Chapter 4 #2
She steps toward me, close enough so she’s under me and I’m hovering over her.
She tilts her head up, rising to her tiptoes; her lips tip up practically begging to touch mine.
“I hate blueberries.” Her breath is cool and smells like cinnamon, like she just pulled the toothbrush out of her mouth and rinsed.
I don’t have it in me to step back. I also don’t have it in me to lean down and kiss her. “Actually, I think I should go.” Maybe if I say it aloud, my feet will obey.
After a frozen moment, ice cold yet filled with fuel, my body obeys. I pull away but she catches my arm and the friction causes the paper bag to rip an inch at the top.
It’s not a grab. It’s barely pressure, three fingers on my forearm, yet she might as well have stabbed me with lightning. That’s how her touch feels. Igniting.
“I eat alone a lot,” she says. “Every meal, pretty much. It’s a luxury to have company. I’ll knock off the jokes. Just…come in. Eat. Please?”
I look at her hand on my arm then I scan her face. Her expression isn’t the seduction from the doorway. It’s something softer and quieter. The subtle sadness of a person who eats every meal alone. I recognize it because I often wear the same look.
Without further explanation, I step past her into the room.
“BOTH SCONES? REALLY? You greedy fuck.”
“Did your mama raise you around sailors? That mouth of yours. And the scones are both blueberry. You said you hated blueberries.”
We’re cross-legged on the floor, the small coffee table sits between us like a high-top.
She has to uncross her legs to lean across the table and snatch the scone right from my hands.
Kezia leaves a crime scene of crumbs behind her—across the table, down the T-shirt I insisted she put on, and onto her still-bare thighs. “I say a lot of things.”
“Are any of them true?”
“Some of them. I do think you’re really hot.”
“Kezia, behave.”
She widens her eyes at me. “Callen, this is me behaving. And I prefer Sylvie.” She takes a hearty bite of the scone like blueberries are a treasure. I already realize lies are a playground for this woman. She likes to swing tall tales like she’s on the monkey bars.
I stop. “Sylvie? Then why do I remember Kezia?”
She peels the lid off another beverage, not looking at me. She tried the latte and the chai and decided against both. She mmmms in satisfaction when she takes a sip of this one. Plain drip is the winner—noted. “Kezia Silver’s the official name on things. But I prefer Sylvie.”
“Sylvie, huh?” I turn it over on my tongue. Sylvie. It fits her better, some soft consonant that doesn’t match how sharp she is. The contradiction is exactly why I like it. “That’s cute. I like that.”
“You said that last night too.” Something crosses her face, quick, and then it’s gone under a sip of coffee. “What else do you remember? From last night.”
“You tell me.” I bite the bacon breakfast sandwich that has cooled to unappetizing and set it down.
“I hope not too much. Discretion is very necessary in my job and it sounds like as of last night I deserve to be fired.” Ha, as if that’s possible.
There’s one way out of PALADIN and that’s a toe tag or a body bag.
Or if Vesper’s the one to end you, maybe just a few loose teeth washing up on shore in a couple of years.
“What’s your line of work?”
“Pass.” No. No way. Not even a hint. That’d scare her too much. She talks a big game but I see the fragility in her.
“You don’t remember anything I told you last night? No confessions?”
“Honestly, no. Why? Did you confess something good?”
She smiles into her cup. Doesn’t answer. Takes another sip of coffee. The flash of sinister delight that crosses her features makes me feel suddenly vulnerable—instantly transported somewhere cold and wet, and I’m standing there buck naked.
“Don’t lie to me. Are you actually a working girl? I won’t turn you in. I have bigger fish to fry.”
She teeters her head. “I’m a girl. And I work. Does that help clarify?”
“Not at all. Care to?”
“Pass,” she says, and grins, and I let it go, because I know I’m not going to get anywhere. What’s it matter anyway? I’ll never see her again after this meal.
We continue to eat. She’s really funny—the dry, quick, funny-at-your-expense kind of way that makes me laugh at myself like it’s easy.
She even does an impression of the bartender that’s so accurate it’s cruel.
To my great surprise, the conversation flows.
She asks where I grew up and I give her the sanitized version and she gives me one back that I don’t believe for a second, some story about a big Irish family, a lie sanded smooth by practice.
We’re both doing it. We both know we’re both doing it.
Guarded truths and overt lies. It should feel like a standoff. Instead, it feels like flirting.
And under it, threading through, she keeps starting questions and killing them.
“Did you ever—” or “Was that when—” and then a stop, a redirect, more coffee.
Three times. Four. Nobody swallows a question that clean by accident.
She’s searching for something. But I can’t make sense of it.
Sylvie seems to be piecing together a puzzle I don’t have.
I tell myself it’s nothing. Four hours of drunk sleep and I’m seeing ghosts in a pretty girl being careful with a stranger. That’s probably it. That’s almost certainly it.
But finally, when we near our final bites of breakfast, she lets one question all the way out. “Why’d you get so wrecked last night? You seemed—you seemed like a man in a lot of pain when you walked in. Was it a woman by chance?”
I should say pass this time. I have the word on the tip of my tongue.
Instead, I hear myself start talking, and I don’t fully understand why, except that I’m so tired of holding the hurt with both hands.
“It was a woman. My ex-wife. Melissa. We had dinner last night—she asked to meet, and I thought—” I laugh, and it’s an ugly little sound.
“I thought I was going to fight for us. Ten years too late, but I had a whole speech. She let me finish it. Then she told me she’s with someone now. Ben. They have a baby coming.”
“Wow. What a misread on your part.” She’s teasing me again, but her face won’t morph into a smirk. Just a little pout that pities me.