Even so, on those nights when he came home early, Nick always managed to sneak her some signaclass="underline" a wink, a private smirk. Also, there was that song he always hummed: it was an old Doors song, he told her. She didn’t recognize the slow, snaky blues melody, or the one line he occasionally sang out in a mocking drawclass="underline" A cold girl’ll kill you / In a darkened room. She searched for it online: “Cars Hiss by My Window.” She loved it, loved especially how it sounded exactly like three o’clock in the morning.
When Nick was home, the hours flew by. Mia never cooked dinner; instead they’d all climb in her car, and drive for fast food, often ending up at the Taco Bell on the corner of Highway 111 and Cathedral Canyon. “Didn’t this used to be a Jack in the Box?” Jessie asked once.
“Good memory,” Nick said, munching his chalupa.
“This is the same road that goes up into my parents’ neighborhood,” Mia said. “You probably remember when we used to stop in here for chocolate shakes.” So far on this trip, Jessie had only seen her aunt and uncle once, when they’d taken her and Mia out to dinner at Nicolino’s, the hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant that was a family favorite. It was weird, to think they could all get in the car and be at their front door in a few minutes. Mia’s life felt so entirely different and separate from her parents.
After eating, they usually cruised around town, avoiding returning home to the tiny apartment. Mia would turn up the radio and play her favorite rap station, passing strip malls and car dealerships and a dozen bars and dispensaries that Jessie wished she could enter. It didn’t seem fair how so much fun was reserved for supposed adults.
Once, they stopped at the community plaza just off the 111, where there were lighted fountains and a movie theater named for Mary Pickford (another long-dead and forgotten celebrity). The sun was just setting behind the mountains and the colored lights of the big central fountain came on. Movie tickets here were too expensive, but they strolled around, watching the Latino kids screeching and scrambling over the fountain, their families relaxing on the nearby turf. The slight breeze tossed the tall palms lining the walkway, each strung with white fairy lights. On a night like this, Jessie could see why this part of her family had never left the desert, despite the terrible heat and retail sprawl. She dug a quarter out of her wallet and threw it into another fountain, between its two spitting mosaic frogs. In the hot night, her whole body was a wish, a yearning for something beyond words.
But lately after dinner, they often piled back into Mia’s beat-up white C-class that matched her dingy white apartment and drove to the nearest Bank of America. Sometimes Jessie took out money, a small fan of twenties she handed to over to Mia. And sometimes she hung back, while Mia, armed with Jessie’s ATM card and PIN, deposited a couple of checks. “Just sign the backs,” she’d tell Jessie, who would obey and pay no attention when Mia turned and handed her a slippery white receipt. Over their heads date beetles shrilled in the trees, louder than the passing traffic on Date Palm Drive.
They kissed and kissed one night until her brain was smooth as a polished marble. In the middle of the thin rug they rolled and grappled until Nick’s hips ground into hers with a shove.
“Take ’em off,” he urged, tugging at the leg of her underwear.
“Wait — not yet.”
“Damnit, Jessie.” He sat up and ran a hand through his hair. “Stop acting like such a cock tease. I see enough of that at work.”
“But I’m not!” she said. “I just wanted to talk a little more, first.”
“Nah. Forget it.” He edged away. “I should get to bed. G’night,” he yawned.
“Wait!” Jessie hissed. She wriggled into her shorts, rose, and pulled down her shirt. She tried putting her arms around his waist, but he twisted away and moved toward Mia’s desk.
“Let it go, Jess.”
She followed him across the room and stood beside him as he switched on the desk lamp. “But it’s still so early! Barely even midnight.”
He kissed the top of her head and mussed her hair. “Time for good little girls to be asleep in their sofa beds.”
“But... there’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about.”
“What’s that?”
“You know, I’m going home in a few days.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick scratched at his beard. “And?”
“And. So, I was hoping we’d keep in touch. Just us. Maybe you could text me or call me from work on... like another phone, sometime. I’d love to hear from you.” She failed to keep the trembling in her knees from climbing into her voice.
“That’s flattering, sweetheart. But I think you realize why I can’t do that. This is all a one-shot deal here. But we’ve had a good time, right?”
“Well, sure, but I was thinking... see, next June I’ll graduate, and then I can totally move down here for good. It’s less than a year away, when you think about it.” Without meaning to, Jessie’s volume had risen along with the force of her words.
Nick frowned and raised a finger to his lips. “You’re cute,” he said in a near whisper, “but really fuckin’ deluded.”
Unconvinced, Jessie twined her arms around his neck. “Just a kiss good night?”
“Nick? Jessica?” Mia’s voice approached from down the hall.
“Christ,” Nick said, and flung Jessie’s arms away.
Mia appeared in the doorway, blinking and pretty in a lavender chemise, her dark hair spilling around her bare shoulders. “What the hell’s going on?” Her blue eyes snapped in bold relief against her brown complexion.
“I wanted to — well, I was showing him that Zeppelin logo you drew.” Jessie grabbed at a sheet of drawing paper across the nearby desk. She and Nick both looked down at Mia’s rendering of the iconic winged angel, his head and nude torso bent back and muscular arms reaching heavenward.
“This is fantastic, babe,” Nick said to Mia.
“You knew it was a surprise, goddamnit,” she barked at Jessie. “And,” she nodded at Nick, “that still doesn’t explain why your fly is down.”
He looked down and pulled up the zipper. “Whoops,” he said, shrugging. “We were about wrapping it up here.”
“Yeah,” added Jessie.
“Remind me when you’re going home again?” said Mia.
“On Monday.”
“That is just about soon enough for me.” Mia swung around and started back down the hallway. “Are you coming or not, Nicholas?”
“Right behind you, babe.”
During the night, Jessie woke. It felt very late, but when she looked at her phone, she saw she’d been asleep for only an hour. She heard a noise, and another. There was a rustle and squeak, and then Mia’s voice calling out Nick’s name, over and over. Jessie strained to hear anything from Nick, but after Mia’s last shout there was nothing but a muffled tension that lingered throughout the apartment. She mashed the pillow over her head, but it was too late to block Mia’s moans from replaying again and again in her ears, too late to stop the tangled images from forming in her mind.
In the morning, Jessie hurried to put on her swimsuit and get to the pool early. She needed to be away from her cousin.
“We’ll be going up to my parents’ house tomorrow,” Mia told her, as she grabbed a towel and headed for the door.
Jessie stopped. “The three of us?” That sounded promising. Maybe there’d be a chance to corner Nick alone in her aunt and uncle’s big red-tiled Spanish house.