ALICE Ch 361

“She’s OK,” Kylie says finally, letting out her breath. She shows Lora the text from Faye. Lora puts her face in her hands. “We need drinks. Badly.”

Kylie’s room, ten floors down, is about the size of a closet. A nice closet, but still a closet. Lora has a room that’s more like an actual hotel room—but it still doesn’t have a minibar or anything. Well, Lora is paid about six times what Kylie is. Kylie grabs the room service menu, and the prices on the cocktails make her want to puke.

Lora just sits there, shellshocked. It’s not just her; the whole team is in shambles.

Two cars. Mio sacked. Alice hurt.

There’s a polite knock at the door. Meri is busy doing damage control; this will be a sobbing Colby, and it’ll take an hour for Kylie and Lora to calm her down. Kylie slips off the bed and goes to the door. It isn’t Colby.

Aria and Bianca can’t hide how tired they are, but they have tried. Bianca wears a dress and has put her hair up. She smells incredible. Aria’s leggings and baggy T-shirt are effortlessly glamorous, and her hair is wilder than ever. Bianca carries an armful of snacks, while Aria cradles two six-packs of canned Negronis, dripping with condensation.

“Hi,” Kylie says, taken aback. Aria hasn’t texted her all day, which is fine; it’s a race day, and they aren’t official or anything.

Ferrari had a good day, while FUTA did not. Some of that glow still clings to these two.

Aria nudges Bianca and says something in Italian.

Bianca smiles at Kylie. She doesn’t have to say it. They’ve come to cheer them up.

“You guys are too sweet,” Kylie says, letting them in.

FF1

Annette paces her room and gives in to her urge to throw her phone, but she aims at the bed. It bounces off and hits the headboard, then lands on the pillow. Fuming, she storms to the window. That’s the fourth voicemail she’s left for Bea after about a hundred texts. Viv hasn’t heard from Viv either.

Bea Ruiz is supposed to be good. She’s supposed to be a professional. They had a phone call scheduled for tonight, and given what happened today, it seems like it would be a pretty fucking important one. She snatches up the phone and pulls up Riley’s contact.

FF1

Riley’s phone dings on the bed. Adella reclines beside it, deep in her own phone. She scrolls idly; it hasn’t taken long for the uncensored pics of Viv’s recent exploits to circulate, and Adella unabashedly checks out each one.

Across the room, Riley is bent over by the mirror, doing her eyebrows.

“Can you get that?” she asks.

Arduously, Adella puts her phone aside and accepts a look at her wife’s bottom in her jammy shorts as compensation for the hardship of looking at her phone. Adella squints; she’s not wearing her contacts.

“It’s Annette. She wants to talk to us.”

“Tonight?”

“Now, I guess.”