Chapter 27 #2
“Who?” Stacey says, not looking up from her iPad.
“Never mind.”
“Can you see if the crew is willing to stay for a last-minute booking?” Stacey asks. “And take them these?” She hands me some water bottles.
I start with Mike’s cell and chuck the water bottle at his head, but he catches it deftly with one hand. “Easy, Bea.”
“Stacey wants to know if you can stay late.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“And then we get drinks after?” Catstrike says hopefully.
“How ’bout it, Bea?” Mike leans against the bars.
“I never pass up an opportunity for a free ginger ale.”
He narrows his eyes, and I get through the rest of the night knowing that I’ll have the satisfaction of proving him wrong. Everyone, especially me, sees through his veneer of charm.
But when I walk into the pub after we close, Mike is kissing the redheaded Catstrike, and all I can do is stand there, staring.
Oh…I feel ill.
I need to leave. I need to run. I need to do anything besides stand here gawking as this voluptuous Catstrike presses her lips to Mike’s.
It’s not lost on me that this is exactly who I believed Mike to be. He’s spectacularly proving every point I’ve made. He’s an actor. He’s a flirt. He’s a pretty pair of lips with gorgeous eyes and the most introspective, intelligent student of Shakespeare who has ever graced—
Oh my gosh! I’m doing it again—letting the man I see on the page blind me from what is right in front of me. If I keep standing here, watching him kiss another woman, I’m going to burst into tears.
Me. Beatrice Hero McKinney.
I don’t cry. I never cry.
The door to the pub opens behind me, and a rowdy group comes in. The noise is enough to break whatever spell Mike and Catstrike are under, because they separate. Abruptly. The redhead beats me to the door, rushing past me.
That’s when Mike sees me. He goes white. I go red.
“Bea!”
And then I’m running. Out the door into the street.
“Bea! I can explain,” Mike yells.
I don’t want an explanation. I don’t need an explanation. If Mike wants to kiss strangers, that’s completely fine. Why should I care about where his lips have been? Will be?
My eyes prick with tears, and I run faster. I take a shortcut through a back alley.
“Bea!”
He can’t catch me. I won’t let him, even in these stupid heels. I can’t have this conversation.
I’m panting when I reach my car. I had to park two blocks up.
“Who the freak invented heeled boots?” I dig through my purse and find my key.
Yes, I regret my decision to buy a vintage Porsche.
No auto unlock happening here. I’m still fumbling to get my key in the ignition when Mike bangs on my window.
“I can explain.”
“Explain what?”
“Beatrice. Can we talk about this?”
“So you kiss and tell. No, thanks.” My engine revs, and I screech out of there before my eyes start to sting. I squeeze them tight at the first red light I come across. After I hit my steering wheel and scream first.
That’s when I see Mike in my rearview. He’s barreling down La Jolla Boulevard on a motorcycle.
Oh my gosh. No! Maybe if I look straight ahead, he won’t see me.
No such luck. He pulls up right beside me. “Bea!”
The light turns green, and I hammer my gas pedal. My squeal has nothing over the screech of my tires.
It’s then I realize I’m in a car chase. I’m literally in a car chase. Mike Benedick is on a motorcycle, and he’s chasing me.
And I cannot get caught.
I swerve down Avenida Cresta. He follows.
I look for a place to pull in and park where he might not see me. But he is right behind me. If there were more traffic out tonight, this might be possible, but it’s Thursday at eleven p.m. The streets are quiet.
Miraculously, I manage to lose Mike after my third trip around La Jolla High School. It must have been the back alley that I took.
It’s only when I turn onto Neptune that I realize what a colossal idiot I am. I can’t go home. Mike lives there.
What the freak am I supposed to do now? Park on the street and sneak into my cottage like a thief? Spend the night camped in my sports car? Drive up to Del Mar and crash at my parents’ house?
I can see it now.
Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. Yeah, I’m sleeping here tonight because my landlord, whom I fell hard for in the margins of Shakespeare’s sonnets but cannot abide in real life, kissed another woman.
Yes, I am scantily dressed like a supervillain. What of it?
No, we are not dating.
No, he doesn’t know how I feel.
No, telling him would only make me hate him more than I already do.
Which is a lot right now.
What does red-haired Catstrike have that I don’t?
Never mind, I don’t want to compare body types or personalities. But my brain is already doing it and landing on the word perky over and over.
I groan and kill my lights before I open the garage and pull in.
Mike is standing there, arms folded across his rumpled white shirt and suspenders. Leaning against the motorcycle. His dark hair is windblown. His jaw is set in a hard line, a scowl really, that makes him look sinister.
He opens my car door before I can. “She kissed me.”
“You kissed back.”
“That doesn’t make me a villain.”
