TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER
Friday afternoon, Kacey greeted me outside the Louis Armstrong Airport by flying at me and throwing her arms around my neck.
“You’re here!” she cried.
“I’m here.” I hugged her back as long as I dared. She smelled so good. Like fresh flowers, fresh paint, and the green heat of New Orleans. It permeated her skin now, the scent of the Nevada deserts long gone.
At her place, I noticed the green and magenta paint outside had been freshened up. Jonah’s whiskey lights hung over a porch that looked sharp and sturdy, and Kacey fitted a key into a brand-new front door.
“Ready?” she said. “Prepare to be amazed.”
“Holy shit,” I said, stepping inside and setting my bag down on the new hardwood floors. “It hardly looks the same.”
She snorted. “After fifteen grand, I hope not.”
The hardwood planks were gray with shades of beige running through the grain.
New travertine tile in the kitchen picked up the light browns.
The cabinets were new, pale gray, the countertops beneath a shiny white quartz.
Gone was the fridge, and the stove that had seen its heyday in the seventies.
Stainless steel appliances gleamed in their place.
“It looks amazing,” I said. “You did good.”
She beamed, buffing a smudge on one of the refrigerator doors. “I had help. Yvonne worked her butt off and then I hired some guys for the floor. But the tile work in the bathroom? All me. Check it out.”
I chuckled as she planted two hands on my back and pushed me toward the bathroom. The tile was dark gray, smattered with graphite and glittering under the light of a small chandelier. Its light sparkled off chrome fixtures and a claw-foot bathtub with a rainfall showerhead.
Kacey planted her hands on her hips, surveying her handiwork. “What do you think?”
“It looks amazing.”
“You said that already,” she said, her smile brilliant. She took me down the last little stretch of her shotgun house to the bedroom. “I didn’t do much. Just the floors and some new furniture.”
“Looks good,” I said, my eyes on the glass ball Jonah had made for her. It was no longer in the center of her bed, but on a stand on the dresser. “Looks real good.”
Back in the living room I sat on the couch.
“Tell me everything. How are things back home?” Kacey asked, curling up in her new high-backed chair.
“Did you just call Vegas home?” I asked as casually as humanly possible.
“Well, shit,” she said, laughing. “I did.”
“Graduation is coming up,” I said. “My dad’s being a dick about my tattoo shop idea, as usual. He’s pushing me to use my degree for something else, for the business side of dealing art, or maybe curating. And he still hasn’t given up on me using my art as a graphic designer. Shoot me now.”
Kacey frowned. “No offense to Henry, but fuck that. You’re crazy-talented at what you do. Born for it.”
“Thanks.”
“I can’t wait to see you in your cap and gown, accepting your diploma.”
“You’re coming?”
Kacey cocked her head and fixed me with a look. “Theodore James Fletcher…”
I laughed and waved my hands. “Okay, okay. You’re coming. But fair warning, it’ll be boring as hell.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
A short silence fell but it was a good one. A silence where two people who hadn’t seen each other in a long time basked in each other’s presence, getting re-acclimated. Settling in. Zelda’s advice to me to talk to Kacey rattled in my head.
How do I start? ‘So I came all this way to fuck up our friendship forever…’
“That couch folds out,” Kacey said.
I blinked at her, wondering if she’d just cut to the chase and I’d be taking Zelda’s second piece of advice. “What?”
“So you can sleep here,” she said.
“Oh. Right. No, I got a hotel room,” I said.
“Cancel it. This is super comfy, I promise. Save your money.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. The back of my neck reddened. God, I wanted to take her to bed. Screw this small-talk and just show her how I felt.
Her phone chimed a text.
“Oh damn, it’s Grant,” she said. “The music video is done.” She dumped her phone and picked up her laptop from the coffee table. “He just sent me the file. I think I’m going to throw up.” She sat beside me on the couch and dumped the Mac onto my lap. “You click it. I can’t.”
“Chicken.”
“The Drowned Chicken.”
“Shh.”
I leaned into her a little, pressing against her shoulder and hip as the opening riff of “The Lighthouse” began to play against a watery background.
A hand emerged. A tattooed arm. The curve of a shoulder into a long, white throat.
Long strands of brass-colored hair undulating across pale lips.
Closed eyes that slowly opened with a flash of blue.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
Like a mermaid, Kacey moved underwater. Her blond hair and billowing white dress became a screen, superimposed with scenes: a club, a street, an apartment. Discovering her man in bed with another woman.
Beside me, Kacey made little cringes and flinches, occasionally hiding her face against my arm.
I hardly moved. I was rapt. Enthralled. I could feel cool air moving in and out of my open mouth.
I breathed in her voice, her luminous, amber-lit face.
The pain and loss in her eyes shimmered through the water and found me. The Drowned Girl.
The video ended and we both exhaled.
“What do you think?” she asked against my shoulder.
“I think…” I stared at the black screen. “I think you’re so fucking beautiful.”
She raised her head and I turned mine. To look at me as I realized I’d spoken my thoughts out loud. They’d fallen out of my slack-jawed mouth before I could catch them back.
“Oh,” she said softly, her face inches away; I could feel the whisper of her breath on my lips. “Thank you, Teddy.”
Our eyes met. She glanced at my mouth, then back at my eyes. Light-headed, I looked at her lips, wondering if it was time. Now. I could kiss her. Kiss her and see what happened.
Would her lips part for me, take my kiss deep inside her mouth and give it back?
Or would she recoil because I wasn’t the brother she wanted?
My fucking hesitation cost me. Kacey pulled back and tucked her hair behind her ear self-consciously. “So, it’s pretty good, isn’t it?”
I handed her laptop back to her. “It’s a great video. People are going to go crazy for it.”
“I guess I’d better tell Grant I’ve watched it and feel it’s suitable for public consumption.”
You do that while I go dunk my head in the fucking sink.
Kacey made lunch for us—crabmeat po’boys with potato chips and soda.
We ate and talked and later, we watched one of her damned 80’s movies.
She curled up close to me, but not close enough, laughing easily, smiling and talking, but I was tired of playing the part of the best friend.
I wanted to ask her what those smiles meant, and if they were for me.
But I couldn’t ask, couldn’t push it. It was such a fragile energy, simmering in the heat between us.
Too much pressure and it would dissolve away.
But goddammit, I want this life, I thought. This is what I want.
To live in her space, my razor sharing the same shelf as her toothbrush. Our clothes tangling in the bedroom. Making breakfast together, then letting the food burn as I took her on the kitchen floor…
Tell me what you want, I thought, glancing at her from the corner of my eye. Because I want everything.