TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER
Friday afternoon was dead at the shop. I’d been hoping for a hard job—a client who wanted something intricate to keep my mind off Kacey’s date. Instead, all I got was a young, nervous-looking girl, about twenty years old, who wanted a semicolon on the inside of her right wrist.
Great, I thought. That’ll take me all of ten minutes.
“What’s it mean?” I asked her, loading black ink and a liner needled in my tattoo machine.
“A semicolon is where a writer can choose to end the sentence,” she said, tucking a lock of brown hair behind her ear. “But they don’t. The story goes on. It’s a symbol of hope. To keep going.” She smiled tremulously. “Sometimes I need that reminder.”
I stared at the girl a moment, nodded, this job suddenly taking on a whole new meaning. This is why I do this.
I inked the semicolon onto the young woman’s wrist and when she was done, I thanked her instead of the other way around.
Time crawled.
A glance at the clock said it was just after six. Eight, Kacey’s time.
She was probably on her date right about now.
A new emotion erupted in me to add to the already noxious mix churning in my gut: Pure, old-fashioned jealousy, straight up. No chaser.
The story goes on. Kacey’s story was going on in New Orleans. It wasn’t the same gravitas as the semicolon symbolism, but the idea stuck with me anyway. She was going on. I was stuck. Period.
“Zelda,” I called over the buzzing of Edgar’s gun and the pounding metal music.
She looked up, her hair falling like black silk around her shoulders. Her impossibly large eyes were the greenest I’d ever seen.
“Yessss?” she drawled when I just stared at her. “Something on your mind?”
“You want to grab a late dinner tonight? A new place opened at the Paris. We could give it a shot.”
Zelda blinked twice, her face expressionless. Then she shrugged. “I could eat.”
“Cool,” I said. Then it’s a date, I thought, but couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud. Guilt assailed me. The guilt of a guy cheating on his woman.
Kacey is not your woman. She never has been, and she probably never will be.
What was she doing right now? Was she having the time of her life? Was her date keeping his goddamn hands to himself or did she want him to touch her? Were they kissing? Or going to bed? Was she letting him take her dress off, letting him put his mouth on her…
Fuck me.
I leaned over and mucked around in a drawer, surreptitiously adjusted my crotch.
Now, that’s a date, Fletcher, a voice like Oscar’s cackled in my mind. Dinner with one girl. A hard-on for another.
We closed up shop at seven. Fortunately, Edgar and Vivian said goodnight and split, leaving Zelda and I to make plans without merciless teasing or speculation.
Zelda waited as I locked up, her small frame hunched into her black leather jacket.
“You like Italian?” I asked.
“My last name is Rossi,” she said. “What do you think?
“Martorano’s is the new place in the Paris. Supposed to be good.”
“Works for me.” Her large eyes widened when I opened the passenger door for her. “Thanks. And here I thought chivalry was dead.”
I got behind the wheel and immediately, it felt like a date —a girl in my truck, filling the small cab with her perfume and presence, on our way to a slightly more than casual restaurant.
This is good, I thought. I can do this .
Over dinner, I learned Zelda was a comic book junkie. She was trying to put together a graphic novel. “Eventually, I hope to pitch it to the big ones. Dark Horse or DC.”
“So tattooing is just your day job?”
“It’s the only way to make any consistent money drawing little pictures,” she said with a dry smile.
I nodded and as we talked, I tried to force myself to feel something, anything , for Zelda.
She was beautiful. Smart. Sharp sense of humor and a crazy-talented artist to boot.
I ran a play-by-play commentary of every observation and feeling.
Examining and cross-examining impressions, looking for something more, convincing myself it was there, even though I knew damn well it wasn’t.
This wasn’t a date. It was a distraction.
Beyond a possible friendship, I didn’t feel one damn thing for her.
It’s not fair. Time to call it.
“Listen, Zelda,” I said, but then my phone buzzed a text. I pulled it out of my jacket pocket. “Sorry, I thought I shut this off.”
It was Kacey.
Terrible date. Awful. Are u free? Need to vent.
A bomb of happiness exploded in my chest. I’d have a few things to say to Viv’s Magic 8 Ball tomorrow. Who’s got your outlook now, bitch?
Zelda cleared her throat pointedly. “Good news?” she asked.
“No, it’s…”
She sighed. “Spill it, T.”
“Spill what?”
“Seriously?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, you know. This isn’t a date. Or if it is, it’s the worst date in the history of dates.”
I sat back in my chair. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said, waving her hand. “I just ate a twenty-eight-dollar ziti, and this wine definitely didn’t come from the rack at the grocery store. The food makes up for what I already knew was a sham.”
