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River is living the wet dream of every woman seated in the front row. All Dallas can see of her at first is a dainty foot in the air, toned calf caught in a large hand. Her hand slips on oiled abs, more than one man lunge to catch her and turn her over, thighs open and already slick. Four men are touching or fucking her, River taking all that tension so they can fake looseness under the lights. Dallas doesn’t particularly approve of the boyish behavior, just pays for it. Plumb near perfectly brainless, River pouts like her jaw already aches as her hair is gathered in a different fist, and she knows they’re no where near opening. Ever eager, she still seeks out those who sit back to watch in little glances. If she reaches for one of them just a little— whines a shade too near pained— flutters her lashes like her eyes might rolls back— someone will take up the task of holding her hand, she’s spoiled like that. River looks struck when she can open her eyes to see whose chest her hand is cradled to. Caught with the flush and fluster of an orgasm all over by her boss who brushes her freshly-minted copper hair out of her embarrassed face, as if she feels it’s inappropriate to come in front of him. Dallas chalks it up to how he’s not paying for her pleasure, but this is still the best money he’s ever spent.
“Big night, sweetness,” Dallas says, ever chipper at the promise of profit. He chucks River under her spit-soaked chin, the most he has ever touched her. “Keep up the good work, sport.”
She uses the showers in the locker room the first night, excitement perking among them like a group of boys waiting for the father to leave to invade the stashed box of playboys in the masteroom closet. The scalding heat and battering water pressure leaves her pink as she walks through them, rubbing excess oil on the length of her arm. The boys all pause, slowly breaking out of the spell brought on by her bare, glistening skin and exposed curves after she passes them. Dallas already told them what he paid for, they know why she’s there, varying degrees of interest bright in all of their eyes.
The door to her office stays open and her ‘desk’ has brass rails and light blue sheets. The pillows are really just to hoist her hips up. River’s first night is peachy keen and he appreciates that she isn’t too noisy through their shared wall as Dallas pays bills, glasses perched on his nose. Her chest is still red from exertion and the showers when she leans with her shoulder and head against the threshold of his office, posture exhausted and feline, eyes drooping to his lap like she’d curl up there if he allowed it. Dallas counts out a thousand but she doesn’t take it.
“Tomorrow I want a thousand and a hundred for each one that comes to see me. Two hundred if it’s Richie.”
That sounds perfectly fair, but, as charmed as he is by the audacity, Dallas isn’t in the mood for negotiating.
“No.”
“No?” she repeats, like it wasn’t something she heard often. Not her, not with a face like that. He’s half surprised to hear himself say it.
“No.”
River presses her lips together in a firm line, anger flushing up her neck, a pink streak along her pulse.
“Can’t you afford it?” River challenges.
Not yet, but he ain’t telling her that, why did she think she was here?
“A thousand a night. We can discuss a bonus down the line.”
“We can discuss it now,” she tries, something about that low tone Dallas never heard from her makes him push his chair back from her step forward. He can’t move a single muscle to stop her from straddling his waist, her robe falling open. He thinks her too young to be truly seductive, for this to be anything more than playacting. Practice, he thinks, but his fingers still twitch when her hips grind into his. Dallas raises his hands skyward to keep himself from touching the perfect little thing squirming in his lap for the wrong reasons.
“You got me all wrong, sweetheart,” he promises, palms up and annoyed that she’d think this might work on him. The disapproving suck of his teeth a thin veil of paternalism, a put on pity to ignore the deep pit of hunger in his stomach that would put little River in over her head. Bites out, scathingly, “I don’t pay for pussy.”
“Not curious how I might convince you otherwise?” she asks, some faux coyness keeping her voice a husky whisper as she leans to nip his thumb, rocking her hips forward as she sucks it into her mouth. Dallas curls his knuckles under her chin before he hooks his thumb behind her bottom teeth to jerk her forward by the jaw, feeling the warmth of a surprised whimper on his skin. River’s hair falls in her face, getting caught in her lashes and dripping onto his chest, wide eyes blinking quickly.
