Chapter 9 #2
He smiled a secret smile that people in love shared sometimes. The smile that made her feel like an outsider. Even her parents, who had been married forever, did that sometimes.
“And then some,” he said.
“Icky is another word I haven’t used in a while,” Dan said, pulling out his phone.
“Are you making notes on words you want to use but are too stupid to remember?” JD asked.
“I am,” Deputy Dan said, not at all insulted.
Blue left them arguing and headed down past the bathrooms to the rear exit with her plate of food. She stepped outside and headed to the area where staff had set up a table.
The air was cooling, and it felt good on her face. She sat down, picked up a chicken stick, and crunched. It tasted far better than it should.
Around her, Lyntacky settled into the rhythm of shutting down for the night. People would clean up after meals, while others were bathing kids. Some were sitting in their favorite chairs, getting ready to watch their favorite shows.
Mundane. Normal. For so long, she’d fought against that, but now…
“What do you want, Blue?”
As no answer came back to her, she picked up another chicken stick and bit into it.
“Hey.”
Just one word, but she knew who that voice belonged to.
“Hi, Jay.” She watched his long legs eat up the short distance between them.
Expression unreadable, he took the seat across the table from her and then snatched a fry off her plate. “How are you, Blue?”
“Doing okay, thanks, Jay. You?”
He studied her for long seconds before speaking. “You look tired. I thought that in the Swing Through the other day.”
“Gee, thanks, just what a woman wants to hear. And so do you, by the way.” His face looked weary and his eyes a little squinty.
“Work.” He sighed out the word. “And I should have said beautiful and tired.”
“Better. Here work or out there work?” She swept her hand in an arc.
“Out there work.” He took a chicken stick this time, and she did the same.
They could do this. Just sit and talk. The sex thing had been good, but they’d been friends—kinda—first, before that.
“Do you work in national security, Jay?”
He studied her again as his white front teeth bit into the deep-fried goodness. “Some, but I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
“You’re not in control of the Doomsday Clock, are you?”
He smiled. “No, I’m not on the Science and Security Board, Blue, nor do I think the Doomsday Clock is a matter of national security.”
“Hah, shows what you know.”
He smiled again, and it was nice—more than nice. The man was hot.
“So what’s next for Blue Jay McAllister now you’ve had time to think about it? Are you going to set up in Zoe’s spare room at Angel’s?”
“I don’t think so.” But she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t acknowledge it had started her thinking.
“For the first time in forever, I don’t know what I want to do,” she surprised herself by saying.
“I usually have a plan, but I can’t seem to form one at the moment.
” Blue frowned down at the fry she held, as if it were at fault.
“Well, maybe you just need to take a break for a while, then?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s happening with your New York apartment?”
“I’ve sublet it.”
“Okay, so that’s one worry you don’t have. Anything else?”
It was an odd thing to sit here and work through her options and just talk about the stuff she hadn’t until then.
She’d spoken to Lynx a little bit, but he’d been busy doing his rock star stuff.
But this, sitting here with Jay, felt right.
No one was interrupting them, and they were just talking about things—real things.
“It sounds to me like you just need time, Blue. So take some,” Jay said.
She nodded. “What about you, Jay? Anything churning inside you I can help you with? Seeing as I’ve just unloaded on you.”
“Hardly an unload. You know the Dukes, right? If they have an ingrown hair, it’s a production that the entire family are involved in.”
She laughed. “They’re good people.”
“Really good,” he agreed.
They fell silent, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, like you’d expect it to be between two people who’d spent a single night having awesome sex.
“I took a DNA test,” he said softly. “And I don’t want to look at the results.”
“Why?”
“Because my father and mother were terrible parents, and part of me doesn’t want to connect with anyone linked to them.”
Blue knew nothing about Jay’s past other than that he’d arrived at her school when she was young and stayed there. No one had talked about him other than how he was always at the Dukes’ house.
“Did you—was your childhood really bad, Jay?”
“The worst.” His words were cold and flat. “My father used to knock us around and never supported us financially.”
“But what if there was someone different? Another branch, or link to your past, that was good. Someone with whom you could connect, Jay. You need to check your results.”
“I always wanted a family. The normal kind I used to watch on TV, and then I met the Dukes—”
“Aww, come on, there is no way that family is normal,” Blue scoffed.
“True that. But I wanted to come home to something near normal.”
“Oh, well, in that case, you should have been a McAllister. We were the poster family for normal.”
That made him laugh.
“But you were loved, Blue,” he said seconds later.
“And you weren’t?”
“No, never. Not until the Dukes.”
“Get in here, Haddon! I have a pool game to thrash you at.”
Blue looked behind them and saw Dan standing in the doorway.
Jay got out of his seat. “Thanks for the food and conversation, Blue. See you around.”
“See you, Jay.”
She watched him leave and wondered what hell he’d endured as a child. One thing was for certain, they were friends again. That little chat had broken through the discomfort between them, and maybe now they could just be what they were. Friends—kinda.