Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [32]
Marcus spots a movement out of the corner of his eye, a figure in all black exiting the Clear Sky customer service center. He points with his whole arm.
“That’s her,” he blurts, unleashing a chestful of pent-up air. “That’s who I’m waiting for.” Marcus is at their mercy.
It’s the first cop who makes the decision. “Then let’s go have a talk with your friend.”
sixteen
What a day, Jessica thinks as she heads to Hwy. 9 Bar & Grille. This day has been so … so … ?
Jessica fumbles for the right word and, in failing to find it, wonders whether she should bother with the alcohol. She feels as if she’s functioning in a sort of dream state already, one comparable to early stages of drunkenness when the five senses are on the way to not making much sense at all. Jessica doesn’t drink much anymore—last night was an exception. Abstaining is easy because Jessica has a rule against drinking alone that goes all the way back to a video about PROBLEM DRINKING in seventh-grade health class. DRINKING ALONE was number two on the list of signs that you were a PROBLEM DRINKER (after DRINKING TO GET DRUNK). Jessica went on to ignore other warnings on that list (DRINKING TO GET DRUNK, DRINKING TO THE POINT OF VOMITING, DRINKING TO THE POINT OF PASSING OUT, etc.) but rarely broke the rule about drinking alone. Her sloppiest inebriations were always in the company of others. She was a social drunk, personable, not pathetic, and certainly not problematic, even on those collegiate morning-afters when she woke up without panties, the stench of fresh puke in her hair. When she travels by herself, there’s no company of others to drink with. So she doesn’t. Except on the one occasion she did bring company back to her hotel room in the form of Len Levy. That night she did drink. A little too much.
“Miss!”
Jessica hears the shout and assumes it’s directed at someone else because she’s a “ma’am” now.
When she drinks in the company of others, it’s usually over a meal, in which case she orders the appropriate beverages to go with the food on the table: margaritas with burritos, sake with sushi, bold reds with pasta, sangria with tapas. Oh, how she wishes she were already on St. John, clinking cocktail glasses full of tropical fruity beverages with her best friends. She doesn’t regret visiting Sunny in the hospital, though she does regret the unfortunate consequence of her actions: the possibility that she might miss Bridget and Percy’s wedding altogether.
Jessica might feel less guilty about her delinquency if she knew for sure that Sunny had benefited from the visit. Her mom and dad (whom Jessica had never met in person and who seemed more sympathetic than their daughter’s essays made them out to be, though in this situation, even the most cretinous parents would be transformed into good people worth rooting for) encouraged Jessica to talk to her as she always would. They believed that their daughter could still hear, if not respond to, visitors’ conversations, and that such interactions were crucial for stimulating her injured brain and could be the difference between a full recovery and a semivegetative state.
“Hey, Sunny,” Jessica had whispered, looking at the blips on the heart-rate monitor instead of her. “You know, I rearranged my travel plans to be here, so the least you can do is wake up.”
No one else was in the room, but Jessica shrank with shame all the same. The joke felt crass, forced. And worst of all, unfunny. Sunny definitely would have called her out on it. “With all due respect, Ms. Darling,” she would have said, “that lame joke is why the baby Jesus weeps.”
Jessica had known going into the visit that Sunny wouldn’t be able to contribute to the conversation. Yet deep down, Jessica had hoped for a cinematic miracle that was not going to come, at least not while she was sitting beside Sunny. That delayed