The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau Read Free Book Online Page A

happy.
    Allie felt like he had just licked her neck, or lips, or the inside of her forearm where she had liked to tickle herself into a semi–sexual trance when she was a young girl. “Good?”
    “Fucking great. Where’d you get this? It feels like it isn’t cut with anything. It feels like pure fucking coke.”
    “It is.” Allie had no idea whether that was true, but why not?
    “Fucking unreal!” He shifted his shoulders, almost as if he were dancing.
    “Totally pure,” Allie said, going with it. She watched him. He wasn’t watching her. Allie knew this type. Since Marc broke up with her, as Allie willingly escorted Beth to bars, she had met many guys whose attraction to her appeared to be based solely on her appreciation of them. It was a smoothly paved one-way street—easy to cruise on as long as you didn’t want to go in the other direction. Allie had stupidly kissed a few of these guys, thinking she might find a Marc replacement who would help mend her battered heart.
    “So what about the price list?” Sex Wax grinned slow and wide.
    “What are they charging down here in L.A.?” Allie asked as casually as possible.
    “Usual,” he said.
    “Hundred?” Allie guessed. She knew coke was expensive and she remembered a group of four friends getting a hundred dollars together once in order to buy some for a Blondie concert. The trick would be to figure out how much for a hundred.
    “For a gram of the good stuff,” he said, and Allie nodded.
    “That’s exactly what I figured.” Allie spoke confidently. She was starting to feel the part of the drug dealer.
    “So you’ll take a hundred a gram?” Sex Wax asked.
    “No way,” Allie said. “This isn’t cut with anything.” (Maybe.) “It’s one twenty a gram.” She felt fairly certain that a twenty-dollar increase over the usual price would be close enough to, and maybe even better than, what Jonas charged.
    “Okay,” Sex Wax said, surprising Allie, “I’ll take three.” He stood up straight and reached into his back pocket. His jeans were slung low and revealed the two channels running from each hip, tendons pointing down.
    “Three what?”
    Sex Wax laughed. “Grams.”
    “Oh, right!” Allie laughed, feeling a little panicked. She couldn’t get too cocky. She had almost blown her cover.
    “What’s your name?” He leaned in the window, holding four hundred-dollar bills.
    “Allie.” She took the bills. “I don’t have change.”
    “So give me three and a third.”
    “Sure.” Allie stared at him with a small panic fluttering in her gut. She felt like she was in a play and hadn’t yet memorized her lines.
    “Do I have to turn around again?” Sex Wax smiled at Allie.
    “Yeah. Can you go over by the pumps or something while I weigh it out?”
    “Give me your keys.” His open hand was sitting in front of Allie’s face. For a second, she had an urge to lean down and lick his palm, the way he had licked hers. But she knew that was wrong. Gross, even.
    “Why do you want my keys?” Allie asked.
    “So you won’t drive away with my cash!”
    “Oh, yeah! Duh!” Allie pulled out the keys and placed them in his hand. Sex Wax closed his palm around Allie’s lucky rabbit foot, then walked away.
    “Wait! What’s your name?!” Allie called out the window.
    He paused, turned, and said, “Mike. And you’re Allie.”
    “Right,” she said. “Mike and Allie.” And then she blushed, although if Mike had heard her, he gave no sign—he was walking back toward the gas station.
    Allie leaned across the center divider and pulled up the Glamour magazine she had seen earlier. Paulina Porizkova was on the cover. Allie studied her beautifully square face for a moment and wondered what it would be like to be that pretty, if she would be in the mess she was in now if she were that pretty. Well, of course she wouldn’t, she decided, she’d be modeling! Allie flipped the magazine open, tore out a page, set it in her lap, and tried to make an