by Jae
“I noticed,” Steph murmured. “Um, I mean, yeah, that’s pretty obvious.” She gestured at the workout equipment.
“What are you doing here?” Rae asked.
Steph pointed at Moose, who had settled his big head onto Rae’s knee and was clearly in canine heaven as Rae massaged his ears. “I’m walking this big lug.”
“Looks like he’s walking you, not the other way around,” Rae commented.
Heat climbed up Steph’s neck. “I don’t normally let him off his leash, but there aren’t many people around today, and Moose isn’t exactly a sprinter, so I thought it would be fine. But when I got a drink from the water fountain, he made his escape.”
Rae squinted down at the dog, never stopping her caresses. “He’s not yours, is he?”
Steph laughed. “You think I’m somehow hiding a dog of his size in our apartment?” She shook her head. “I’m a part-time dog walker, and he’s my favorite client.”
“I can see why.” When Rae looked down at the dog, her expression softened in a way Steph had never seen before.
“You like dogs.” Steph wasn’t sure why she was so pleased at that observation, but she was.
Rae shrugged. “Who doesn’t? Most of the time, I like animals better than people.” She slid her long fingers through the shaggy fur along Moose’s massive neck. “What breed is he?”
“He’s a labernard. A mix between a Saint Bernard and a Lab.”
Rae’s gaze went from the dog to Steph, and again Steph noticed that her left eye didn’t move as much as the right. But now she knew it wasn’t a lazy eye. She had so many questions. Was she allowed to ask any of them?
When Rae paused in her caresses, Moose jumped up and licked her face to encourage her to continue.
“Moose, no!” Steph clipped his leash back on and managed to drag him away a few inches to give Rae some space.
Rae wiped her face with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “Yuck.”
The look on her face made Steph laugh. “Don’t worry. He rarely drinks from the toilet.”
“Hahaha.”
Steph offered her one of the baby wipes she always kept on hand when she walked her canine clients and watched Rae clean her face. Her playful mood disappeared when she noticed the pink-purplish bruise that had formed on Rae’s forehead. “Does it hurt?”
“Nah. It’s just slobber.”
“No, I mean the bruise.”
Rae’s expression closed. “Not worth mentioning.”
“I think it is,” Steph said. “I think we should talk about it.”
Rae looked as if she would rather be slobbered by Moose again than talk to her. “Nothing to talk about. Just don’t tell anyone it wasn’t some burly six-foot guy who gave me that shiner.” She attempted a crooked smile but didn’t pull it off at all. “Being knocked out by a cupboard door would be bad for my street cred.”
Steph gave her a look. “Who’s making a joke of everything now?” For the first time, she understood why her sister constantly told her how annoying it was. She gently bumped Rae with her elbow. “Come on. You know I’m right. If we don’t talk about it, we’ll start to tiptoe around each other as if walking on eggshells. I can’t imagine you want that either.”
Finally, Rae heaved a sigh and got up from the ab bench. “All right.” She wadded up the baby wipe and tossed it in the direction of a garbage can. Even though her shooting form was perfect, she missed by a foot.
Was that a side effect of having only one eye? Steph held back the question. Instead, she walked over to the baby wipe, picked it up, and tossed it into the trash.
“Thanks,” Rae mumbled.
With Moose happily lumbering along between them, they followed the path. Even though she had told Rae she wanted to talk, Steph now found herself not knowing what to say.
Rae didn’t seem to be in any hurry to start this conversation either. She stopped at a water fountain, and Steph tried not to be too obvious about observing her as Rae swallowed a few mouthfuls of water. How in the world could anyone look sexy while doing something so simple as drinking water?
Once Rae had quenched her thirst, they continued.
“Let’s sit down over there.” Steph pointed at a picnic table and led the way toward it. She flopped down on a bench, then remembered that Rae wouldn’t be able to see her if she sat on her left. Quickly, she slid over so she would be on Rae’s good side. This would take some getting used to, but she silently vowed to make things as easy as possible on Rae.
Rae gave her the tiniest nod of appreciation and settled down at the other end of the bench, with as much space as possible between them.
Moose looked back and forth between them, then flopped down on a patch of grass in the middle and rested his muzzle on Steph’s shoes. His contented sigh filled the silence between them.
Steph waited for Rae to speak, but after a while realized that she would have to take the first step. “So,” she cleared her throat and took refuge in the familiarity of flirty teasing, “is this the part where we kiss and make up?”
The corners of Rae’s mouth didn’t curl up, not even a fraction of an inch. But despite her gruff expression, something changed in her posture—an almost imperceptible softening that Steph probably would have missed a month ago. “You wish.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying.” Steph sobered and tried to catch Rae’s gaze. “But I know I’m to blame for other things. I’m sorry I left the cupboard open. I thought you were being anal about wanting all the cupboards to be closed and everything put away immediately.”
“Well, to be fair, my parents would probably tell you I am anal. I’ve always been a lot neater than them, but for the most part, that’s just how I avoid bumping into things on my blind side.”
