Chapter 8 Broken, sparkly things
Broken, sparkly things
Gage
Angelo’s was packed. It looked as though everyone in Story Lake had the same idea for dinner. Servers zoomed in and out of the kitchen, cooks yelled, and the phone rang incessantly. I put a hand on Zoey’s back and guided her into the fray, trying not to analyze why the touch seemed so natural.
I guided us past the ancient, grumpy hostess Jessie, more of an institution of Story Lake than the restaurant itself.
It was loud and crowded, and all the TVs were tuned to different stations.
After so many years of the town looking like it was occupied by a skeleton crew, it was nice to be inconvenienced by a busy dinner rush.
I nodded, waved, and shook hands the whole way to the bar. Nearly every face in the place was familiar and shared a history of some sort with me. I loved that feeling, that deep, unshakable sense of belonging.
I snagged the last barstool against the wall for Zoey and positioned myself behind her.
The tropical scent of her hair teased my nose, making me want to lean in even as I reminded myself of the safety of distance.
I’d argued myself out of this infatuation so many times I’d memorized every single point.
She was irresponsible, irrational, completely unserious…
and so was this physical pull I felt toward her.
Part of me—a small, illogical part—wanted to explore it. To see what adventure it would lead me on. Thankfully, I was an adult with maturity and self-control. I didn’t bend to spontaneous whims.
Dahlia, the bartender, looked up from the drafts she was pouring and gave a jerk of her chin toward the kitchen. Five minutes, she mouthed.
I leaned down. “Want a drink while we wait?” I asked Zoey over the music.
She cupped her ear. “What? It’s so loud in here.”
Reluctantly, I moved in closer. The smell of coconuts got stronger. “Drink?” I repeated.
“Sure. As long as you’re confident the three ravenous wolves in the car won’t eat your steering wheel.”
“Beer okay?”
She nodded.
I flashed Dahlia two fingers, and she nodded.
Zoey swiveled on her stool to face me, bringing her knees in contact with the tops of my thighs. She seemed unfazed, but my body reacted like she’d set fire to my pants, and I took a self-preserving step back.
I was trying to look anywhere but her eyes, so my gaze fastened on the glittering globe she wore on a long chain. “What’s on your necklace?” I asked.
She held it up for me to study. “It’s a disco ball.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
Her grin was wicked. “Because you think you know everything.”
“I make educated guesses,” I pointed out, taking the charm in my hand. “Why do you wear a disco ball around your neck?”
“Because I like broken, sparkly things.”
“Broken?” I repeated, taking a closer look at the charm.
“All those broken pieces add up to something everyone loves.”
I frowned as my thumb skimmed over the seams of the disco ball. It was a deeper answer than what I was expecting from Zoey “Fun Is My Middle Name” Moody.
“Now, I was honest with you. So you owe me,” she said. Her eyes sparkled, and her curls took on the deep red of the neon sign on the wall behind us. She might not have been my type, but I sure as hell liked looking at her.
I dropped her necklace and tried not to watch it nestle back between her breasts. “I do?”
“You do,” she said firmly. “Since we’ve established that we’re not interested in each other for relationship purposes—”
“That is on the record,” I said warily.
“—and since you don’t look like the ‘hot, sweaty, one-night stand’ type, we officially don’t need or expect anything from each other,” she continued.
I let out a surprised laugh. “What was that about a one-night stand?”
Zoey looked me up and down, then smirked. “Please. You wouldn’t survive it.”
“I’m having trouble surviving this conversation,” I shot back, doing everything in my power to force all the images that came to mind out of my head.
“I’m just saying we don’t need or expect anything from each other. So that means we can just be brutally honest with each other. Right?”
The beers arrived in front of us, and I called out a thanks to Dahlia over the noise. I handed one to Zoey. “Fine. I think all your skirts are about four inches too short.”
Zoey sputtered into her beer, and I grinned.
“First of all, if I’m not your type, why are you looking at my hemlines?” she demanded.
“Zoey, honey, you don’t have to be a man’s type to get his eyes on you. And I’m kidding about the skirts.”
She poked me in the chest. “Now you definitely owe me.”
I grinned. “All right. Fine. Tell me how to settle up.”
“You lied when I asked if you were doing okay about the accident and the charges.”
“Who says I was lying?” I asked casually.
“Come on, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal. Tell your platonic friend what’s simmering beneath that good-natured surface,” she prodded.
The finger in my chest shifted to a warm palm on my arm.
