Chapter 11
11
“So how did it go?”
“Uhm, good.” I set my phone on the kitchen island, pulled down a wine glass, and grabbed a good bottle of Oregon Riesling out of the fridge that I had been saving for a special occasion. And this sure was an occasion.
“Am I hearing you tearing foil off a bottle of wine?” Sue always had had bat-like hearing.
“Maybe,” I muttered. I found my corkscrew in my newly minted junk drawer and popped the cork.
“Why do you need wine?”
I poured my glass and thought about how to answer Sue’s question.
“Girl! Talk to me. You’re killing me here! Say something.”
I took a large sip. Okay, it was a gulp.
“It went well.”
“It went well. Sure it did,” Sue said sarcastically. “That’s the reason you’re chugging wine at four o’clock in the afternoon. Don’t ask me how I know. I heard that gulp. Now talk to me. What’s the problem?”
I took another gulp of the golden goodness. It helped calm my nerves.
“I like him. That’s the problem. Okay? I like him. But he seemed too nice. Too kind. Even when he was nervous because he wanted information about his brother, his nervousness was too perfect. It wasn’t right. All of this was after he volunteered to help some stroke victim he’d never met. Sue, I really like Kai, but after Denny, I just can’t trust my own opinion. And I sure as hell can’t trust some guy who seems too perfect. That got me into trouble the first time around. Denny was just luring me in for the kill.”
After all that word vomit, I picked up my glass and sucked down the rest of the wine.
“Have you finished your glass?” Sue asked gently.
“Yes.” I gave the phone a dirty look. “And I’m thinking about pouring another one.”
“Before you do, can we have a calm, back and forth conversation?”
“How long?”
“Less than five minutes, I promise.”
I started the timer on my phone. “The clock has started.”
“I hate it when you do that,” Sue complained.
“You’re wasting your time.”
“Fine. Denny spent four months being perfect before he asked you to move in with him. He never wanted to meet any of your friends. He wanted to isolate you from everyone. He was an antisocial asshole. Is that Kai?”
“It was one date. How would I know?”
“Somebody must have talked him into helping this man who had a stroke,” Sue prompted.
“We were surrounded by people from the town. There was Lettie the waitress at the diner, then Harvey. I told you about him, I think. He owns the local construction company. I met him and his wife at Lettie’s potluck. That man can eat. Then there was the town doctor, who everybody calls Doc.”
Sue laughed.
“So was Kai there amongst everyone?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he seem fidgety?”
I thought about it. “He didn’t seem to. He really wasn’t fidgeting when it was just me and him and Lettie. He was charming and funny. He was really nice to Little Grandma, too.”
“Ohh,” Sue sighed. “You’ve told me about her. I think I’m going to bring Steve and Angie out for a visit just so I can meet Little Grandma.”
“You better be coming to visit me.”
“And Chaos.”
I laughed. “And Chaos.”
“So Kai is actually good with people. That’s not the same as Denny.”
I felt my shoulders relax. “You’re right.”
“What did you talk about with Mr. Perfect?”
“It was weird, Sue. After everybody left, Kai made me feel like I was the most important person in the universe. He listened to me. Really listened.”
“As he should have. And what did you talk about?”
“We talked about his brother Beau, of course.”
“Of course.”
“He wanted to know what I knew about him, and I explained I didn’t know much, but how grateful I was that he seemed to care enough about Chaos that it was okay for me to install a doggie door for her. I also told him that Beau insisted on paying for it as a modification for his house.”
“What did he think about that?”
“He was okay with it, I guess.”
“And?”
I really wanted another glass before I started talking about Kai’s near-death experience.
Fuck it.
“Are you pouring yourself another glass of wine?”
“Yes I am. Get over it. I need one.” I took a sip, not a gulp, and started talking. “Kai told me how he got injured. They thought he was going to die. He had multiple surgeries on his neck in Germany, then they sent him to Walter Reed in the states. He stayed there for eight months. They told him he wouldn’t walk. He sure proved them wrong.”
“God, Marlowe. I don’t know what to say.”
“I know, right? Then he told me how his bastard of a father had him working on those dangerous crab boats out in the Alaska ocean when he was ten years old.”
“No way.”
I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. “Really. Ten years old. His father was evil, Sue. Pure evil. But at least some of the crew was watching out for him.”
This time when I took a gulp of wine, Sue didn’t give me any shit.
“I asked him if anything good happened after he started working on the boat, and he told me about this one time that some of the crew members took him on a flight to a place called Sitka, and they saw some fjords. He made them sound magical.”
“You mean like in Norway?”
“Yes, with glaciers. Anyway, they also took him regular fishing, like with a rod and reel.”
“How sweet. That’s incredible that they did that.” Sue sighed. That’s why we were such good friends. When I had been busy hardening my shell after Denny, Sue was there to add big poofs of emotional cotton candy to my life. I pressed off the timer.
“Yeah, it was.”
“But Kai did do one kind of Denny thing. He looked at me whenever I drank my sweet tea. He would get all intense and stare. I’ve never felt so self-conscious sucking on a straw before.”
Sue’s laughter rang through my phone.
“What?”
“He was so imagining you sucking his dick.”
“What?” I screeched.
“You heard me. Every time you sucked on your straw, he was imagining you sucking his dick.”
“He was not.”
“Was too.”
“Was not,” I shot back.
“When I really want to mess with Steve when we’re out for dinner, I start playing with my straw and take my time sucking on it as I drink. It’s really good if it’s a milkshake with whip cream. His eyes practically roll back in his head.”
“You, Sue Rankin, are a dirty girl.”
“And I fly that flag high and proud.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that came straight from my belly. Okay, there were a zillion reasons why Sue was my best friend. Her being a dirty girl was a zillion-and-one.
“And then if you really want to mess with them, take the straw out of the milkshake, scoop up some of the whipped cream with the end of your straw, then lick it off with the tip of your tongue. That’s like the dirty triple word score.”
I laughed even harder, imagining lumberjack-sized Steve Rankin wrapped around tiny little Sue Rankin’s finger.
“Now tell me more about the date,” my friend demanded.
“Can’t. Laughing too hard,” I gasped.
I pushed up from the kitchen island and stood up straight. Sue was absolutely right. Why hadn’t I seen that? “Sue, you are a genius.”
“I’m a dirty-girl genius,” she said smugly.
“He kissed me.”
“Whaaaatttt?!” Sue screeched.
“It was magnificent.”
“Where? When? How long? Was there tongue?”
“On my front porch swing. After the date. Long enough for me to lose my mind. Yes, there was tongue. And he wants to go out again.”
“When? What are you going to wear? Do you need to go shopping? You could Facetime me from the dressing room.”
“Whoa. I didn’t tell him yes, yet. I told him to call me.”
“Yuck. That sounds like you’re playing games.”
“Well, I’m not.” At least not anymore . “I just needed to get my head on straight, and you helped. So, thank you.”
“Anytime.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Remember to call me so we can go video shopping together.”
“I won’t forget.”