“I’m not interested in teaching you how to listen, baby,” he tells her, serious enough to shush the next whine when he tightens his grip. “Thousand a night, a raise down the line if you get out of my lap right now while I can still be civil and ask you nice-like. Now, do I need to repeat myself?”
They can plainly discuss what positions make her squirt, that she can come from just anal penetration, and how pinching her nose while getting her face fucked makes her unspeakably wet; but what makes her face red are his hands busy with tying her robe shut. River refuses to meet his eye when she gets to her feet, taking the money like that can stop the wet sniff she tries to hide behind the back of her hand. He frowns, but doesn’t stop her from leaving.
Dallas ain’t above poaching the girl, so-called River. Just his luck to find himself doing the favor of taking a little upstart off the hands of another venue manager; always help a friend in need as he’s been told and goddamn if he doesn’t get him a gem. Face more square than oval like a young Grace Kelly, a type of effortless beauty with a natural red lip, hair somewhere between true ginger and strawberry blonde. He’s seen her dance and she’s talented enough to make up for her grass green age. Limber like she was forced to participate in too many sports during high school, but he doubts any university recruiter ever wafted the possibility of a scholarship in her neck of the woods— compliant, teachable. He should probably ask her about her age but doesn’t want to find out if the ink on her diploma is still wet, that’s her business. That’s not to say he’s not curious as to why the hell she’s doing in a piece of shit club when she could easily earn six figures at The Office or, hell, he bet she could get into E11even.
Tall but narrow in the shoulders, malnutrition from the same poverty that taught her to be careful stops River well away from Dallas where he blocks the back door. The dancer’s parking lot is fenced so, with open suspicion and toned arms crossing her chest, he can see her weighing what type of threat he is. Not what he wants necessarily if she’s going to accept his job offer. She’s early to her shift which gives her a few good marks. Her pretty face is clean of make up and stamps his first impression of her as naive, but unbeknownst to her, River is in deep shit with management. So, here Dallas is, kind enough to break the news to her: “The way I hear it, you’ve taken to fuckin’ men in the champagne room, young lady— now, not only is that not safe but creates unfair expectations for your colleagues who are not as enthusiastic to fulfill them. You don’t got a job here, darlin’.”
“Who the hell are you?” she asks, half-rude tone challenging his credibility.
“Name’s Dallas.”
“Do you make people call you Big D?”
The unexpected question almost gets him to laugh, humor leaving him in a huff, framed in a half-smile, “No, ma’am, I do not.”
“Why’re you talkin’ to me and not Deon— this some exit interview, what do you want?”
Charming. His grin don’t budge.
“Simple, really. I want you to come work at my establishment.”
Her assessment rakes down his body and she’s still looking at his snake skin boots when she tells him tartly, “I’m not interested in moving into some bunny house, sir.”
“Ah-ah-ah, you got it all wrong, sweetheart. I own stages, too, I just cater to the fairer sex.”
“I don’t fuck women,” River lies.
“I ain’t asking you to fuck the patrons.”
Eleven thousand dollars later, Dallas feels a growing admiration for the way she tailors her noises. Breathy moans, keening whimpers, groans from deep in her chest. If he worked at it, he could probably piece together who she’s fucking at any given moment just from how she gasps. The reoccurring thought of installing a two way mirror between her office and his plagues him more and more frequently. Paying bills is just that fucking boring. He misses Mike. A mind for numbers, that one, measurements, best of fucking luck to his business. Furniture, Dallas scoffs as he reaches for a framed photo, plucking it from the wall before it falls again from the force of a knocking head board. The first moan sounds shocked and from how it reverberates in his chest, hand spreading there as if to trap it, Dallas knows it’s genuine.
“River,” he prompts with the money held out. Pulling it back earns him a dirty look but at least she’s looking at him again, and follows his finger pointing to a chair beside his desk.
