Dallas picks up the phone again and stares at it, uncomprehending. Then he looks back at Nicki. “She said to tell you to come home,” he says, his voice strangely high. “Your mother’s in the hospital.”

2012

“Maybe I should go visit your mom in the hospital,” Dallas says, propping himself up, his elbow digging into the dingy motel room pillow. “Pay my respects.”

“She’s not dead,” Nicki says. “She’s in a coma.”

“Wrong choice of words, I guess.”

“No shit,” says Nicki. She pulls the blankets up around her chin. They have cranked the air conditioner to full blast, so even though it is probably thirty degrees outside, the room is freezing. The cold air was welcome thirty minutes ago when they crashed into the room, delirious and sweaty from heat and adrenaline – Nicki won’t call it desire, that sounds too romance-novely, and there is nothing romantic about her relationship with Dallas – but now the sweat is cooling on her skin and everything seems like a really fucking bad idea, including the air conditioner.

Dallas picks up the remote and flicks half-heartedly through the channels. “Sunday-afternoon television sucks,” he says. “Why can’t motels have Netflix?”

“We’re lucky this motel has a working toilet.”

Dallas shakes his head. “Hey, I take you nice places.” He flicks around some more and then settles on a nature documentary, something about sharks featuring an attractive host in a wetsuit. That guy London likes. Adam something. “Let’s learn something, shall we?” says Dallas.

But Nicki is not in the mood for learning. “Do you have any weed?” she asks. Nicki hasn’t smoked since she married Hamish, who, although he looks the part of a stoner, is resolutely straight edge. He doesn’t even really drink, just a beer sometimes when he’s fishing, or a taste of the whisky he’s made to make sure nothing’s gone wrong with the batch. But she suddenly wants to, can almost feel it burning in her lungs. And god knows she deserves it, this one little fucking thing.

“At my place,” Dallas says. “But we probably don’t want to go there.”

Because of Tanya, Nicki thinks. The little bitch. “Never mind,” she says. “I didn’t really want it anyway.” After this, she will have to go to the hospital, and Shawn will probably be there, and Shawn is basically a narc – he can smell weed on you ten miles away. But she feels the occasion calls for it, somehow. Dirty motel rooms and weed just seem to go together.