SEVEN
CHAPTE R
I led Kacey out through the parking lot to my truck: a small pick-up in blue, its flatbed filled with cardboard boxes.
I held the passenger door open for her, which seemed to surprise her.
This whole lunch outing surprised me: not in the schedule by any stretch.
But obviously Kacey was in no hurry to rejoin her band.
After whatever catastrophe she’d caused at the Pony Club, staying with me was an act of self-preservation.
I climbed behind the wheel and my eyes strayed to Kacey’s thighs—smooth skin between her boots and the almost non-existent mini-skirt.
Part of a colorful tattoo was partially visible on her left thigh and the urge to see the rest of it was ridiculously strong.
Kacey was easy on the eyes. Actually, she was more than that.
She was beautiful. But so what? She was more Theo’s type with her bleached hair, leather, and tattoos.
But I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her bare skin. How long had it been since I’d touched a woman?
One year, four months, thirteen days, and eighteen hours.
I scoffed at my inner mathematician, though the number probably wasn’t far off. I hadn’t been with a woman since my ex-girlfriend, Audrey. Before I got sick.
“What’s with the boxes in the back?” Kacey asked, jolting me from my thoughts. “Are you moving?”
“No, they’re full of glass,” I said, grateful for the distraction. “Old bottles and jars that I melt down to make my pieces. I’m going to take them to the hot shop tomorrow.”
“So, the hot shop is where you blow the glass?” Kacey snickered.
I arched a brow at her.
“I know, I know. I’m twenty-two but I have the sense of humor of a fourteen-year-old boy.” She turned in her seat toward me. “And how do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Raise only one eyebrow. I’ve always wanted to.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just can.”
“Do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s cool.”
I arched my brow at her. “Is it?”
She laughed and sat back in her seat, satisfied. The broad smile remained on her lips as she watched Las Vegas passing outside her window. Even only half-turned to me, she had a stunning smile.
“So, what are you working on?” she asked after a moment. “At the hot shop.”
“Well… I’m working on an exhibit for a local gallery. It opens in October. The exhibit, not the gallery.”
Smooth, Fletcher. But it had been months since I’d spoken to a stranger about the exhibit. I’d whittled my circle down to exactly three friends, my family, and the curator of the gallery. Until Kacey, I hadn’t fully grasped just how small a circle that was.
“Will you sell your glass at this exhibit?” Kacey asked. “Like those beautiful paperweights?”
“Yes, I’ll have small pieces like that for sale, but the main focus will be a large-scale installation.”
She started to ask another question as I pulled the truck into the parking lot of Mulligan’s, a mom-and-pop diner. It was nearly three in the afternoon, the lunch rush was over, plenty of parking to be had. I pulled into a spot near the door.
“This is right up the street from you,” she said. “We could’ve walked.”
“In this heat?” I said and shut off the engine.
“Good point. The heat is godawful. I don’t know how you desert dwellers cope.”
I held the diner door open for her, surprising her again. She beamed at me and I almost lost my train of thought.
“I was born and raised in the desert,” I said. “I’m used to it, but some people can’t hack it. Wimps and pansies, every one.”
Kacey snorted and elbowed me lightly in the side as she breezed past me into the restaurant. She sighed with relief as we entered the air-conditioning, then caught me giving her a knowing look.
“Oh, fine. I’m a wimp,” she laughed. “Get us a table, smartass, while I use the restroom.”
I chuckled on my way to the hostess station. It was easy to be around this girl. And it seemed like she found it easy to be around me, like we’d known each other for years instead of hours.
A waitress greeted me. “How many, hon?”
“Two,” I said, and felt an immediate twinge in my chest.
I’d heard you could cut off a limb but still feel the pain of its absence.
I didn’t miss Audrey, my last girlfriend.
She’d cut me off, right after my transplant surgery.
We’d planned a certain life together, but when the virus wrecked my heart and nearly killed me, it wrecked our plans and killed our relationship.
Theo would never forgive her for leaving, but I got over her quickly—even after being together for three years.
It hurt she left, and the timing sure as shit could’ve been better, but I forgave her for leaving to find someone else, someone healthy with whom she could fall madly in love and build a real life with.
I didn’t miss her. Yet in answering a waitress’s innocuous question, I realized I missed the ‘two of us.’ Being part of a couple, holding a door for someone, requesting a table for two, joking, teasing, being someone's smartass... My tiny circle of loved ones didn’t include a girlfriend and wouldn’t ever again.
