ALICE Ch 199

Lora reaches out hesitantly and places her hand on Kylie’s back.

“Oi,” she murmurs. “You mashed?”

“Huh?” Kylie looks up, startled. She’s not in fact drunk, just miserable. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Having a drink.” She’s planning on more than one, but she isn’t about to admit that to Kylie. Kylie’s the sloppy one. She can afford to be sloppy; she doesn’t have burns on her face to be self-conscious about. Lora orders a White Russian and leans on her hand. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve the night off, haven’t you?”

“What’s the matter with you? Drinking before a race?”

“Won’t be much of a race,” Lora mutters, then freezes in horror. She did not mean to say that out loud. Fortunately, Kylie doesn’t care enough to think about it. Or rather, she takes it all wrong.

“Without Alice?” Kylie sighs bitterly. “Faye can drive. Well, no. No, no. You brought the new girl. What about her? Can she drive?”

“Course she can,” Lora mutters, irked. Her drink arrives and she gulps half of it down. She stares at the glass. “All these drivers are within a tenth of a second of each other if you put them in the same car. They can all drive.”

“What’s she like?”

“Who?”

“The girl. Mio.”

Lora twitches. “She’s a rally driver,” she says shortly.

“Thanks,” Kylie says absently as another foaming lager is placed in front of her. She pulls it over and takes a long drink without taking her eyes off Lora. “No,” she says.

“No,” Lora confirms, putting her face in her hands.

“No!”

“No,” Lora moans.

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Lora shoots Kylie a look. “I really don’t. I woke up, all right? I woke up and she was there.” Lora feels her face heating up at just the memory. She has zero memories of what happened that night, but she remembers the morning perfectly. She came to in a bed that looked as though it had been hit by a bomb. The room had reeked of sex, the feel of her skin told its own story, and even though she’s a head taller than Mio, she had been snuggled up to the Japanese driver as she would have any of the men who had been in her life, with her head on her collarbone. Mio’s arm had been around her.

“What did you do?” Kylie asks, fascinated.

“I legged it. Then I drank some more to forget only it didn’t work.”

Kylie just stares. “I thought you had a type.”

“I thought you had a type now look at you.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“You fuck off!”