THIRTEEN
CHAPTER
I drove us to Sprinkle Cupcakes and parked along a back street. Harrah’s Casino rose up on our right and the Strip was a straight walk west from the little cupcake shop. It was closed at this hour, and Kacey’s face fell until I showed her the ATM.
“This is a cupcake ATM?” she said, staring at the bright pink square built into the wall of the closed shop. “Oh my God, that’s the best thing ever.”
“I thought you might like it.” I slipped my actual ATM card into the payment slot and the menu screen lit up. “Go ahead.”
She punched her order into the screen. A machine inside the ATM hummed and a little door slid up to reveal her cupcake: a red velvet with cream cheese frosting.
“That is so cool.”
I ordered a plain vanilla cupcake. I turned from the ATM, juggling my wallet and dessert, just as Kacey broke off a frosted piece of red velvet and offered it to me.
“Want to try?”
“Hold on…” I tried to stuff my wallet in the back pocket of my jeans, but the damn thing wouldn’t go. Kacey stood on her tiptoes and held the little piece of cake to my mouth. I had no choice but to eat it off her fingers .
Her head cocked, her eyes bright and electric underneath the amber streetlights. “Good, right?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t tasting any cake.
“You have a little frosting…” She reached again, and her fingertips brushed the corner of my mouth. A whisper touch that crackled like a little current of electricity, straight down to my groin, where is sat heavy and warm.
I offered her mine. “Taste?”
That’s all I could manage. Taste. I scoffed inwardly. Me Tarzan, you Jane.
Kacey took a small bite of my cupcake, and I watched as she licked her lips, staring at her mouth.
“How is it?” I said, a split second before my stare would need an explanation .
“Good.” Kacey stepped back and flashed me a smile. “You have excellent taste, Fletcher.”
We headed west, toward the Strip, ambling along a walkway between shops and restaurants, lined with potted plants and trees.
It was after eleven on a Sunday, but Vegas was wide awake.
Couples, groups of laughing friends and tourists speaking other languages walked past us or parted around us.
We strolled and ate our desserts, heading across the boulevard toward Caesar’s Palace. Then I turned us south.
I wanted to show her the Bellagio Hotel.
“Let’s stop here,” I suggested. We leaned our arms on the white cement wall that buffered the pond in front of the Bellagio. Across the water, the hotel was lit up in gold and pink, curving toward the smaller structures of the casino below it like an open book.
“It’s beautiful,” Kacey said. She turned around to face the Strip. The small-scale Eiffel Tower glowed in front of the Paris Hotel and Casino across the street. “Italy on one side, France on the other,” she said.
“You’ve really never been inside a casino?”
She shook her head. “Our tour schedule is so crazy; we haven’t had any free time until after the show last night. That’s why we’re here until Tuesday—so Jimmy can hit the strip clubs and do some gambling. The last time I was here, I was too young to be allowed anywhere fun.”
“Did you come here with your parents?”
“No,” Kacey said, turning her gaze to the still, dark water in front of us. “I don’t see them much anymore.”
“Too busy with the band? Will your tour take you through San Diego?”
I took a bite out of the cake, and when I looked up, Kacey’s entire demeanor had changed. She hugged herself though the night was warm with a soft breeze, and the light in her eyes had dimmed as she cast her gaze over the dark water.
“No, it’s not on my schedule,” she said. “I haven’t seen my parents in four years. My dad kicked me out of the house when I was seventeen.”
I nearly dropped my dessert and the bite in my mouth was like a jagged rock. I swallowed with difficulty. “He kicked you out of your house? At seventeen?”
My tone was far too loud and hard. I was demanding an answer from her bastard of a father, not her. But Kacey didn’t flinch or retreat. I think she understood my outrage, maybe even felt a little boosted for it.
“I snuck my twenty-two-year-old boyfriend home through my bedroom window one night. My parents caught us…in a compromising position, and that was it. My dad had never approved of anything I did; he hated my playing electric guitar, but that was the last straw. He let me pack a bag and locked the door behind me. I hadn’t even finished high school. ”
I chucked what was left of my cupcake in a nearby trashcan, appetite lost. “What kind of asshole turns his daughter out on the street? And what about your mom? She didn’t help you?”
Kacey’s shoulders jerked up in a shrug as she picked at her cake. “She didn’t say a word. She never has. She’s quiet and meek. My dad isn’t abusive to her, not physically. But he can turn off like a faucet. Cold, bone-dry silence for days if he’s really pissed, and my mom can’t handle that.”
“So she let you go?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked but I couldn’t help it.
I didn’t understand how people could turn on their own children.
That kind of parental failure—no, violation —was completely alien to me.
My childhood had been ridiculously free of troubles.
Sure, Dad was hard on Theo, and Mom was a compulsive worrier, but that was the extent of my complaints. My parents were good people.
They should’ve been your people, I thought, looking at Kacey.
In a weird twist of fate, we each ended up with the wrong set of parents.
Mine would’ve loved her and doted on her.
They would’ve nurtured her music and been proud of her accomplishments.
They’d give firm, appropriate discipline instead of throwing her out of the house.
A terminally ill child was something her parents deserved. My plight, given to that cruel father and spineless mother, would make more sense. If Kacey and I switched families, I’d no longer be afraid of the emotional burden I was leaving behind, and she’d be cherished forever.
“My mom didn’t fight for me,” Kacey was saying.
She chucked her cupcake away too. “She lost her voice when she married my dad. I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for that.
But even so, I still call her sometimes.
She doesn’t say much, but I think she likes when I call. To know I’m still alive anyway.”
