Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

does not want to have. Because she knows exactly what it’s about.
    Money.
    It’s always about money. At least, that’s all Courtney has wanted to talk about for the last couple of months. Ever since Allison hasn’t been meeting her share of the rent, and other expenses, like the cable and Internet. Courtney is threatening to cancel the service altogether, although Allison is sure she’d never follow through. Courtney lives on Facebook when she’s home. When she’s at work, too, from what Allison gathers. Why that trading company hasn’t fired her ass, Allison has no idea. At least when she goes to the bar, she
works
. She works her
ass
right off, that’s what she does, waiting tables, dealing with asshole customers, taking abuse from the kitchen who can’t get a single fucking order straight to save their lives.
    Oh, she earns her money, Allison does. She just doesn’t have enough of it. She’s paid only half her share of the rent the last three months. Hasn’t replaced anything in the fridge. Tells Courtney she’ll pay her back when she can.
    Courtney is all,
Yeah, well, I’ll believe it when I see it
.
    The bitch.
    She makes way more money than Allison, and for what? Sitting on her butt in a nice cushy chair in front of a computer all day, doing trades, making money for other people. Allison doesn’t even understand half of what it is her roommate does.
    Things really escalated after Allison’s call home a couple of months ago. Allison, talking to her mom back in Dayton, telling her the Big Apple wasn’t quite everything she’d hoped it would be.
    “Oh, sweetheart, you should come home,” her mother said.
    “Mom, I’m not coming back.”
    “Well, they need people at Target. There was a thing in the paper that they’re hiring.”
    “I’m not coming back to Dayton to work in Target,” Allison said.
    “Have you met anyone?”
    “Mom.”
    “I figured, you working in a restaurant, there’d be lots of opportunities to meet some young man.”
    “Please, Mom.” Why does she always come around to this? Why the hell does her Mom think she left Dayton in the first place? To get away from questions like this, that’s why.
    “You can’t blame me for hoping my little girl will find a guy who’ll make her happy. Your father and I were very happy, you know. We had a good life together. You’re thirty-one, you know. You’re not getting any younger.”
    She needed to throw her mother a bone. “I
have
met someone,” Allison said. It helped that it was actually true. It’s always easier to spin out a story when there’s a grain of truth in it, especially when it’s a story for her mother. She has met someone, and they’ve spent some time together. Some pretty
hot
times. The whole thing started with a single glance.
    Sometimes two people looked at each other and they just
knew
.
    Allison sensed her mother brightening on the other end of the line. “Who?” she asked excitedly. “Tell me all about him.”
    “It’s too early,” Allison said. “I’m just going to see how it plays out. If this is the one, I’ll let you know. Okay? No third degree. Right now, I’ve got more serious things to worry about.” Setting the hook.
    “Like what?”
    “Well, the customers, they’re just not tipping the way they used to. And business is down. People are eating and drinking at home. And there was the whole thing with the chipped tooth.”
    “Chipped tooth? What are you talking about?”
    “Didn’t I tell you about that?” Of course she hadn’t. She’d only just thought of it now. There was no chipped tooth.
    “You never said a word. When did you chip your tooth? How’d that happen?”
    “Okay, so, there’s this girl I work with, her name is Elaine? And she’s a total idiot. She’s coming through the crowd with a full tray of drinks, right? And she’s weaving in between these banker shitheads who—”
    “Ally.”
    “Sorry. These banker numbnuts, and she raises her tray up just as I’m coming from the other direction, and the edge of it smacks right into my mouth and the drinks go all over the place and when I go into the ladies room to look in the mirror I’ve got this little chip in my front tooth.”
    “Oh my God,” Allison’s mother said. “That’s just awful.”
    “It wasn’t huge, but every time I ran my tongue over it, it was like this sharp point, you know? So, anyway, I went to this dentist up on Madison and he fixed it and I swear, if you looked at it with a