Chapter 14
The bar closest to us is mobbed, so we move to the one across the gigantic room.
Lucas is waylaid by a group of fans and waves us on.
The walk is an awkward one for me and a boisterous one for Margie, Anna, and Avery.
Anna and Avery have linked arms and are singing show tunes at the top of their tipsy lungs.
Margie is loudly monologuing Shakespeare.
But in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Love’s Labour’s Lost last summer, I distinctly remember her playing Rosaline, not Berowne.
“And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love’s whip…” she shouts, throwing her arms wide.
Jack and I trail them, silent, making me feel like we’re chaperones at the world’s shittiest high school dance—a commentary on the people we’re babysitting, not the quality of the Vaughns’ party.
“Your sister is nice,” I say. I have no idea how to have a normal conversation with the man next to me.
“Thanks. She likes you…all, too.” His voice is strained, as if he also isn’t exactly sure how to speak to me without spitting fire.
He almost looks perplexed by my cordial tone.
He shoves his hands into his pockets and tips his gaze up to the ceiling.
“I wanted to apologize for using the stuff I heard through the wall against you when we argued. It was out of character for me. I’m going to do my best not to hear whatever is going on over there at your place until the wall is fixed. Okay?”
I falter a little, an uncertain feeling swirling inside me, and he grabs for my elbow to steady me. “Wh—what made you think of that?” Is he remembering that he almost kissed me right before making that out-of-character-for-him comment?
“It’s been weighing on me,” he responds. “That’s why I cut in.”
“Oh. I— I’m sorry about your—” I gesture to his entire body. “The glitter thing. It… It pains me to say it, but you wouldn’t have looked terrible as a Twilight extra.”
He gives a little laugh.
Quickly, before I can change my mind, I say, “I have a proposition for you.”
“Does it involve thinking of England? What would Lucas Webb say?”
I suppress a chuckle. If the structural integrity of my hate collapses, the majority will landslide away. I need a new footing with Jack. He isn’t a cheating asshole, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a good, old-fashioned, regular asshole. One who, admittedly, can be amusing sometimes.
“You’ll never know. You promised not to listen through the wall,” I purr.
He makes a face I can’t read, and before he can lob an insult or worse, apologize again, I rush to add, “No. It does not involve thinking of England. I was wondering if maybe we could call a truce and try to be…normal neighbors?”
“We’d have to be normal people first, and I’m thinking that at least half of this equation doesn’t qualify.”
“Don’t talk about yourself like that. Being normal is a stretch goal you might just reach if you try hard enough.”
“Okay. So what do normal neighbors do? Want me to come by and ask to borrow a cup of sugar?”
“If you need it, sure.”
“Eggs?”
“Okay…”
“Flour?”
“I’m not a damn supermarket.”
Jack’s laugh gusts out of him, the comet’s tail of a loud breath. It’s gratifying. “I was going to bake you a neighborly cake. Your loss.”
We’ve reached the second bar, and this one is jammed up as well.
Jack takes our orders, and Anna insists we bring our drinks out to the tables set up on the open-air deck a few steps away.
Margie excuses herself from our group, still tipsy and looking positively incandescent, saying that La has returned to the table and she doesn’t want to leave her there by herself.
“Wait—” I protest.
“I’ll be right back with La.”
The outdoor terrace off the hangar deck is intimate, and Avery’s decorators have softened the severity of the warship with greenery and faux creeping ivy.
It’s quieter out here, and cheerful, with crisscrossing strings of vintage-style Edison bulbs hanging over our heads.
There are a half dozen rectangular bar-height tables and chairs set up, tablecloths and little covered candleholders on top.
Manhattan’s brilliantly lit buildings are reflected back up at us from the dark, glittering Hudson River beyond the deck.
Jack takes the seat across from me at the table, next to his sister.
Avery, of course, grabs the seat to Anna’s right.
That leaves a seat open for Margie, whenever she reappears, on my left.
Avery and Anna huddle together, lost in conversation once more, their backs practically turned to me and Jack.
I tap my fingers on the table and look around, pretending to be utterly engrossed in every detail of a waterfront I’ve seen more than a few times. Anything to avoid looking up at Jack’s candlelit face.
“Three dots, three dashes, three dots. You’re tapping out S.O.S.,” Jack says.
My fingers freeze mid-tap. “Why do you know that?”
“Boy Scout. Why do you? Dad a scout leader?”
