Chapter 3 #2
"—very soon for a man with no plan." He took a long pull of his smoothie. "Are you going to tell her?"
"Tell her what?"
Fox gave me the look. The one that said he had at least four things he could say and was selecting the least devastating option out of genuine affection for me. "Pick one, Isak."
I flipped him off and crossed over to the living room, swung my legs over the back of the couch and dropped down onto it. Vito jumped up immediately and settled on my chest like a weighted blanket with opinions. I stared at the ceiling and patted his cute little butt.
The thing was she'd saved my number as Cat Daddy. She'd made up a name for a person she'd met and interacted with for a half an hour. Called me that, with the same energy she'd named her cat Tig Bitties. Like I was a character she'd filed away as real before she knew anything about me.
Nobody did that. Nobody met a Kingman and filed him under a name they made up. They filed him under the name he came with, the family he came from, the jersey number they already knew.
She didn't know any of that.
She just knew a guy who'd climbed a tree for her cat.
"You know what it's like," I said to the ceiling. "When someone—" I stopped. Started again. "When you can tell they're talking to the real you and not to the thing they think you are."
Fox was quiet for a moment. Actually quiet, not strategically quiet.
"Yeah," he said. "I know what that's like."
He did. Fox Daws, whose mother was Roxie Wilde, who had become more famous than any of his movies for choosing football over Hollywood because it was the one place he got judged on what he did instead of who he was related to.
Fox knew exactly what it was like to stand in a room full of people who thought they knew you and feel completely alone in it.
It was why we lived here together. It was why this worked.
"She doesn't know," I said.
"She will."
"I know she will. I just—" Vito pushed his head against my chin. "Not yet."
Fox nodded. Didn't push. He picked up his skincare thing again, resumed whatever step he'd been on when I came in, and let the silence be comfortable for a minute.
Then he said: "Dude. I got it. Bring her up here to the Thunder Ball Room."
I lifted my head. "What? No, and no."
"Friday. After the ride. Bring her up." He gestured around the penthouse with the serum bottle.
"Women love this place. It's impressive without trying to be impressive.
Vito's here. You've got the helmet collection on the wall, which is either very cool or very serial killer and I've been told it depends on who you ask—"
"I'm not bringing her up here."
"Why not?"
"Because she doesn't know I live here. She doesn't know I own the building. She doesn't know—" I waved a hand. "Any of it."
"Right, right." Fox considered this. "It's the perfect way to do the big reveal."
I stared at him. "We are not calling the penthouse the Thunder Ball Room."
"It's a Bond film," he said. "and it has room in the name, so it sounds like a—"
"I know what it is, Fox."
"—venue, which we are, we're a venue for—"
"No. Vetoed. Permanently and retroactively." I put my head back down. Vito resumed his position on my sternum. "Add it to your list of ridiculous and unneeded names for our place. Why you think it needs a name is beyond me."
"You'll get it eventually."
"I won't."
"The Thunder Ball Room is objectively—"
"Daws."
He capped the serum. "Fine. But you still don't have a plan for Friday."
"I'm aware."
"She thinks she's going on a motorcycle ride with a mystery man."
"She is."
"At some point on Friday the mystery man is going to have to either take the helmet off or come up with a very convincing reason not to, because I hate to tell you this, but this is not the way."
"Shut. Up."
"I'm just laying out the variables."
"I know the variables."
"Cool." He picked up his smoothie. "Then what's the plan?"
Vito looked up at me. In the dim light of the penthouse his eyes were very green and very unimpressed. He'd been there. He'd seen how this started. He had opinions.
"I don't have a plan," I said.
"No plan."
"Not yet."
"Friday."
"I know it's Friday."
"Four days, buddy."
"I swear to god—"
"I'm just saying." He raised both hands. "The Thunder Ball Room is available if you need it."
I threw a couch pillow at him.
He caught it without looking, because he was Fox Daws and his reflexes were genuinely irritatingly amazing, and he pointed at me on his way to his bedroom.
"Four days," he said. "Figure it out."
The door clicked shut.
I lay on the couch in the dark with my cat on my chest and my phone in my hand and Friday coming like a freight train I had flagged down myself and her contact sat in my phone under a name that meant I already knew she was different before I was ready to admit it to anyone, including myself.
Cheerleader in a Tree.
My phone buzzed again and I picked it up, already smiling. But that only lasted a second.
Jules: Found the perfect little place in Highland Heights right near campus.
Me: Cool. When do you move in?
For some reason known only to my little sister, she'd decided to do her masters at Kentucky North University. Sure, sure it had one of the nation’s top sports psychology programs, but did she have to pick a school seven whole miles from Cinci?
Denver State had a perfectly good graduate program and she could have lived at home and tormented at least four of our older brothers to her hearts content. But no... she was moving here for the next year. .
And I was going to love having her around. On occasion.
She would also be laughing her ass off at my current romantic entanglement. Although, she did give solid advice when she wanted to.
Jules: I'll be there Friday.
Ah, fuck a duck.