“Seriously, Gage. I’m not invested. I don’t need you to have the reaction I want you to have. I just want to know how you’re doing.”
I studied my glass for a beat. Maybe she was right. Maybe getting it out would loosen the tightness in my chest.
“Disco.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Disco,” she repeated, holding up her necklace. “That’s our official safe word. Only instead of incredibly dirty sex stuff that you definitely wouldn’t survive, it’s our ‘tell the truth’ word. If one of us says it, the other one has to tell the truth.”
I blew out a breath and gritted my teeth against the new onslaught of fantasy images that played out in my brain. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Don’t care. I like ridiculous. Stop stalling. It’s either this or we sit here in silence, waiting for pizza.”
“I like silence.”
“That’s Levi,” she said.
“Fine. No. I’m not okay.”
“I noticed,” she said wryly. She looked up at me expectantly with those jade-green eyes.
“Miller is gone forever. My sister wakes up in bed alone and gets into a wheelchair every fucking morning. And somewhere out there is the woman who put her there. She got to go back to normal. She didn’t lose anything.
Her life didn’t change. There were days since the accident that the only thing keeping me going was knowing that someday, that driver would lose their normal.
That there’d be some kind of justice. But these charges are… ”
The bitter taste of anger was rising to the surface again, and I took a swallow of beer to force it back down. Zoey’s thumb stroked the inside of my forearm. A small, gentle movement that centered my attention on her again.
“They aren’t enough,” I rasped. “How can three years of her life compare to taking Miller from us forever? I can’t fucking stomach that. That’s not justice. That’s a fucking slap in the face. To Laura, to the kids, to Miller’s parents.”
“To you,” Zoey added.
I nodded tightly.
She wet her lips, and my attention snagged on them. Full, rosy, glistening.
“Were you and Miller close?”
I shrugged. “Not at first. I was younger, the tagalong in school. But after I graduated from law school and came back, we were tight.”
Tight wasn’t the word for it. He’d been another brother to me. A voice of reason, a reminder to loosen up. Someone who always had my back. I missed him every fucking day.
“What do you think would feel like justice?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Honestly? I don’t know if there’s anything less than what she took from us that would do the trick. And I don’t like the way that feels. I don’t get angry. I don’t walk around carrying grudges. But, Zo, this is eating me alive.”
She let out a long exhale and then dipped her head to my chest and wrapped her arms around my waist. The contact, the comfort of it, shocked the hell out of me.
“That fucking sucks,” she said into my shirt.
I dropped my chin to the top of her head and breathed in that tropical scent. It was like a vacation, a moment away from all the darkness. “Yeah. It does.”
We were both silent for a beat in the middle of the bar’s Saturday night chaos.
I could feel the steady beat of her heart under my hand on her back, the warmth of her breath against my chest. She was small and warm and solid.
Somehow, with my senses occupied by Zoey, my anger inched away from the edge.
“Good disco. That was just a platonic hug, by the way,” she said, pulling back and grinning impishly. “So don’t get any ideas about trying to propose.”
I snorted. “Please. Ten minutes alone with me and you’re already thinking about trading in your convertible for a minivan,” I teased.
“Nice try, pal. You’re not wrong or bad for wanting justice,” she said, going serious again.
“Yeah, well, I’m starting to realize that sometimes the law can’t deliver true justice.” I didn’t know how to operate in a world like that.
“Hey, here’s a thought. Have you tried numbing your pain with meaningless sex?” She fluttered her eyelashes at me.
Miracle of miracles, I found myself letting out a reluctant laugh. I ruffled her hair with affection.
She wrinkled her nose and tried to right the damage to her curls. “Can you imagine if we did hook up? It would obviously go horribly wrong.”
“Horribly,” I agreed.
“And then we’d have to spend every Thanksgiving and Christmas together because of Hazel and Cam,” she said.
“I’d have to tell my future wife that I had a torrid affair that ended badly with the hot redhead at the table.”
“She’d hate me.”
“She’d have no choice,” I agreed and picked up my beer. “I think Cam can unbunch his undies. We’re obviously not going to get involved with each other. We have disaster written all over us.”
“It’s tattooed on our foreheads,” Zoey said.
“Subject change,” I said, using her segue. “Tell me about your work.”
“What?” She cupped her hand to her ear again.
I inched closer. “Your job. What did you do today?” I asked.
She looked baffled. “Why?”
“I’m interested.” Her baleful look made me smirk. “In what you do, not you.”