“So how many do you have?” he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone.
“Ten,” she replied easily. “You’ve met Mister Mittens. The tabby is Groucho. The cute little Persian is Fluffy. That crazy little guy up there is Nemo. He is always jumping on top of the fridge. But he knows better, don’t you, Nemo?” She grabbed the cat from the top of the fridge, and it gave her a wary look. “You’re not allergic or anything, are you?”
“No…Not allergic.” He was going to be cool about this. It wasn’t manly to be afraid of cats.
“Anyway, this is Luger—like Lex Luger? Because this little guy is crazy about WWF wrestling, aren’t you? And he’s Nemo’s twin.”
“Cats can have twins?”
“Oh yes. Can’t you see the resemblance?” She held up Luger or Nemo or somebody for Owen’s inspection. He stepped away in what he hoped was at least a somewhat subtle move and nodded quickly. Jennifer barely seemed to notice and went on naming the cats.
Owen jumped what felt like ten feet in the air and barely suppressed a yell as something streaked by his feet. “Whoa! What was that?” He forced a laugh even though he’d nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked across the room to see one of them—a gray one he hadn’t caught the name of because he’d been so busy trying to hide his fear—peering at him. Wait, was it glaring? “Those things really move like lightning, don’t they?”
“Aw, my babies love their mommy, don’t they?” Jennifer stroked one of the cats behind the ear and didn’t seem to have heard him.
“They’re kind of freaky, aren’t they?”
Jennifer looked up at him, confusion temporarily darkening her cornflower blue eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing, I mean, I guess, they’re kind of like ninjas. Silent and fast. It’s freaky,” he said. When he caught her frown, he hastily added, “In a good way, I mean.” He tried to force another laugh, but he choked on it. Keeping a wary eye on the cats, he tried to hold up a conversation with Jennifer. He wasn’t letting cats scare him away from the first girl who actually seemed like a viable option since Kristin—the first one who liked him back anyway. Well, probably not. There was a chance the cats might win, though.
“Aw, why are you so tense?” Jennifer asked.
“Not tense.”
“You’re making them nervous. Relax.”
“I’m making them nervous?”
“C’mon. Show ‘em you’re a friend. Here, take Nemo for a minute while I change the litter boxes. I’ll only be a minute.”
“Where are you going? I’ll go with you,” Owen said.
“Here. Just hold out your hands.”
Owen backed up. “I can’t do that.”
Jennifer advanced with Nemo. “It’s okay. They don’t bite.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Owen, what’s wrong?”
“I’m more of a dog person.” Owen backed up again. Much farther, and he’d be out of the door. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“Aw, I think Nemo likes you. Look. He’s reaching for you. He wants to play.”
All Owen saw was a paw, a paw with very sharp claws attached reaching out toward his jugular. Like a mini jaguar going for his carotid. “Okay, that’s it. I really gotta go. See you around, Jennifer.” He bolted before she could say another word. He cleared her apartment building and started walking down an adjacent street before he was completely clear of the willies. Pulling his cell out of his pocket, he called Dante.
Dante answered on the third ring. “If this is not extremely important, and/or you are not partially dead, I will hang up this phone right now.”
“I’m stranded,” Owen said.
“How’d this happen?”
“Long story. I need you to come get me, man. I’ll owe you.”
“A lot,” Dante said with a sigh. Lowering his voice, he added, “You know Mary was going to give it up tonight, right?” That was something Dante had been trying to get for a very long time.
“I really doubt it. You always say that.”
“Have a nice walk home.”
“No wait, man! I’m sorry. Please. I’ll do anything. I have no other way to get home. I don’t have money for a cab, and I’m about twenty miles away from campus, which is where my car is.”
“Okay,” Dante said with a long sigh. “Tell me where you’re at.”
When Dante picked Owen up in his Mazda 3, he had a huge grin on his face.
“Thanks for picking me up, man,” Owen said.
“No problem.” Dante tapped out the beat to the song playing on the radio against the steering wheel after pulling the car away from the curb and onto the road.
“You’re in a much better mood than when I called you.”
Dante nodded, and all Owen saw was the hood of his black coat bobbing as he had the hood pulled over his head. “Turns out Mary thinks I’m a great friend for doing this. She’s waiting at our place for me right now. So, turns out, you actually did me a favor. But you still owe me one.”
Owen laughed. “Okay.”
“So tell me what happened.” Dante merged onto the interstate, slammed the gas pedal, and made short work of getting into the far left lane.
“It started out okay. Jennifer invited me back to her place.”
“Don’t tell me you freaked out about Kristin, or no. You called Jennifer Kristin right when it was getting hot, and she kicked you out?” Dante started laughing. “That would be too much, but I could see it happening.”
“No,” Owen said.
“So what happened?” Dante pressed.
“It just…didn’t work out.” Owen suddenly found the view from the interstate of the giant clock on top of the old train station downtown very interesting.
Dante pulled off his hood and cranked up the heat. “You brought me all the way to Shockoe Bottom because it ‘didn’t work out?’ You made her so mad she wouldn’t even take you back to your car, and all you got for me is it didn’t work out?”