She tucks her hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture, girlish, when she sits. Distrust in the pinch of her brow as she scrutinizes him.
“Been a few weeks, anything needing to be changed?”
“The light in there is a little harsh.”
“I’ll change it. Anything else?”
“It’s getting a little easier. They’re all still testing the waters,” River shrugs, then catches how he’s trying not to grin and rolls her eyes. Her smile slightly bigger where a dimple kisses her cheek, “For a lack of a better expression.”
“You sticking with me?”
“If you offer me more than a thousand,” she tests with a slight arch in her brow that Dallas doesn’t humor. “It’s fun, but I— I’ve only done threesomes and you’ve got nine guys here, it’s a lot. Not during or nothin’, they’re sweet, but you call them out to rehearse or the show and I don’t feel done. Like my body don’t know it’s over. I’m still so—”
Even now the girl has goosebumps under the thin fabric of her robe, a slight shiver in her shoulders as she tucks her cold hands between her knees. Dallas sighs, fearing the next thing that comes out of his mouth.
“C’mere,” he says softly, leaning back in his chair in invitation. Instantly, she’s on her feet but hesitates after his rejection a few weeks prior. He pats his knee and she tentatively perches on his thigh. Her posture straightens under the rub of his hand but softens when that’s all he does. She pillows her head on his shoulder, folding her legs up, curling into his lap. “This alrigh’?”
“Kinda weird,” she whispers with a little crooked smile and he laughs, rubbing at the goosebumps on the tops of her thigh, “but, nice.”
“Stay s’long as you’d like,” he says, angling his chair toward his desk, putting his glasses back on. She’s so warm, the weight of her soothing some ache in the back of his neck. Dallas doesn’t know where she puts her height to make herself so small, legs hooked over his arm rest and hands in lil fists, tucked close to her chest.
“You forgot to carry the one,” River says with a yawn, tapping the shit math he did on the margin of a bill, suddenly heavy in sleep before he can ask her where the hell he’s supposed to carry it to.
“What are you still doing—? Oh, honey,” Dallas sighs, pushing at River’s shoulder, mascara smeared across her red cheek like someone slapped her for each tear. The girl is shaking uncontrollably, goosebumps covering every inch of her skin, ankle tangled in the cord of a vibrator. He’s fucked enough people on enough beds covered in money to correctly estimate there’s about six thousand dollars scattered about. Rode hard and put away wet, her eyes open slow and unfocused. Dallas gathers her up and River presses her face into his neck, chest shivering against his, mouthing at his pulse. He doesn’t have time for this— Dallas tells her as much and she whimpers so damn pitifully he hugs her tighter, lets her guide his hand into her panties. Slick and so fucking ready and he can’t shake the strange static in the base of his skull.
“Please— I’m sorry— m’sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she gasps, panting a frustrated mewl when she can’t angle her hips to make his fingers sink inside, but he only adds pressure for her rock against.
“You’re alrigh, overstimulated somethin’ terrible but you’re alright, baby. You just need to come down s’all,” he murmurs, trying to keep her from climbing onto his thigh and can’t bring himself to deny her that when the feel of her pussy, all puffy and abused, makes his heart thud heavily in his throat, reason bleeding from his ears. When he catches sight of the waistband of her underwear stretched over his wrist, the very last seed of paternalism he held for her cracks in his chest, whatever spilling out shouldn’t be given the will to touch her like this. Mutters, low and to himself, “Pretty fuckin’ panties.”
“Wore them for you,” she whispers against his mouth, eyes almost too dark to call blue.
Dallas rests his head against the wall, watches her squirm helplessly in his lap. Voice rough when he tells her, “You’re already getting what you want. Take it easy on me, baby, I’m an old man.”
Rivers too busy clinging to his shoulders, ducking her head to lave at his collarbone, to know her knee was pushing too hard on his dick. Dallas grips her waist with both hands to jerk her hips back, the rough fabric of his pants has her sucking in a breath, silent as she rides out the tremor, but it’s still not enough to keep her from trying to pry open his belt buckle.