Blind side… The words echoed through Steph’s mind, leaving tiny shock waves in their wake. She still couldn’t believe it. Even though she had figured there was something not quite right with Rae’s eye, she would have never in a million years guessed that she had no sight in it at all.
Rae bent and stroked Moose’s side as if not wanting to look at Steph. “Ask,” she said in a let’s-get-this-over-with tone, never glancing up.
Steph hesitated. It wasn’t that she didn’t have any questions; she had too many of them. Plus somehow this felt as if she was being tested. If she asked the wrong question, Rae would clam up like an oyster. Finally, Steph settled on the first question that popped into her mind—okay, the second. She sensed that Rae wasn’t ready to talk about what Steph really wanted to know: how she had lost her eye. “What do you need from me?”
Rae straightened and faced her for the first time since they had sat down. “Need?” She looked so puzzled as if Steph had asked about her favorite sex position.
Interesting images involving lots of naked skin shot through Steph’s mind at the thought. Focus, she firmly told herself. “Yeah, need. Other than making sure I close all cabinets from now on, is there anything you need me to do—or not do—to help you?”
“I don’t need help,” Rae said gruffly.
“Everyone needs help sometimes, Rae. That doesn’t make you weak.” Great, now she was sounding like her parents or her sister.
Rae shrugged. “I can’t think of anything. Close the cabinets and approach me from the right, and we’ll be fine.”
Steph nodded and waited, but Rae didn’t add anything. Was there really nothing else, or did Rae just not want to tell her because she didn’t trust her?
“Now can I ask you something?” Rae broke the renewed silence.
“Sure.”
Rae gestured at her left eye. “Could you really not tell?”
“That you’re blind in that eye?”
“That it’s fake.”
“No. It looks incredibly real.” Steph studied Rae’s eyes, comparing the left to the right. They weren’t completely sy
mmetrical, with the left one being a tiny bit bigger, but then again, most people’s eyes weren’t entirely equal. The color of the iris was the same, though, right down to the tiny flecks of amber that Steph had admired before. “Even now I have to think for a moment to remember which one is real and which one is the glass eye.”
A near smile brightened Rae’s tense features.
Hadn’t anyone told her how good the eye looked before? Well, Steph could imagine Rae didn’t often let people close enough to study her eye in detail, much less ask questions about it.
“Acrylic,” Rae finally said. “Prosthetic eyes are no longer made of glass. They hand-paint the iris to make it a perfect match to the other eye. They even form the blood vessels in the white of the eye with tiny red silk fibers.” A hint of fascination shone through Rae’s grouchy exterior.
“Wow. Whoever did yours was a true artist.”
Rae smoothed her fingers over the pockmark-like scars on her forehead. “Yeah.” A visible shiver went through her.
At first, Steph thought talking about her prosthetic eye had brought up unpleasant memories, but when Rae hugged her goose-bump-covered arms to her chest, she realized that Rae was probably just getting cold. Now that she was no longer working out, her body was cooling down. The short sleeves of her T-shirt ended above her biceps, and the breeze up on the hill pressed the damp material to her chest. Steph tried not to notice the way Rae’s hardened nipples poked through the cotton. She shrugged out of her leather jacket and held it out to Rae. “Here.”
Rae stared at her without reaching for the jacket.
“You’re cold,” Steph added.
Rae continued to stare. Then a smile tugged on her lips. “Um, thanks, but I don’t think that will fit me. Even if it did, I wouldn’t want to get it all sweaty.”
“Oh, getting sweaty can be fun.” Steph flashed her a grin. Retreating into familiar jokes was a relief.
Rae rolled her eyes…or rather one of them since the left one didn’t move all the way up.
Steph was very aware of how overly aware of it she was. She hoped that would lessen with time since she didn’t want to make Rae feel self-conscious.
“I think I’ll go home before your one-liners become even worse.” Rae stood.
“Yeah, it’s time for me to get back too. Moose’s hour is up.” Steph got up and shrugged back into her leather jacket.
With Moose trotting between them, his long, bushy tail swinging from side to side, they left the park. Once they reached Beverly Boulevard, with four lanes of traffic rolling past them, Steph gripped Moose’s leash more tightly. They walked several blocks in silence, with only traffic sounds and the soft jingle of Moose’s dog tags accompanying them.
Finally, when they stopped at a red pedestrian light, Steph glanced over at Rae. There was one last thing she had to say, as much as she would have preferred to avoid it. “About last night…”
Rae stuffed her hands more deeply into the pockets of her running shorts, as if wanting to hide as much of herself as possible. For someone who was so physically strong, she could appear quite vulnerable at times. “Yeah?”
“Were the roommate jokes I told really that bad?” She had tried to keep them on the tame side, without going into any really personal details.
The light turned green, but Rae didn’t move across the intersection. She turned toward Steph and heaved a sigh. “I only listened to one, so I don’t know about the rest, but—”
“Wait a minute! You barely even listened, yet you ripped me a new asshole for violating your privacy?” Steph put her leash-free hand on her hip. “What the hell, Rae!”
“Oh no. You don’t get to be indignant. You’re not the wronged party here.”