“I don’t know how mad I made her, or if I even made her mad, because I kind of…fled,” Owen said.
“What happened?” Dante shot a glance at him, eyebrows raised above his black-framed glasses, before turning his gaze back to the road. “Did she try to take advantage of you?”
“Ha ha,” Owen said dryly. “You are so hilarious, traveling salesman. Do you have your own show yet? Maybe that should be your next business venture—taking your show on the road.”
“I’ll think about it. In the meantime, what happened? You might as well tell me, or else I’m going to assume she tried to compromise your virtue—”
“Did you just say compromise my virtue?”
“Yes, and I’m not going to let it go for a very long time. I’m warning you. It might just come up at one of our pickup basketball or soccer games or while we’re hanging out down at The Hops. Who knows?”
“That’s a threat.”
“And this is me, outside of my bed in the middle of the freezing cold night while a very hot girl is in it.”
“She had…cats.”
“What? Huh?”
“I don’t like cats.”
“What don’t you like about them?”
“They freak me out, okay?”
Dante burst out laughing.
“You’re a good friend, you know that?”
“I’m sorry man, I’m sorry.” Dante tried to compose himself and then started laughing so hard again he could barely keep driving. “Go on. Really. I’m listening.”
“I just don’t trust them. They have shifty eyes. And they’re so sneaky. They stalk around all soundless, jumping from behind corners, like the deadly, silent predators they are. How can you trust a creature that makes no sound at all like that just sneaking up on you all the time? A dog would never do that.” Owen shuddered. “Mini panthers. Or lions. They’re predators. You trust a lot of predators?”
“Guess not,” Dante said.
“Okay, go ahead, just get it out of you
r system,” Owen said, suppressing his own grin. Now, in the safety of Dante’s car, far away from Jennifer’s apartment, it did seem a little funny. Just a little bit.
“Thank you, man.” Dante grabbed his side over the fabric of his coat after letting out a round of pent up laughter. “Oh, my stomach! You’re a good friend. Your debt is paid.” Dante erupted into a round of hyena cackles, and Owen sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
By the time Dante dropped Owen off at his car, Owen felt a lot better. So the date hadn’t gone so well. There would be others.
A small, nagging part of him wondered, were the bad dates the universe’s way of pushing him in Marci’s direction? They kept crossing paths after all. Well, maybe the universe had better have a little talk with Marci about that. He wasn’t the one who was resistant to the whole idea. And he was done chasing girls. Especially rich girls who thought they had something to prove to their parents. That’s what he’d done with Kristin, and look how that’d turned out for him. Four years of putting up with her tantrums. Ugly fights. And the worst had been begging her to come back whenever she decided she’d had “enough”—and he wasn’t ever sure what he’d done to be “enough”—and broke up with him. They’d broken up and gotten back together more times than he could count. That’s why he hadn’t believed the last time was really the last time. Until he found out about Justin.
And for what? So she could go off and get engaged to Justin on his daddy’s big, fancy boat? Enough of that.
Nope, time to get back on the horse. As soon as he got home, he was going online to the dating site and finding someone to set up date number three with.
If he could have seen the future, and could have known what a disaster date number three would be, maybe he would have conceded and let the universe have its way.
Chapter Eleven
Marci knew from the moment she walked through the door and saw him lying prostrate on the couch that this was going to be bad.
“Hey, Tyler,” she said, entering the apartment like she was literally walking on eggshells the way she was figuratively. Closing the door softly behind her, she approached the couch. Tyler didn’t move the arm he had draped over his face. She knelt next to the couch. He still didn’t move. Wouldn’t say anything. “Tyler, honey, what is it? Are you okay?”
Still nothing.
“Sweetheart. What can I get you? What can I do?” she rested her chin on the arm of the sofa and looked down at him. He was breathing too rapidly to be asleep, but just barely. “I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nobody can fix it,” Tyler finally mumbled, his voice muffled by his arm. “It’s unfixable.”
“Ah, now I bet that’s not true.”
Tyler flung his arm aside and glared up at her. The whites of his eyes were striated red around brown irises, and his long lashes were wet and clumped together as a result of the tears he’d obviously cried. “They were tears of anger, okay? I’m pissed, okay? They didn’t hurt me, they pissed me off.” Tyler snapped. “Don’t look at me like that!” He pulled a pillow over his face.
Marci wasn’t aware that she’d been looking at him in any sort of particular way. Except for maybe with concern.
“Like you’re judging me. Or ashamed. Or embarrassed for me.” Tyler answered her unasked question three times over.
“Tyler, you know I’m not doing any of those things.”
Tyler didn’t answer.
“Where’s Ronnie?” Marci asked, switching tactics. Maybe a change of subject would take some of the sting off whatever had happened or at least distract him a bit.
“Law library,” Tyler’s petulant voice was muffled by the pillow that remained over his face. “She said she needs peace and quiet to study for some big midterm or something, and that’s the only place she can get it.”
“Fall break is Monday and Tuesday,” Marci said.
“That’s what I said. She said she has a lot of studying to do. I think she just doesn’t want to put up with me.”
