first night all over again—except I had been with Nico, and Jake was just the cute guy with the nice girlfriend, and how did it all get so fucked up so fast?
Amma pulls away from me, giggling, collapsing onto the sand, and suddenly Eliza is there, too—how did she move so fast? Wasn’t she just sitting with Jake? But no, now Brittany is standing in the shadows, while Nico takes another hit from the joint Jake is holding.
Time is both slowing down and speeding up, and I’m happy and sad all at once. I take the joint Eliza offers, sucking more of that thick, sweet smoke into my lungs, the hash and the pot blending to make everything hazy.
I stumble back from the fire, my eyelids heavy as languor slips through me. Everything is heavy now, and I lie back down, the sand cool against my hot skin.
I smoked too much,I think distantly, feeling tired and strange all of a sudden, my arm too heavy to lift, my heels digging holes into the sand.
The sky is still spinning.
I look over to my right, and even that feels like too much effort, like my head has been replaced with a heavy stone, lolling on my neck.
Nico is there at the edge of the jungle, his body limned in firelight. I’m not mad at him anymore, and I want to tell him that, but I can’t open my mouth, can’t do anything but lie there as Nico splits into two people, two shadows.
Two Nicos.
That will make things easier. Amma can have one, and I can have the other.
The thought makes me laugh, or it would if I weren’t suddenly feeling so sleepy.
The two Nicos hover on the edge of my vision, but I see now that one of them is smaller, skinnier.
Not two Nicos. Nico and Brittany.
I blink. No, not Brittany. It must be Amma because they’re kissing now, the shadows blending into one.
In the firelight, Amma’s hair looks darker, and I see Nico’s hands come up, like he might push her away.
But they only flutter there for a moment, and then he’s holding her, and they’re still kissing, and I shut my eyes, not wanting to see.
When I open them again, both Nico and Amma are gone.
BEFORE
Amma peels the label off a bottle of beer in a bar in Canberra, and wonders how she let shit go this far.
Chloe and Brittany are sitting at another table, a booth near the back, with a bunch of dudes in striped shirts and fraying khakis, and Amma knows it’s going to be another night of watching the two of them flirt and preen and laugh, and in the morning, there will be rolls of cash in their bags that they’ll insist they got from an ATM, or a watch that must’ve fallen in there or some other stupid shit like that, and they’ll give each other those knowing looks because aren’t they clever, aren’t they smart, and isn’t Amma just so trusting and naive?
She should go home.
She almost did, back in London. When Brittany had suggested following Chloe to Australia, she thought it sounded insane and stupid, and she could’ve said so. Just put an end to it all.
But she and Brittany had embarked on this thing together, and she didn’t feel right, just leaving her with Chloe.
Chloe with her bright smile and hard eyes and fast fingers.
It was almost admirable, really. How good she was at sucking people in, making people trust her. And, as Amma kept reminding herself, it wasn’t like these guys couldn’t afford the losses. She understood where Chloe was coming from.