“You did?”
She nodded. “Right before you visit She Who Shall Not Be Named, you get ridiculously happy. And when you come back, you’re a goopy puddle of misery.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Yeah.” Zelda reached for a long, crackery breadstick from the cup between us and took a bite. “So, what’s Miss Kacey up to tonight?” She batted her eyelashes, still chewing.
“She went on a date and it wasn’t good.”
“Not good for her is good for you. I mean, you do like her.”
“I do,” I said. “And it’s completely fucked because she’s Jonah’s girlfriend.”
“ Was Jonah’s girlfriend,” Zelda’s sharp voice turned soft around my brother’s name. “She is no longer Jonah’s girlfriend. It’s been almost a year since she’s been anyone’s girlfriend. The statute of limitations has run out on self-imposed celibacy. How old is she?”
“Twenty-four.”
“She’s a twenty-four-year-old woman. So, let’s say she lives to be…seventy-five. What, she’s supposed to stay celibate for fifty years? Never love anyone again? Be alone forever?”
“No, but…” I drummed my fingers on the linen tablecloth. “If she’s going to be with someone else, it probably shouldn’t be me.”
“Why not?” Zelda asked.
“Where do I start? I danced with her at a wedding and Jonah’s best friend looked like he wanted to murder me.
Worse, my mother takes a lot of comfort from her.
Kacey dropped out of nowhere and made Jonah really fucking happy at the end of his life.
It’s a huge deal to Mom. And to our friends.
And to me, too. She loved him right up to the end.
” I rubbed my hands over my eyes. “How do I take that away from my mother? Why would I even try?”
Zelda’s expression became pinched. “Why would that take away something from your mom? Don’t you think it would make her happy to know you’re loved too?”
“We’re not talking love anyway,” I said, shaking my head. “My last visit to New Orleans, Kacey friend-zoned me hard. Or maybe I friend-zoned her. Whichever the case, she needs the space to figure her shit out.”
“Yeah, you’re giving her space all right,” Zelda laughed. “She lives four states away. No one can say you’re being too needy.” She leaned forward on her arms, pointed the breadstick at me. “You know what I think your problem is?”
“Enlighten me.”
“You want to be with her, but you’ve never had a serious relationship and you’re afraid of fucking it up. Right so far?”
“Maybe.”
“You want to give her space, let her recover on her own terms, without looking like you’ve been dry-humping her leg for the last year.”
A laugh barked out of me. “Something like that.”
Zelda narrowed her large green eyes at me. “Have you two ever…?” She sawed the bread stick in and out of the O of her thumb and index finger.
“Jesus, Zelda.”
“Well?”
“No. We haven’t even kissed. And I feel like a junior high school dork talking about this.”
“You should talk about this. With her. If you want her, tell her. Fly to wherever she is tonight and tell her.”
“Tell her what? I don’t have the words,” I said. “Jonah did. He could say all the right things to make her feel special, or at least tell her how he felt. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m not good at romance and shit.”
“Not calling it ‘romance and shit’ is probably a good place to start.”
I shrugged. “Straight sex is easier for me.”
“Fantastic.” Zelda rolled her eyes. “I’m on a non-date with the last nice guy in Vegas, who’s probably a beast in the sack and happens to be in love with someone else. Who’s luckier than me?”
“I’m not in love with her.”
Zelda rested her cheek in her hand, stirred her beleaguered breadstick in her water glass. “Liar.”
“I don’t know what I feel. I’m fucking frustrated. Is that what love is? Trying to do right by everyone while feeling like my guts are inside out? I can’t think about, sleep with or even touch another woman.”
Zelda’s eyebrows shot up. “You haven’t slept with anyone else? Since when?”
“Dude, I haven’t so much as jerked off in year.”
Zelda stared at me for a moment, then blinked and shook her head. “I feel like I should drink some water and have you tell me that again so I can do a spit-take.”
“Yeah, well…”
“What about all those dates Edgar is always teasing you about? The blonde and her party? The redhead with the snake on her ankle?”
I shrugged. “Lies.”
“I’ve heard you blow off Edgar a hundred times, saying you had a woman waiting. Where do you really go?”
“Church.”
“Say that again,” she said, taking a sip of water.
I smiled into my own water glass. “I go see Jonah’s installation. It’s still at the Wynn. I just sit there and think. I don’t pray or anything, but it’s like…sitting in a cathedral.”
Zelda shifted in her chair. I looked up and her green eyes were heavy and soft. The sharp edge of sarcasm fell away, revealing a soft vulnerability underneath. “I see.”
“It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. Jesus, why do you dismiss or belittle every single emotion that crosses your heart?”