“Please, I need—”
“You need to get cleaned up and I need to get to work.”
“I need to come,” River pleads, pulling back to pin him in place with blue eyes like the smooth glass of water, fresh tears sticky in her lashes, and a pathetic little hiccup interrupts her sniffling. “Just once, please, Dallas, you— you don’t have to pay me tonight if you just—”
“Now I know you ain’t thinking straight, girl. Is one orgasm worth sixteen hundred?”
Her mouth flattens but she nods desperately, looking at his mouth with parted lips, “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
An expletive slips from him as he eases her out of his lap to lock the door because despite appearances and assumptions, he’s not one for an audience. River climbs too far into his lap, trying to straddle his waist and huffing when he puts her on his thigh. She takes the locked door as permission to go for his buckle again, face crumpling with a sob when he stops her. In his arms all authentic distress the most talented escorts can’t mimic is leaking down River’s smooth cheeks. The performance of it has been dropped— the moans, the breathy gimme gimmes, every sweet, teasing smile — blurring the line between her public veneer of sex and the privacy of her pleasure. River smells like cash and cum and raw need, everything on the same table she’d happily lay her cheek on. That honesty she reserves for him solely terrifies some part of Dallas bucking against the acceptance that he loves her. This isn’t right. A man good for her wouldn’t want to see her like this, sure as fuck not pay to keep seeing her like this. A man good for her wouldn’t feel hunger for her used, hardly any strength to keep from collapsing into his chest. Her fingers seek his, threading them together, all that trust in her eyes knowing he’ll keep her upright.
“I don’t got the time to fuck you, now, c’mon ride it out. I know you can move your hips better than that, what, you can’t? Thought you needed it,” he mocked, hands slowing the roll of her hips. She’s leaving a wet spot on pants that are dry clean only but his bigger concern is how the smell of pussy on him is really fuckin’ bad for business, “Why is it that I’ve got to do everything when it comes to you, huh?”
“Yes, yes, like that, Dallas, don’t stop—”
“Pay your rent, for your pretty nails, all those salon appointments, even your little panties,” he says, two fist fulls of cash to rain over her.
“Please, please, more,” she breathes, leaning her head back to bask in the feel of money on her skin, paper rasping together in a torrid bloom. His fingers brush down her stomach in the same path, humming at the practiced movement of her hips, perfected muscle memory.
“Bought you a damn car, now I’ve got to make you come, too, are you that spoiled, River?” he asks, a shade too humored to sound scolding, as he rubs at the mascara on her cheek.
“I am, ya,” she agrees, that damn gorgeous, lopsided smile brightening his whole fuckin’ life, before she pecks him in a sweet kiss.
“What’d my boys do to get you like this, sport?”
River giggles, delirious and melting onto his chest, a spasm in her hips fucking up her pace.
“They found out I like getting slapped and wanted to see if I had any special places that could make me come harder.”
No wonder he heard her screaming earlier, the same strange pride in the smile returning to his face.
“Well?” Dallas asks, grabbing her throat to make her sit straight in his lap to assess all the hand marks left on her, skin flushed all over, a bruise on her bicep.
“Face,” she whispers, capillaries already broken under the flush on her left cheekbone, and cries out because it’s not like she has the mind left to remember Dallas is left-handed. Holds her freshly pink cheek with tears shaken loose, eyes big and sparkling as she looks at him in shock, lips parted and wobbling, “Harder, ple—”
His palm stings when he pushes her onto her back, pinning her down with a hand cupping her neck, squeezing with his thumb and tips of his fingers, pinching blood in place, until her lashes flutter at the induced light-headedness.