“How did you survive on the streets?”
“I wasn’t on the streets. I followed Chett, the boyfriend my parents caught me with.
He told me he wanted to marry me, so I tagged along as he followed one get-rich-quick scheme after another.
I followed him here. He was running out of money, so he had this great idea I could be a model.
” She made air quotes around the word. “I shut that shit down immediately.”
“Good.” My hands closed into fists, and I jammed them into my pockets .
“But once I told Chett I wasn’t going to cooperate, it was all downhill. I was underage. I couldn’t drink, gamble, or even get into an eighteen-and-up club. He got tired of me real quick. Dropped me on my ass when he met someone else. Some showgirl.”
“What did you do?”
“I hitched back to California, thinking I’d try again with my parents. Go back to school. I did really well in school, actually.”
“I believe it,” I said.
Kacey smiled gratefully. “I made it as far as Los Angeles. I was staying at the YMCA and met Lola. She was nineteen, and in the same sinking boat as me. She’d just scraped enough money together waiting tables to get a cheap studio apartment and let me crash with her.
When I turned eighteen, I got a job at the same restaurant, and we spent off days busking in parks.
I sang and played my guitar while Lola played drums. A few months later, we found a want ad from a gal who wanted to put a band together, and the rest is history.
” She held up her hands. “And that is why, to this day, I’ve never stepped foot in a casino. ”
I nodded absently, my emotions roiled into a frothy rage at the men in Kacey’s life who had failed her so fucking badly. “What happened to Chett?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” She said it calmly enough, but I’d learned by now that everything Kacey felt was revealed in her large, luminous eyes. She cared about everything, passionately.
She goes all the way up to eleven.
That thought helped to quell the anger that was chewing at my gut.
“Feel that?” Kacey asked. “That’s the night dying a slow and painful death thanks to my sob story.”
“I’m sorry I pried.”
She waved my apology away. “I don’t mind.
I like talking to you. I don’t normally talk about my life.
Ever. Then it gets bottled up and I do something stupid like call my parents.
I get rejected, rejection makes me drink myself into a stupor, I start a riot in a green room and next thing I know, I’m waking up on my limo driver’s couch. ”
“A vicious cycle.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kacey said. “The couch part wasn’t so bad.”
A short silence descended. Despite every admonishment to keep to my schedule and not get close to this girl who was leaving in two days, I felt myself leaning in, wanting to hold up the pain she’d trusted me with. Wanting to give her something in return.
“Do you want to come to the glass studio tomorrow?” I asked. “You could see how it all works, or maybe watch me make something…”
I felt the back of my neck redden. I sounded completely arrogant and totally boring at the same time. As if I’d asked her to watch me polish my coin collection.
But then Kacey clapped her hands together. “Are you kidding? I’d love to.”
“Really?”
She used her index finger to lift one of her dark brows in an arch. “Really.”
I leaned back, laughing harder than I had in months. Rusty gears inside me creaked from lack of use, and my embarrassment faded to nothing.
“I’ve been dying to see how you make that beautiful glass,” Kacey said. “I was beginning to think it was for show, Fletcher. You ordered them from Etsy and passed them off as yours to impress the chicks.”
“I’m legit, I swear.”
Her laugh echoed across the pond and within it, I heard traces of a beautiful singing voice. She started to say something else when music filled the plaza in front of the Bellagio: the haunting flute introduction of “My Heart Will Go On.”
Kacey grabbed my arm. “Is that the Titanic song? Oh my God, it is. Why are they…?” Her words trailed away as Celine Dion’s voice rose up and the Bellagio fountains began their show .
Jets of water arced up from the pond, swaying in time.
They moved gently at first, almost shyly, like couples on a first date, touching and then collapsing over the expanse of water.
Blue light illuminated them from below. As the song gathered momentum, more jets rose higher and crashed harder, creating clouds of mist. The colors changed to red, to pale purple, and then silvery white.
The song hit its crescendo and Kacey’s grip on my arm tightened.
Her eyes grew soft, and she watched the water dance, but I could look nowhere but at her.
The show was at my periphery, a backdrop to her.
The song mellowed to its final notes, and the tall jets of water were graceful arcs again, crossing each other in pairs, like dancers or lovers, then slipping beneath the surface as the song ended.
Kacey sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting that.” She looked up at me. “It was beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “Beautiful.”
At my apartment, I unlocked the door and held it open for Kacey. She smiled almost shyly at me as she went in.
Holy shit, this is a date, I thought, locking up . I just took Kacey out on a date and now… This is the end of the date.
“Thanks for the cupcake,” she said from the living room. “And the water show. Did you plan that?”
“I know this city. Aside from my time at grad school, I’ve lived here all my life. And it’s part of my job to know where all the best shows are.”
“You’re good at your job,” Kacey said. “You go above and beyond, actually.” She moved close to me, rested her hands on my forearms and craned up to kiss my cheek. “Goodnight.”
I waited until she stepped back to speak, not trusting myself to open my mouth while hers was so close to mine.
“Goodnight,” I said. I stared as she went into my bedroom. In a few minutes, she’d be in my bed, her hair spilling across my pillow…
This is bad. Very, very bad.
I changed to the sleep pants and T-shirt I’d stashed in the hall closet and leaned back in the recliner.
I laid my hand over my ailing heart that ached for reasons that had nothing to do with my chart or diagnosis, or any terrible biopsy.
It ached because I could still feel Kacey’s soft lips on my cheek, and I missed her.
She was fifteen feet away, and hadn’t yet left Vegas with her band, but I missed her just the same.