Steph refused to let herself be intimidated by Rae’s glare. “How do you know you are if you haven’t heard most of what I said?”
“I heard enough to know I didn’t like it,” Rae shot back.
Moose let out a low woof as if sensing the rising tension between them.
Steph put her hand on his head, petting him, and tried to soften her stance. “This is getting us nowhere. We’re scaring poor Moose.”
Rae reached out too, and their fingers brushed as both stroked the same spot behind his ear at the same time. She withdrew and stuffed her hand into her pocket. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
Was she apologizing for upsetting Moose or for the accidental touch?
“It’s okay,” Steph said. “I don’t want to argue with you. I just want you to understand. The jokes weren’t really about you. They are about situations my audience can relate to, like living with someone who’s your total opposite.”
“Well, next time you want to talk about that, don’t use me. Make something up.”
Steph shook her head. “That’s not how stand-up works. You’ve got to be authentic.”
Rae faced her without the slightest softening. “Then find another way to be authentic. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being made fun of in public.” When Steph opened her mouth, she lifted her hand. “I know you think I’m overreacting, and maybe you’re right, but I’ve been teased about my parents and their lifestyle as a kid, and I won’t let you do it a second time.”
Ah. So that was why Rae had become so defensive. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. If I had known it would bring up bad memories…”
Rae waved off the apology. “It’s not just about my parents. Promise not to make me a topic of your routine again.”
Steph had never made a promise like that to anyone since she hadn’t wanted to restrict her creative freedom. But now that she knew part of why Rae was so strict about putting stuff away in the apartment, she could no longer joke about it anyway. “All right.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.” Steph ran her thumb across her chest. “Stick a needle in my…” She bit back the eye at the last second. “Uh…”
“God, you really suffer from a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, don’t you?” To Steph’s surprise, a hint of amusement colored Rae’s tone.
Steph hid her overly warm face behind her hand. “Yeah, a pretty severe case. I’m sorry.”
Rae shook her head. “I don’t want you to have to watch every word you say to me.”
“So you want me to watch what I say on stage, not at home?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay.” But Steph promised herself to be a little more careful with her thoughtless remarks anyway. Her family might think she was incapable of being tactful, but she could be considerate if she wanted to, couldn’t she?
They reached the corner where Steph had to turn right to drop off Moose at his owner’s place, while Rae needed to continue on to get back to their apartment. Steph slowed her steps and pointed. “Moose lives over there.”
Rae hesitated. “Want me to wait?”
Steph considered it for a moment. But she needed to feed Moose and take photos of him to send to his owner along with her daily report. It wouldn’t have been fair to keep Rae from her shower any longer. Plus she sensed that Rae probably needed some time alone to recover from the conversation. “No, that’s fine. I’ll see you at home.”
Rae nodded and ran her hand over Moose’s head one last time. “You be good, big guy.”
He let out a soft whine as if he understood that this was goodbye.
“Rae?” Steph heard herself say before Rae could walk away. She hadn’t planned to speak, but at the same time, she knew the question would ricochet through her mind until she finally asked it.
“Yes?” Rae looked over warily. She probably knew what was coming.
“You…you mentioned being…” Steph swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Being shot. Is that how…?”
“Yeah.”
Steph had suspected what the answer would be, but hearing it still made a giant fi
st clench around her stomach.
Rae lifted her hand, either in a wave goodbye or in a gesture to stop further questions. “See you at home.” As she strode down Beverly Boulevard, Moose gave a strong tug on his leash, trying to follow her.
Steph hopped to keep her balance and dug her heels in. Her arm muscles strained against his pull on the leash. “Moose, no. We’re going this way.”
Moose grumbled but plopped his behind down on the asphalt next to her. They both watched Rae’s retreating form until other pedestrians blocked their view.
CHAPTER 12
“Wow. Grandmas sure aren’t what they used to be.” Rae stared after the elderly lady to whom she had just handed her purse back—minus a big bottle of bourbon Granny had tried to smuggle into the club.
Carlos whistled. “And my abuela always insists that in her day and age, women didn’t use to drink like men.”
Rae shrugged. “It’s the twenty-first century. Women can do pretty much everything men can.”
“Including getting the shit beaten out of them.” Carlos eyed the bruise on Rae’s forehead, which, four days later, had darkened to a bluish purple. “Man, I’m always missing all the fun! The one time I take some time off, something like this happens.”
“It didn’t happen at the club,” Rae said.
Carlos waved through several patrons. “Then what happened?”
No way would she reveal how she had gotten that bruise. Rae gave him a pointed look. “I got into a fistfight with the last person who kept asking me questions. He looks a lot worse than this.”
“Very funny. You’ve been living with that comedian for too long. Her sense of humor is rubbing off on you. Oh hey, speaking of the devil… Your girlfriend’s here.” He jerked his chin toward the crowd lined up in front of the club.
Rae swiveled her head to look in that direction.
Her gaze immediately zeroed in on Steph, who stood toward the end of the line in a pair of curve-hugging jeans and an equally tight-fitting, black T-shirt that had a pink tie painted on it. On most people, Rae would have found the outfit silly, but on Steph, it just worked.