“I need to tell you something, you listening? Just nod, I don’t need you to talk,” he mutters, allowing a breath then listening to her wheeze and whimper under his grip, “You’re going to keep riding my thigh, that’s right, there you go— River, look at me, I’m in the room next time you want it like this.” She tries to open her mouth but he chokes whatever promise she was going to make, her gasping breath close to his skin when he kisses her cheek. “Teach those boys how to properly slap, too, Jesus, look what they’ve done to my girl. I’m going to have someone take you home, sh, shush, not yet, but you better get off now because you’re cut off for a week. No climbing into my bed, no bringing boys home, no toys, not even your little fingers, nothin’— no, nuh-uh, you had your fun so don’t you fuckin’ whine at me, little girl. You did this— just don’t know when to stop, do you? Don’t worry, baby, you’re going to pass out soon, likely as soon as I slap you again.”
She can hardly keep her eyes open but she nods, chin eagerly bumping into his wrist. A grin in the corner of her mouth, desperation wet on her cheek and in the jerky movement of her hips.
“Plea—”
Their heads close together on the couch where they lay with their feet propped on opposite arms, cotton between River’s toes, nails long dry. The sun dulls from burning white to a creamy yellow dusk, sparking on each cresting wave just beyond Dallas’ condo balcony. Too comfortable to bother turning off the movie after it goes back to the original menu, the music on loop. Skin sticking to the leather keeps them from moving all that much. Glasses of red wine holding just stains beside the two bottles they already drained. Air conditioning wouldn’t be fixed until tomorrow, too hot for anything but lounging in their underwear.
“Could go dancing,” River says, unsuccessfully rousing either of them, mopping her brow with a silk scarf.
“All that body heat,” Dallas counters.
“When I was a kid and it was this hot, we could go get free lemonade in town. Take our paper cups and strip down, sit in the river til sundown.”
“No A/C up North?” he asks, fanning himself with an empty DVD case.
“Hell nah. Jus’ an old coal town no one thought was worth to introduce modern amenities to. Nothing all that special,” she says, tone shifting as she tries to downplay any fondness Dallas just heard in her voice the moment before. Something shared in the shade of her lashes when she glances at him.
“Couldn’t beat the heat where I’m from,” Dallas says.
“Texas?”
“How’d you guess?” he drawls, cowboy syrup of his accent drips right off the leather cushions. “Slow deatha on the high plains. Not as rich in oil like the eastern basin, Odessa, but had more of that than water. Hell, I think my daddy’s well must’ve been 900 feet deep.”
“He still alive?”
“No,” he says, thankful she didn’t ask about his mother, who can never seem to stay dead like his father. Her judgements colored his thoughts when he was younger— just like your father— the same shade of red as her lacquered nails. “Your parents?”
“Ya know. Dead. Opioids. Sort of. When I was real, real young, daddy got hurt when a mine collapsed. Broke his back, but he learned to walk again. He and mama were shot dead, later, trespassing on someone’s ginseng plot, trying to make quick money,” River says, flat in a way that she’s come to terms with all sorts of happenings in her holler, “I didn’t want to scratch my life out of the dirt like that. That’s why I left soon as I could, hardest thing I ever did, but I did it. Never once have I let myself cry over it.”
Dallas does his best to do the respectable thing and not think about things he knows runs her mascara in big alligator tears.
“Tough to a fault is what you are.”
She makes a dismissive noise that he doesn’t contest, he’s got time to make her see it.
“And fucking melting. Let’s go to the beach.”
“Sand ‘still hot.”
River fishes an ice cube from her water glass and rolls onto her bare stomach, running the ice across his brow. Even as his nerves jump in surprise at the sensation, he hums, content and encouraging, lifting his chin when she traces his throat and rubs the rest of the melting ice across his chest. Water pools and trickles down his neck, an open mouth kiss doesn’t let it go to waste.
“We could have sex,” she suggests, voice a casual octave higher. Incredible really, how smart he’s found her to be, when she has very little else on her mind. Horny or not, she can balance his books and bills and accounts better than him, that’s for damn sure.