I thought I’d made peace with it, but some part of me, buried down deep, said otherwise.
I sank into the booth and took up a menu to distract myself from thoughts I didn’t want. Mulligan’s had typical country diner fare—breakfast served all day, and a variety of burgers and sandwiches for lunch. Unfortunately, more than half the items were strictly forbidden to me.
Kacey flounced into the seat across from me, looking scrubbed and vibrant. I tried not to think about the fact she was wearing my T-shirt, like girlfriends sometimes did with their boyfriend’s clothes.
The waitress set two waters on the table. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Kacey said. “Desperately.”
“Decaf for me,” I said.
The waitress moved on and Kacey shot me a funny look. “Decaf?”
“I can’t have caffeine.”
“What a tragedy.” She leaned over the table. “You know what they say, there’s a time and a place for decaf: Never and in the trash .”
I laughed with her. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
Kacey studied the menu. “I’m so hungry, I might have one of everything. What about you? What are you going to get? Wait…” She let the menu drop to the table. “What can you get?”
“Not sure yet. My options are kind of limited.”
“Because of your dietary restrictions.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, shit, Jonah, why did you bring me here?” She flapped her hand at the menu. “This is all grease and fat.”
I laughed and held up my hands at her sudden outburst. “Whoa, it’s cool. I’ll find something.”
She bit her lip. “Yeah, but... ”
“I brought you here for you,” I said. “This is perfect hangover food. I used to come here with friends when I was at UNLV.” I tapped the corner of her menu. “Get whatever you want. It’s fine, I swear.”
She still looked dubious as the waitress came back with our coffees, putting an orange decaf doily under my mug.
“You ready to order, hon?”
Kacey gnawed her lip.
“Order,” I told her. “Unless you’d rather we go back to my place and fire up some Lean Cuisines?”
“When you put it that way…” Kacey turned to the waitress and said in a deep voice, “ Yes, very well, I'll have a Bloody Mary, and a steak sandwich, and a steak sandwich .”
The waitress gave her a look and I frowned at the Bloody Mary.
Kacey flashed her eyes, looking between us. “It’s from Fletch ? The movie?” She jabbed a finger across the table. “You, Jonah Fletcher, can’t tell me you haven’t seen the greatest Chevy Chase movie of all time?”
“Sorry, I missed it,” I said.
“It’s a classic,” Kacey said. “I have a thing for eighties movies.”
The waitress cleared her throat. “So do I, honey, but I don’t have steak sandwiches or Bloody Marys.”
Kacey ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and I ordered a Cobb salad, hold the bacon, and a side of wheat toast, no butter.
When the waitress moved on, Kacey shook her head. “No bacon? The only good thing about a Cobb salad is you get to put bacon on it.”
I shrugged. “Not on the list.”
“That sucks. What else can’t you eat?”
“No red meat, no chocolate, no salt on anything…”
Kacey nearly choked on her coffee. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No chocolate ?”
“I miss salt more,” I said. “And butter. Nothing fatty, nothing delicious.” I laughed dryly. “In summation, I’m not allowed to eat anything delicious.”
Kacey shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Not like I have a choice. And there are worse things.”
“I’m trying to imagine something worse than not being able to eat chocolate.” She froze, then set her coffee mug down, her smile vanishing. “Oh my God, that’s a terrible thing to say to someone with a heart condition. I’m sorry. I do that a lot—just blurt out whatever pops into my head.”
“Hey, it’s cool. I can’t do cocaine anymore either, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for all the money I’m saving.”
Her embarrassment fell away with a smile. “Yeah, you look like the cocaine type to me.”
“Total cokehead. Reformed.”
Kacey relaxed and sat back in her seat. “So, you went to UNLV? That’s where you studied industrial arts?”
“Yes, my brother and I both studied art there.”
“And then Carnegie Mellon?”
I sipped my coffee. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”
“You have a lot of photos and diplomas on your wall. Before I decided to cool off my boobs in your freezer, I had some time to kill.”
I set my cup down before I spilled it. “That’s not something you hear every day.”
“It is in my world,” Kacey said with a rueful smile, as if it was an old joke she’d gotten tired of hearing. But she waved it off.
“Carnegie Mellon is…where?” she asked.
“Pennsylvania. Talk about a weather shock. The first winter I was there I wanted to hibernate.”
“Wimp,” she said over the rim of her coffee. “But from one pansy to another, east coast has too much weather for me, too. I was born and raised in San Diego, where if it drizzles, people lose their shit. ”