“Two. Why?”
“Do you need a ride home? I’ll still be awake.”
“I’d love a ride. Thank you.” I smiled at him across the table and after a moment, he gave me one back.
Chapter 5
Kylie
I looked up guiltily. “Um, did you say something?” I probably shouldn’t have taken this unscheduled break to hide in the bar’s office to crank up the computer. And it was so old, it practically did need a crank to start it up.
“I said, what are you sitting in my chair muttering about?” Roy asked me. “And why the hell are you using my computer?”
“Well, first I wanted to check on the vocab word of the day. It’s ‘Byzantine,’” I told him, and improving my vocabulary was definitely part of what I’d been doing. “‘Byzantine’ has to do with the name of an ancient city where Turkey is today. Super far from here.”
“Why would I give two shits about that?”
In my life after leaving San Francisco, I’d learned that a good offense was better than a good defense. Better to be the questioner rather than the person getting questioned, so I started right in on my boss instead of continuing with the discussion of what I was doing on his computer. “‘Byzantine’ also means other things, things that remind me of you, like ‘secretive’ and ‘devious,’” I informed him. “I know something’s up, Roy. What is it?” I studied him, the weird color of his skin. The poor lighting made me look extremely ruddy, but Roy was more of a green. “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine. I don’t have any idea of what you’re talking about,” he told me, but his head darted with little movements to the right and left. He reminded me so much of a meerkat on the lookout for a hawk.
“I mean, please,” I said, drawing out the last word. Puh-lease! “I’ve worked here for how many months? And in all that time, the clean-up has been me sweeping off the tabletops with that old broom and pouring buckets of water on the puke on the floor. Today we’re scrubbing and mopping,” I said, pointing to the super gross cleaning tool he held in his hands. If that mop did anything besides spread more dirt, I would have fallen over in a faint. “You had me get all the flies off of the windowsills. You even have a repairman coming to fix your neon sign so the S works!”
“Yeah?” he challenged. “It’s my bar, isn’t it? I decide what we do and you work for me. Get off your ass and get at it.”
I just kept staring at him. I modeled my expression after Emma’s when I gave her the new dinner that the vet had recommended: very disappointed in what was before me.
Roy jingled his keys and mumbled something, something that sounded like “gun.”
“What did you just say?” I asked, alarmed. I’d thought that his weapon of choice was a baseball bat, but if he was moving into firearms—
“I said my son is coming to visit!” he barked, and my jaw dropped.
“Your son! You have a child? How did that happen?”
“The usual way,” he told me angrily. “I really need to spell out the process for you? I thought you would have learned by example, since you grew up in San Fran with naked hippies screwing on the streets.”
“They don’t do that so much anymore,” I said. “What’s your son’s name? How old is he? Where does he live? What does he do?” I shot out my questions rapid-fire, and there were more where those came from.
“Dexter. He lives in Detroit. He’s twenty-eight and he’s an architect.” My boss sighed. “I don’t see him very much. His mother and I split when he was a baby and she raised him downstate. I want him to know what I have here, my tavern.”
“Roy!” I jumped up from behind the desk and put my hands on his shoulders. “That’s wonderful that he’s coming! That’s so cool! And you want him to like the bar—”
“Take your hands off me.”
I hugged him. “We’re going to make this place shine! At least, we’ll make it so he won’t want to hold his nose from the smell.”
“All right, all right.” He squirmed away from me but I saw a little hint of a smile. “I’m not paying you to improve your vocabulary, so get to work.”
He also wasn’t paying me to look up the guy who had written the love letters to my great-aunt, but I had been doing that, too. I’d been searching for her Ronnie, Maude’s summer love, but I hadn’t spent enough time on the project to run him to the ground like they’d done at the repo company I’d worked for in Louisiana. It turned out that there were a lot of men with his name floating around, and it was going to take me a while to find the exact one who belonged to Great-aunt Maude. I had only read three of their letters, two of hers and one of his, because I was still pacing myself. It was hard, though, because they were full of the details of their summer together and their hopes for the future, and I was so excited for the next chapter. Letter, I meant.