I shrug. “Mr. Vaughn taught me.” I take a grateful sip of my wine to pull the rip cord on the current conversational thread. What the hell is keeping Margie? She dragged me to the bar and abandoned me.
Jack runs his finger around the rim of his glass of scotch, over and over, in a nearly hypnotic way. He glances up just as I’m looking at him. Our gazes lock. “So what other hidden talents do you have?”
“You tell me. You’ve heard enough of my conversations to figure me out.” I break off our eye contact.
“I told you I’ll try not to listen anymore… And like you haven’t overhead anything about me through those walls in all these months? Come on. I’m not exactly mouse-pissing-into-cotton-quiet on the other side of that wall. What have you heard?”
I sniff. “Your vacuum?” I say it to be funny, but he looks vaguely uneasy, maybe because it’s a violation of our truce.
So I hurry to add, “What else? Besides your penchant for sad coffeehouse music… I may have overheard you making snarky remarks at your TV when the Mets are playing. They suck, by the way.”
“Sometimes. Hence the snarky remarks. What else?”
“You’ve got a friend named Mark who is obsessed with WWII.”
“Moth. His real name’s Luis, but his nickname is Moth because he’s always drawn to the worst, most dramatic situations.
He’s the reason I have this scar. Tried to jump in and save him during a fight and took on friendly fire.
” He points to a scar on his chin, and I lean in to see the pale white line.
We’re nearly nose to nose when he dips his chin down, and for a second we stay there, sharing the same breath.
His lashes are longer than I realized. And his eyes are heat and mist and… I scramble back in my seat.
“This is scintillating stuff,” he drawls, then rests his elbow on the table, his cheek on his palm.
I mimic his pose, noting that his gaze dips to my cleavage and away, lightning quick. “Okay. Here’s something interesting. You’re going through a drought.”
“How do you figure?”
“Never brought a woman home in all the time we’ve been neighbors.”
“Maybe I stay at their apartments. Or maybe it’s because I’m scared my neighbor will chase them away.” My eyes stray to Anna and then guiltily move back to Jack. “What is it?”
“About that… I have a confession to make,” I say.
“Undying love.”
“You’re back to deluding yourself again. Am I going to have to duck another failed almost-kiss?”
His lips curve in a roguish way. A Pirate Duke smile.
A silent songbird in my chest flutters its wings.
“Nah. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve got a giant ego.
” He smiles at my over-the-top scoff. “But it’s a giant, fragile ego.
House of cards. Can’t handle any more rejection.
Guess you’ll have to be the one putting the moves on me. ”
“You should totally hold your breath for it,” I say, and smile in response to his laugh, despite myself.
“So. Your confession…?”
“My confession. I…” I lower my voice so that Anna can’t hear and lean forward.
Jack leans forward to meet me, his eyes a galaxy of reflected colors in the candlelight.
“When I met your sister the first time, she ran out of your place crying about a cheating asshole. I thought that asshole was you.”
“That’s why you thought I cheated on the ‘girl in the picture’? Well, you usually think the worst of me, so that’s nothing new.”
“Yeah, but that was the first terrible thought I ever had of you. And it kind of set the tone.”
“Oh! So that’s our Big Bang, huh? I’d wondered—not that I gave you a ton of thought, of course—but I thought it was very suspect how you went from ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ to brawling alley cat.
Guess that explains it.” He takes a sip of his drink, then stares down at the amber liquid. “And now that you know you were wrong?”
“Well, since then, I’ve compiled a dossier’s worth of things I dislike about you, so.” I bite back a smile, but Jack’s flies free, dimples and all. He has a rakish mouth. A mouth I realize I’m staring at when he clears his throat and sits back.
“Only a dossier? I rented out a warehouse full of filing cabinets for you. Real Indiana Jones shit.”
“In preparation for everything I’ll discover on you? Or have you been compiling things you dislike about yourself for me? I hope it’s the latter. Huge time-saver. Your flaws are glaring, but there are just so many.”
He takes a sip of his drink and dips his head with a grin in recognition of the point I’ve scored on him. “So normal neighbors,” he says.
“Yes. Although I’m not sure if I know how to be normal around you. Antagonizing you is like muscle memory at this point.”
“Hypothetically, do normal neighbors”—he waggles his eyebrows, so I know I’m going to hate whatever comes next—“retaliate for being glitter-bombed?”