I find that statement incredibly ironic considering how Mike is still in resplendent Badpun cosplay. Guess someone was too excited to even stop and wash his face. “You flirted with her the entire night.”
“I’m glad you noticed,” he says dryly. “Did you see when she ran out?”
“What?”
“Right before you did. She ran. You ran.”
“So?”
“So I borrowed Vlad’s bike and…”
“And what?” I demand.
His exquisite brows draw up before they furrow together. “Never mind. Forget it.” He leaves the garage.
I follow. “Tell me what you were going to say, Mike.” I catch his wrist when we get to the top of the stairs. The Pacific is peacefully crashing, and the surf is high tonight. We have to shout to be heard above the waves.
Mike rounds and takes a step closer to me. “And I chased you.”
“And you’re going to tell me now that you flirted with Catstrike—”
“Gwen.”
Don’t tell me her name! “—to make me jealous?”
“Yes, and I took it too far. And I’m sorry. If I’d known you’d be this hurt, I wouldn’t have—”
“I’m not hurt. And I don’t need an apology. Gwen’s the one you hurt.”
“Sure. I’ll make sure to apologize to her, too, the next time I see her.”
I grimace. I hate the idea. I hate that I was jealous. I hate that I have no claim on Mike. I’m a nuisance. A buddy’s big sister to annoy and bait. Not a sex symbol. Not a fantasy. Not even a friend.
“The wheels are turning.” He brushes a strand of hair away from my eyes. “You want to talk about whatever it is that is going on in there?” He gently touches my forehead.
Shakespeare ricochets in my head. A gorgeous couplet about touch.
A line about jealousy. Phrases about romance.
And Mike’s accompanying scrawl: Even a simple gesture changes when you’re in love.
It settles in the heart and radiates out into the shoulders, down to the very fingertips, doesn’t it, Will?
I wince because I can’t imagine Mike penning the words without seeing his hands on Gwen’s shoulders. His lips against hers. My gosh, I could scream.
“Bea, if I’d known you cared—”
“I don’t. Not at all. Flirt, kiss, fawn over whomever you want.”
He frowns.
“It’s late,” I say. My body shivers. And cold. “I’m going to call it a night. I hope you and Gwen can work it out.”
“There is no me and Gwen.”
Oh? I pause.
“She loves a guy named Tony. She mentioned this in parting. Right before she bolted for the door.”
“No wonder you didn’t chase her.”
Mike puts his head in his hands and groans.
“Night, Mike.”
I should go home, but I’m too mad. Too hurt. And maybe I don’t want Mike to hear me cry.
So I walk back down the stairs and drive away.
I drive, and the tears fall. I circle around La Jolla, up to Mount Soledad, but that’s a place for couples to sit and stare at the city lights.
I drive down to La Jolla and park outside the library, and somewhere around four a.m., I run out of tears and fall asleep.
I can’t do it. I can’t do anything. I know this was supposed to be my year of everything.
I know I claimed I wanted this, but right now what I want is to sink into an organic mix of cactus potting soil, grow roots, and complete my transformation from woman to plant.
Here lies Beatrice Hero McKinney. Some plucky, winsome botanist can come along in fifty years and find me.
A new species of cactus that has extra long, extra sharp spines and never blooms and is inedible and unwanted. Even the pollinating flies eschew it.
I’m still very much dealing with the fallout of last night when I step into the La Jolla Library as it opens. I slink into a chair, unshowered, unkempt, remnants of cosplay clinging to me. Smudged makeup. Matted hair. Odd footwear.
A librarian in a cardigan with embroidered strawberries on the collar approaches me. “Hi. I’m Linda. I want to welcome you to our library.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say as I scroll through my phone.
“I want you to know that this is a safe place.” Linda is clutching pamphlets. “We can help you find a hot meal or a bed for the night.”
“Oh my gosh. I’m not homeless. I just didn’t want to go home last night.”
Linda shuffles her pamphlets and is about to hand me one with a photo of a sad, scared-looking woman on the front.
“Stop. No.” I grab my bag to leave the library. “I’m fine. I’m going to walk dogs, and I’m fine.”
She backs off, but I don’t blame her. My life since yesterday evening—oh gosh.
All night I tortured myself with shoulds.
I never should have cosplayed. I shouldn’t have answered my phone when Adam called.
I definitely shouldn’t have walked into Mike’s kitchen after four hours of back-to-back walks.
But I wanted to prove that I was the type of desirable woman who gets phone calls.
And I wanted to see him, and…then everything fell apart. Not just fell apart. Blew up.
And now I look like I’m in crisis. That’s why the kindly librarian approached me with handfuls of pamphlets. It’d be funny if I didn’t feel so sick about it.