“I hate sweating when I come,” Dallas says, shooting it down, and turning his head so she has the access needed to keep licking at his collarbone. The hot brand of her tongue undoing the work of the ice, his lungs heavy with humidity. “Keep doin’ that though.”
“Kissing you or the ice?”
“Mm, both.”
Ice clinks against her teeth when she rolls her tongue, her lips cold as another cube runs over his chest. By the time it melts, mouth hot again at his pulse, her fingers are just making patterns in the gleam of water.
“Can I come?”
“You askin’ cause you need something from me?”
“No, just this,” she says with a light kiss, nipping and tasting his skin.
“Then sure, sport, go for it,” he says.
“Mm, actually, maybe… hold my hair?” she asks shyly.
Dallas reaches back, cupping the back of her neck and sliding his fingers into the nape of her hair, holding her in place.
“Harder?”
“Mhm— unh, yeah. Tell me you how you like it or what you like,” she asks, the leather creaking under her hips as she finds her rhythm, whiny little breathes puffing between kisses.
“Oh no, no,” Dallas scoffs, shaking his head, nearly dislodging her, “I’m not listening to you poke fun at me.”
“I wouldn’t,” River tries to promise, rubbing her forehead against him as she sucks in a hissing breath through her teeth, pussy sore after a three day weekend.
“Real vanilla shit. Have you laughin’ right out the door.”
“C’mon, I promise,” she says, pawing at his shoulder with her free hand that he tangles his fingers with.
He trusts her, closes his eyes when she finds that one spot on his jaw. After a beat, he confesses, “Fully clothed.”
“Like…” she muffles a moan against his shoulder, panting and lips brushing his neck, “like, you— need ‘em too much to take ‘em off, spontaneous an-and urgent— that’s kinda hot, Dallas.”
“I love a woman in a nice pair of blue jeans, yeah, you know that, but somethin’ about panty lines under a skirt drives me fuckin’ crazy.”
“More,” River begs, gasps interrupting the path of her kisses.
“Catch myself thinkin’ what they got on, what pair of panties I’m going to find, if they’re the type to push to the side or tear off. If they picked them out thinking of me— wearin’ ‘em for me, ya, that’s what I like.”
“Oh, fuck, Dallas—”
“Yeah, you close, baby?” he murmurs, fingers tightening in her hair to tuck a keen into his neck, a fever caught in her groan. “I like kissin’, too, I really like kissing, position don’t matter to me if a pretty girl is moaning into my mouth.”
“D-Dallas, I’m gonna—”
“C’mon then, pretty girl, come f’me.”
He drags her mouth to his, messy enough to make her hips jerk on her fingers, and eats up her moans as she tenses with a cry. Rubs his tongue against hers, uncaring of the heat or how hard it is to align their lips like this, and she matches him stroke for stroke. River goes slack and lets him tug the last groan out with his teeth, a noise so obscene he’s dizzy with it. She keeps kissing him long after he feels the last tremor shiver through her, a strand of spit snapping between them when she needs to catch her breath. Her pupils blown, face still close to his, smile playing on the curve of her lips when he sits up.
“What?” he asks, a small laugh in his voice at the shy way she nibbles on her bottom lip.
“I-I don’t usually like kissing older men,” River says, soft and vulnerable, feeding some hunger deep in his stomach.
“S’that righ’?” Dallas confirms, rubbing his thumb against the teeth marks, knuckle under her chin pulling her face close to his.
“You never kissed me before,” she says like some small confession and presses a sweet kiss to his thumb against her lips.
“Only because you have a mouth that could put a man on a road of obsession. Distracting as hell when we first met, fear it’s only gotten worse since I’ve learned what you can do with it.”
She licks the pad of his thumb into her mouth like a personal demonstration and before he even has a mind to groan, he yanks her forward, pressing his lips to hers. Every time she goes to deepen the kiss, he pulls back, little kitten tongue brushing his lip. Chases him right into his lap, making all these needy noises against him that he wants to hear for the rest of his natural life. In this heat, he can’t touch her, can’t grab her and pull her flush to his chest. Hands sweaty, making out like a touch-shy teenager, what the hell is this girl doing to him.