“No, that’s not it.” Marci said, and it wasn’t just to placate. Ronnie had been disappearing a lot on both of them lately. “She loves you. I do, too.”
Tyler slid the pillow down to his narrow chest and gave her a doleful look. After a silence that seemed to stretch on twice the length of the earlier part of her day, Tyler said, “I didn’t get the part.”
“Oh, honey.” She reached out, and he readily went into her arms for a hug.
“I was so sure they liked me. The director was saying he hoped I’d be back in New York soon so we could all go to this club his friend owns. We were talking like I already had the part. We got detail about the rehearsal schedule and the likelihood the show would get a contract for five more seasons. And how they saw this character growing to play a major part on the show. Then, some assistant—the director didn’t even have the decency to call me. We had dinner together, and he couldn’t tell me himself. This nameless, faceless assistant thanked me for my time and said I’m shit.”
“She didn’t say that.” Marci was slightly horrified but mostly sure he was exaggerating. Exaggerating was second-nature to Tyler after all.
“He. He said I wasn’t quite what they were looking for, they decided to go with someone else, blah-dee blah, bullshit bullshit. To tell you the truth, I stopped listening after he thanked me for my time. That’s when you know it’s all over. Done. Dead. When they thank you for your time or for coming out to audition or for some other bullshit variation of the above.”
“I’m sorry. I know you’re going to get a better part in a better show. And not television. Broadway. Which is where you really want to be anyway.”
“No, you don’t know that.” Tyler pulled himself to a sitting position on the couch and tucked his long legs under him. “Maybe I should just give up.”
“You definitely shouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Tyler said peevishly. He hunched his shoulders and stared down at the floor.
“You want to go over to Sadie’s?”
“Sadie’s?”
“Yeah. She asked what we were doing for dinner.” She’d texted Marci earlier and asked that. Marci told Tyler this and added, “I told her I’d get back to her after I talked to you and Ronnie.”
“Sadie’s. Where the food is only slightly charred if you’re lucky, and the wine is always flowing.” Tyler grinned. “Let’s go.”
Marci texted Ronnie to tell her she didn’t know what she was up to, but she needed to get her butt over to Sadie’s. Ronnie insisted she wasn’t done studying. Marci texted back that she couldn’t study all night, and she had all of Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday still to work on it. And that Tyler needed her. When Marci was finally forced to tell Ronnie over text what should’ve been told to her in person, that Tyler didn’t get the part, Ronnie capitulated.
Sadie opened the door to her condo with a glass of wine in hand. “I was wondering what was taking you two so long.” She handed the glass to Tyler and waved them inside. “There’s more where that came from. Get in here.” Tyler and Marci followed Sadie into the living room. Sadie shared this place with her fiancé, Rafe, who was in England studying at the London School of Economics at the moment. In his absence, Sadie had definitely taken over from a decorating standpoint. The place was filled with bold splashes of primary colors. Sadie was very much into color, couldn’t stand for things to be drab. In addition to her jewelry making business, she’d taken up furniture design on the side. One of her pieces, a coffee table she’d sawed in half lengthwise, sanded, painted, upholstered with a bright blue colored fabric, and otherwise transformed into a bench, resided in the living room opposite the couch.
Ronnie was already there. She was in the kitchen, her more-than-generous cleavage spilling out of her low-cut top, glass of wine in hand. She was frowning over the directions on the back of a box of something.
“Sadie, only you could botch insta-pasta.” Ronnie, who typi
cally made her own pasta from scratch, smirked at the box.
Tyler sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything burning. Yet.”
“Quiet, you two.” Sadie breezed into the kitchen and poured two more glasses of wine. She brought one out to Marci and took a sip from the other.
“What are we having?” Marci asked.
“Shrimp and fettuccine alfredo,” Sadie said.
“À la Pasta-Roni,” Ronnie added.
“That is absolutely not true,” Sadie said with mock severity. “It’s the grocery store’s generic brand thank you very much.”
All of them, including Sadie, broke out into laughter.
“With a side of steamed vegetables,” Sadie added.
“You better let me take care of that,” Ronnie said. “We don’t need anymore burn victims in this crowd.”
Everyone turned to look at Marci, and she stuck her tongue out at them. She laughed along with them but was disconcerted by the fact that even that slight and vague reference to Owen made her stomach flutter.
While Tyler and Sadie caught each other up on gossip and Sadie attended to her cooking with less than half her attention and quite a few sips of wine, Marci pulled Ronnie off to the side.
“Something’s going on with you,” Marci accused.
“What? Huh? No, it’s not.” Ronnie twisted a lock of her dark brown hair through her fingers, concentrating on the movement rather than looking at Marci.
“You’re never around anymore. You act strangely when you are. You’re hiding something.”
“Hiding something?” Ronnie gave Marci a look that implied Marci was talking crazy talk. “I’m working extra shifts, okay? I have to get in study time whenever I can.”
“Why do you need the extra shifts?”
“What? Well, I mean, my Halloween costume ain’t gonna be cheap. Then the holidays are coming up.” Ronnie hemmed and hawed and included a few more vague rumblings about expenses that Marci didn’t buy.
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