Also, I’d spent a little time during this break searching for a job for Kayden. In our conversation over the nasty coffee, he really hadn’t seemed to understand the kind of trouble that he was in, but I did. I’d been down Unemployment Road and the trip wasn’t pretty. I didn’t want Kayden to watch his money supply shrink as his fear grew in proportion. He’d end up staring into the nearly empty jar where he’d hidden crumpled bills inside a bag of dog food, wondering if his next meal was going to be munching on those nasty-smelling, brown chunks of kibble himself. Maybe he kept his money somewhere else, though.
When I’d last seen him, when he’d picked me up after my shift, Kayden hadn’t had much to say. He’d spent the ride to my house yawning and rubbing his eyes and mostly I had, too. But before I’d gotten out of the car, I’d remembered to get his information.
“What?” he’d asked.
“Your phone number. Give me your number so that I have it,” I’d repeated patiently.
He’d reeled it off, then asked, “Why do you need it?” and he’d stared at me like I might be up to something nefarigent.
“I’m going to help you find a job,” I’d said, and I planned to. It was just that everything I’d sent to him since then wasn’t right. He wrote a one-word answer like “no” or “wrong” to the messages about job listings. The other ones, the texts saying hi or what’s up or just pictures of Emma being cute, he completely ignored.
Now I followed Roy out of his office. “What else do you want me to clean? Should I try to scrape off the inside of the women’s bathroom window? Is there glass under all that gunk, do you think?”
“One minute.” My boss was leaning on the side of the counter. He had his hands on the sticky top and if he hadn’t, I thought he would have fallen.
“Roy?” I rushed over. “Are you ok?”
“Fine!” he snapped at me, and stood up straight. But even in this poor lighting, I could see his pale face, creased with new lines of pain. This was something I recognized: illness.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong with you?” I paused, watching as he tried to swallow. “What do you have?”
“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong with me. Stop trying to weasel another break for yourself and keep cleaning.” He moved back behind the bar top, but slowly, carefully. I recognized that walk, too, the kind someone did when they were trying to hide from you how hard it was to move. He saw my eyes on him and exploded again. “Get your lazy ass back to work!” And he was pissed at me for the rest of the shift, nagging and criticizing because nothing I did was right, and then he pulled the ultimate jerk move after he locked up for the night.
“I’m going to see Sal tonight. I can’t drive you,” he announced as he walked over to his Olds, where I was already waiting.
“Roy, come on! You said you would. Can you drop me at my house first and then see your girlfriend?”
He shook his head and unlocked his door. “Call that Kayden Matthews. I saw him pick you up! Haven’t you been screwing him for rides in his Bentley?”
“No!” I glared at him through the darkness. “Why would you say that to me, you asshole? I wouldn’t do that!”
Roy didn’t answ
er, but he didn’t lean over to unlock the door for me, and when he pulled out of the parking lot, he left me standing in it. Asshole!
“Asshole,” I muttered again, and I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. As if I would sleep with Kayden for rides! Women had slept with Kayden for no reason at all except that he was so handsome and rich and famous. Even now, without the rich and famous parts, he wouldn’t have to dumpster dive with me. I bet women were still falling for him right and left after he gave them his half-smile or even just looked in their direction.
I was going to get a car to come and get me, that was what I’d do. Of course, at this time of the night/morning and being in the sticks, the first driver available could arrive in an hour and a half, if that person even showed. So then, eventually, I did call Kayden, not because of sex but because besides Roy, he was the only person I knew here. And I was getting really cold.
“Who is this?” his voice slurred, and I wondered if he’d been drinking.
“It’s Kylie. Are you drunk?”
“What? No, I’m not!” His words sharpened a lot. “I was asleep. What time is it? Why are you calling me?”
