Chapter 503 | The Rules of Implication

Chapter 503: 503 | The Rules of Implication

The word hung in the air, and Alexis watched Jordan’s face do absolutely nothing.

That was the worst part. She had just asked a boy to take her to a hotel, and he sat with both hands on the wheel like she’d asked him to pass the salt. His eyes didn’t drop to her mouth. His fingers didn’t drift toward her knee the way Harrison’s always had, the way every boy’s had when she gave them an opening smaller than the crack under a door.

Jordan McKnight looked at her the way he looked at a grocery list from Chloe.

"Okay," he said.

Alexis blinked. "Okay?"

"You asked me to take you to a hotel. I’m taking you to a hotel." He turned the key. The Civic coughed and rumbled awake. "The Ritz is about twelve minutes from here. You want to stop for anything, or straight there?"

Her brain short-circuited.

She had rehearsed this through forty minutes of silence on the drive south, every word placed like a chess piece on a board her mother had built. She knew what please did in that tone, low and stubborn, the one her mother called unbecoming and Harrison called hot. She had watched his hands work on Chloe’s shoulders through a cracked bathroom door on Sunday night. She had heard the sounds Kumiko made on his couch. She knew exactly what she was offering.

What she had not rehearsed was what came after he said yes. She had not let herself. Somewhere under the plan was a girl who would have to take off a mustard-stained shirt in front of a boy who had watched her eat a gas station hot dog, and that girl did not have a single line ready.

Jordan pulled out of the gas station and merged onto the coastal highway like they were going for milk.

The ocean came and went between buildings on her right, flat and silver in the late light.

"I asked you to take me to a hotel," Alexis said slowly.

"I know. I was there."

"At night."

"It’s four-thirty, but sure."

"Alone."

"Kumiko and Chloe are both in Newport, so yeah, that tracks."

Her hand shot out and grabbed his forearm hard enough to leave crescents. He glanced at her fingers, then back at the road. His arm was warm. The muscle didn’t flex.

"Jordan. I’m asking you to take me to a hotel. Alone. Tonight. And I said please."

"I heard you the first time."

"Then why aren’t you—" Her ears burned. Eighteen years of never having to say what she meant, because men always filled in the blanks. "Why aren’t you doing anything?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. Once. "What do you want me to do, Alexis?"

Her name. Not princess. Her actual name, in that voice, the one Chloe had banned from the apartment and Kumiko had documented across three pages of pink notebook. It went through her chest warm and slow, and she hated him for it.

"I want you to—" Her fingers dug in harder. "I want you to want something."

"I want lots of things."

"From me. Right now. In this car."

He moved into the left lane to pass a slow pickup. Eyes on the road. Voice unchanged.

"You’re at sixty-seven, Alexis."

Sixty-seven. A number she had never seen, pinned to her by people who had known her for five weeks, and as far as she could tell it was the only number in her life her mother didn’t control.

Cold water.

She’d heard them talk about it. The sticky note on Chloe’s refrigerator. The line between guests and votes and whatever came after votes, which nobody had explained to her because she hadn’t earned the explanation.

"Chloe said sixty-five."

"Chloe said sixty-five for a voice. Seventy for a vote. Seventy-five for other things."

"What things?"

His jaw shifted. The cocky tell Kumiko had documented, the one that meant he was about to say something that would make her either slap him or kiss him.

"The things you’re asking me for right now."

"And who decided seventy-five?"

"Chloe."

"Of course Chloe."

"She decided sixty-five too. You liked that one."

Alexis let go. Her hand retreated to her lap, found the black cuff, and pulled it down over her knuckles.

"That’s not fair."

"Probably not."

"You’re supposed to argue with me."

"I’m driving. I can only do one thing well at a time, and I’m not sure which one this is."

"I’m sitting here in your stolen shirt asking you to take me to bed, and you’re quoting numbers at me like I’m a stock portfolio."

"You’re not a stock portfolio." His eyes flicked to her for half a second. "Stock portfolios don’t wear cat slippers."

She looked down. The pink terrycloth slippers stared back at her from the floor mat with their lopsided embroidered eyes. She had forgotten to put her heels back on. She had crossed a gas station parking lot in cat slippers and eleven-hundred-dollar silk with mustard on the cuff.

Her mother would have an aneurysm.

For one bright second she hoped somebody at the Shell had taken a picture and sent it all the way to Newport.

That made her laugh. Wet and cracked, nothing like the effortless laugh she’d practiced in mirrors for Maison. The ugly laugh of a girl who had just lost everything and was in a Honda Civic asking a boy to fuck her and being told to level up first.

"I don’t understand the rules," she said when it ran out.

"Nobody does at first."

"Kumiko seems to understand them."

"Kumiko has a notebook."

"I don’t have a notebook. I have a declined credit card and a missing car and thirty-three dollars and a boba loyalty card from Koreatown." She pulled the card out and held it up. Three stamps. Seven to go. "This is my entire net worth. I am worth two-thirds of a taro milk tea."

Jordan plucked it out of her fingers without looking and tucked it into the cupholder next to a crumpled receipt.

"Hey—"

"I’ll hold onto it for you."

She watched it sit there beside the receipt. Nobody had ever held something of hers to keep it safe. People held things of hers so they would have them.

"That’s my only asset!"

"Then I’ll keep it safe." The Ritz-Carlton sign appeared on the bluff ahead, white lettering against the blue Pacific. "We’re almost there. Front door or park?"

Alexis stared at him. "You’re actually taking me to the hotel."

"You asked me to."

"I asked you to take me to bed."

"No. You asked me to take you to a hotel. You implied the other thing."