Dallas leans back, clearing his throat uncomfortably, soothing down her worried look with a hand over her hair.
“I got plane tickets.”
Her brow shoots up in surprise, whispers, nervous like some shoe is about to drop, “Ta’where?”
“We’ll have to do some driving once we get there, but Pittsburgh. Figured we should probably head that way early, right? Got a graduation party to plan.”
River throws her arms around his neck to hide the tears so strong and sudden the whites of her eyes go pink in the corner. Dallas says fuck it to the heat, to anything stopping him from holding her tight.
River moves into his apartment two months after he meets her, not entirely on purpose on either of their parts. His fault, sort of. Dallas looked the other way when the bartender doesn’t card her on nights she stays for the show, lingers in the back getting more and more flushed as the acts go by, her drink never going empty. She left wearing her scuffed sneakers, which Dallas shifts the other part of the blame to. White, ratty things that made wine turn sour in his stomach. Seeing her sitting in those damn shoes, crossed at the ankle, at a bus stop close to two in the morning had the same nausea induced effect.
“Keep rollin’. Not a whore,” she lies, voice bored, neon in her copper hair, not looking up from her phone at the shiny car idling at the curb.
“I’ll try to keep that in mind while I listen to you getting fucked tomorrow night,” Dallas says dryly, making her phone clatter to the ground when she jumps in surprise. “Get in.”
River doesn’t move, lower lip puckered like she might be chewing on the inside of it. She looks up at the bus signs, mentally calculating what time she might get home, if she’s lucky. Finally, she asks, “How mad are you going to be when you find out I lied to you about my address?”
“The address listed in your employee file that says I pay you for washing dishes? I think I can keep my cool, River. Get in. Tell me where I’m going.”
Where he’s going is thirty minutes further than he was expecting, nearly across town, to a seedy little motel she rents for cheap by the week.
“You don’t got to walk me in, Dallas,” she says, bristling, defensive about how he was sneering at this hovel with his arms folded on the top of his car.
“Now, I promised I wouldn’t get mad, River, but— surely I pay you enough to afford something more than a step up from condemnable, with extra left over for a car payment. How the hell do you even get to work?”
“Walk a mile to a bus stop then take another bus,” River says with a shrug, “Shorter route than the one I took to school back home.”
“Where is back home to you?” he asks. She jumps, not knowing he walked up as she unlocked the door. The question unexpected enough that he doesn’t think she’s lying when she responds immediately.
“West Virginia,” she says, eyes narrowing like she’s daring him to say something about it. He can hear it in that interstitial accent of hers, Southern but not. Her keys rattle but she doesn’t move to head in so Dallas raises his brows, hands clasped together, no better place to be. River sighs, opening a door in a tiny room with not much more than a sleep sofa folded out, sheets crumpled. Personal affects only a hairbrush, a beat up makeup bag, and a framed photo on two stacked milk crates. Heels pile up at the floorboards between the door and an open suitcase, slinky fabrics and lace poking out of inner pockets, that he shuts.
“What are you doing?” she asks as he grabs her shoes.
“You’re coming home with me. Do you have other things or is it just this stick and bindle situation?” That fairly earns him a dirty look over her shoulder, that drops when he asks in all seriousness, “What are you doing in this place?”
She picks up the picture of a girl that’s damn near identical to the one standing in front of him and hands it to him.
“You want the whole story or can I cut to the chase?” she asks, hands nervously flexing.
“By all means, cut to the chase, I got the whole drive back to my place to pester you with questions.”
She shakes her head like she’s trying to keep herself from rolling her eyes. River taps the photo, a ghost of a smile she can’t help curling the corner of her mouth that keeps his attention before remembering he’s supposed to be looking at something else.
“My baby sister is aging out of foster care soon. She wants to go to college, be a doctor someday, and she will, too.”
Dallas has no doubts.