“Roy left me here at the bar. He was supposed to give me a ride but he got mad because I think he’s sick and I asked him about it, so he left me. Can you come and take me home?”
Pause. A long pause. “You’re stuck outside the bar, now?”
“Yes, at this moment. If you don’t come, I’ll have to start walking. I can’t stand out here not moving because I’m freezing. Actually freezing.”
He paused again, even longer, long enough to make me think he had hung up. “Kayden?”
“Yeah, ok, yeah.” He yawned. “Yeah, I guess I can come get you.”
I went back to wait in the entrance of the tavern where the building blocked the wind slightly. I stood for a while, singing and talking to myself to stay awake, but I got so tired. I slid to sit, my back against the door. Lordy, I was exhausted and cold, really cold. After a moment, I let my eyes slide closed. Just for a sec, then I’d get up again and walk around, maybe run around, even, to warm up. But, for just a sec, I would need to rest, because I was really tired. So tired. Just for a sec.
∞
Kayden
“Shit.” I dropped my wallet again and felt around the asphalt under the car to find it. I had been dead asleep when my phone rang, finally asleep after a few nights of lying in the bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking a lot, going back and forth about what I was going to do. Now I was exhausted, to the point that my body ached. Once I found the wallet and got myself into the Bentley, I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. I could have fallen asleep again right there, except that the steering wheel was so cold that it hurt my hands to hold it. Shit.
The roads were practically empty and even with the heat turned up to Death Valley levels, my car was freezing. Did that woman seriously not have anyone else to call to get her? I looked at the road ahead of me, black and icy in the December night. What in the hell was I doing out here? When had I ever, in my entire life, gotten up out of a dead sleep to pick someone up? And why would I start now?
I got increasingly pissed the further I drove, so that when I arrived at the bar that just said “Roy” in the window, I was swearing out loud. “Where the fuck is she?” I asked the steering wheel. The parking lot was empty. “Is this some kind of fucking joke?” My breath puffed white in the near darkness when I got out of the car. “Kylie?” I fumbled in my coat for my phone and called her, and when it rang in my ear, I heard another phone chirp somewhere close by.
“Kylie?” I followed the sound to the door of the tavern and saw a bag of trash someone had thrown there…no. It wasn’t garbage.
“Kylie. Hey!” I knelt down and reached out to her, but stopped myself. I couldn’t touch a sleeping woman, scare the crap out of her, have her call the cops for assault or something when she woke up with my hands on her. But she was so still…
“Kylie?” I pushed on her shoulder, gently, and she didn’t respond at all. Shit! I took both her shoulders and shook her but now her head lolled back against the door. I held up my phone, shining the light at her face. “Kylie,” I repeated. I reached again and touched her cheek, and it was icy. Shit. Shit!
I picked her up off the ground and started to run toward my car. She was lighter than I expected, her body smaller than I’d thought under the plastic bag and the layers of clothing. Her cheek rested against my neck and Jesus, she was cold. I jostled her around, nearly dropping her as I got the door open, and the movement made her make a noise, a little groan. Like something hurt.
She muttered something, then asked, “What? What?” As I put her in the front seat, her eyes fluttered open. “What’s happening?”
“I’m taking you home,” I told her. I got in too and turned the heat back up to Sahara intensity. She held out her hands toward the vents and I pulled off her mittens, brushing against her skin as I did. Jesus, this was bad.
“How the hell long were you out there?” I closed my fingers around hers to warm them up. It was like gripping icicles.
“J-j-just since I called you. How long was that?” Her whole body started to shake.
How long had it been? I’d messed around in my apartment before I left, waking up and stretching, checking my phone, looking for my keys. I rubbed her hands, watching her, then took off my coat and ripped her free of the garbage bag. “Wear this.”
“Ok.” Her voice shook, too, and it seemed like she was struggling to move, so I helped her get it on. “I got a little cold.”
“Yeah.” She needed more than the car heaters. Like, soup, or sitting in a tub of hot water, something like that. I started out of the parking lot, still holding her hands in one of mine. “Roy just left you?”
“He was really mad. Sometimes people don’t like it if you know stuff about them.” A huge yawn nearly split her face. “I guessed that he’s not feeling well and I don’t think he wants to tell anyone, so he got angry because I know his secret.” She yawned again. “But I don’t think he meant for me to freeze. He wasn’t considering that this would happen.”
“He wasn’t thinking about you at all.” Bastard. How could he have left her there? I thought of her huddled in that doorway, put out like a bag of garbage on the ground, waiting.
She’d been waiting for me. How long had I spent standing in the bathroom of my apartment before I left for the bar, looking in the mirror and thinking that I needed a haircut? I’d been remembering the stylist I used to fly in from New York when I wanted a trim, while Kylie had been sitting there in the cold. The whole time I’d been remembering how I’d paid for my highlights in lines of coke, she’d been freezing to death.
She winced because I had gripped her hands too hard, and I loosened my hold. “Roy’s going to be sorry tomorrow when I take three federally mandated breaks instead of just one,” she told me, and yawned again.
“You’re going back there tomorrow after what he did?”
“Of course. I have to get paid, right?” She wriggled her fingers beneath mine. “I’m so glad you came.”
I could have been there sooner.
“I’m really tired,” she went on. “That was why I sat down like that, but I should have kept moving around. Now I’m good because your car is so nice and warm.” She sighed. “I hope you don’t have to sell it because you’re out of money.”
“I’m not selling it. I’m going to get a job.” After all the nights of thinking instead of sleeping, I’d realized what I was going to have to do. I didn’t have a choice about it.
“Oh, I’m glad,” Kylie said. She cuddled into my coat. “I was getting worried about that.”
“About me getting a job? Why?”
“You’re my friend, aren’t you?”
Was I? “You think we’re friends,” I said slowly.
“We had a holiday dinner together and we watched all those movies.” Her voice was getting softer and harder to understand. “You came and got me w
hen I needed you, so, yeah. We’re friends.”
That was all it took? I nodded but when I looked over, her eyes were closed.
Kylie was still asleep by the time we got to my apartment building, and so was the guy at the desk when I carried her in through the lobby. No way should she have stayed conked out like that, all the time in the elevator, as I tried to type in the code to get the door open, as I put her down on my bed. She curled up right away into a tight little ball, like she was still cold, so I pulled off her ugly shoes and then piled the covers over her. It didn’t seem like it was enough. I sat down next to her on the mattress, careful not to touch the mound of blankets.
In that book she’d loaned to me, The Lady Desires a Pirate, they’d given Lady Lorna brandy after the villain pirate from the other boat had made her walk the plank and she’d nearly frozen in the North Atlantic. Then she and the hero, Captain Blackthorne, had cuddled together for body heat and they ended up screwing their brains out in his hammock. None of those things were going to happen here, in real life and outside of a romance novel, but I realized that I did have the urge. Not for brandy or for screwing, but to put my arms around Kylie to warm her up, to cuddle her.
It made me laugh out loud and I startled myself with the sound. Cuddle? When had I ever voluntarily cuddled a woman? For my entire life, as soon as I’d been done with sex, I’d gotten out of the bed, stood up from the couch, backed away from the wall we’d been doing it against, and left. But I didn’t have the urge either to screw Kylie or to get away from her.
Yeah, maybe we were friends. I cautiously put my hand on her back and felt her shivering, still, even with every blanket off my bed wrapped around her. “You ok?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. Her breathing was slow but even and listening to the regular sound made me tired all over again. I got up and got some towels and some of my clothes, and I made the pile on top of her even bigger. Then I sat down on the bed to watch her, just in case. Like, if she might need me for more covers, something like that. I could stay awake for a while.
The Bust Page 9