by Holley Trent
“Of course it is,” Seth said, his cheeks already burning red from the vodka he’d imbibed before Grant could even pick him up. “Lucky fucking Irishman you are.”
Yeah. Lucky.
“What’s that about being lucky?” the woman asked. Grant felt the press of unnaturally firm, high breasts against his back even before his nostrils registered the familiar, cloying scent of clemantis-scented perfume. He blew out a shuddering breath as sticky gloss-coated lips touched one of his cheeks and then the other.
“Hello, Seska–I mean, Francesca.”
Curt winced. He had been the one to start calling her Seska after the traitorous Cardassian spy in the Star Trek: Voyager franchise. The name had fit, so it stuck.
Grant turned in his chair to look up at his ex, who’d straightened up to her full height and then some. She was nearly six feet tall even without the three-inch heels. As he was right at six feet himself, when they were together she towered over him by a bit when in her favorite shoes. He wasn’t particularly self-conscious about his height since it beat the average, but Francesca always got a perverse glee from being dominant in that one thing.
Francesca was the absolute last person Grant wanted to run into before leaving town. With some effort, he’d managed to avoid her on campus for several years, so his luck must have really just run out there in the club.
“Long time no see,” she sang. Well, of course it had been a long time. They’d had a bad breakup. She tossed her long dark hair from one shoulder to the other while jutting out her chest.
He felt his gut clench in disgust. She’d had more work done. She’d always been small up top and was still fairly narrow, with the exception of the new balloons on her chest. In that tube dress she looked something like a D-list porno star, all bones and silicone. At that moment he was very glad she’d dumped him.
She pulled out the empty chair at the table and perched on the edge of it, looking at each man in turn with a brazen smile, then she let her gaze linger on Grant. “So, how the hell are you, Grant?” she asked. “You look luscious as usual. Been kicking the ball around again? Or maybe you’re doing that CrossFit thing so many of you athletic types are going gaga over?”
Nope, that had been Seth’s thing. Seth had dragged both Grant and Curt to the grueling workouts only for both Irishmen to sneak out during the jumping rope. They’d spent the rest of the hour at a bar.
“I’m fine.” He straightened up and pulled his hand back from the table when he saw Francesca extending her paw toward it. “I’m moving back to Ireland.”
Francesca showed no emotion about the snub of her hand, but stuck out her bottom lip in a pout over the announcement. “Oh, that’s no fun!”
He turned his head and rolled his eyes. For a woman who had a doctorate in folklore, she had certainly become frivolous since they’d split up. Working in the film industry as a consultant probably had something to do with that change.
She propped her elbows up on the table’s edge and leaned in to put her cavernous cleavage on display. “Well, when are you leaving, sweetheart? Maybe we can hook up before you go.” That last bit came with a wink.
Curt mumbled, “Blech.”
Grant smiled as kindly as he could manage. “I’m leaving Monday, actually.”
Francesca’s painted-on brows shot up. “That soon? Well, I’m in town until Tuesday.” Her lips peeled back into a sharklike grin. Curt put his hand over his mouth and made a gagging noise. Francesca acted as if she did not hear.
“He has a girlfriend. She wouldn’t like it,” Seth said.
Francesca cocked her head to the side and squinted at Seth. “Really. He has a girlfriend and she’s letting him hang out with you two?” She scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh. No woman is that stupid.”
Grant tried to smooth his expression to one of absolute blankness, but he feared the twitching of his cheek would give away his feeling of absolute oh shit.
“Yeah, yeah, he does,” Curt said as he accepted a round of shots and three beers from the waitress at his side.
Grant refused his when offered.
Curt shrugged.
“Who is she?”
“Mrow!” Curt pulled his lips back from his teeth and hissed, making a little scratching motion in the air like an agitated cat.
“Stop goading her,” Grant said. He wished he had cut the guy off from the bar an hour before. Curt had the social graces of a hungry alligator.
“The one. You know, the one,” Seth said, draining the shot, then immediately chasing it down with lager.
“What one? What are you babbling about?” She twirled a length of her pitch-black hair around her fingers.
“Whew!” Curt yelled after drinking his shot. He shook himself as if he felt a chill, and pounded the tabletop with his fists. “That’s good stuff. You know, Seska. The girl. The one you thought he was screwing but he wasn’t? Well, he is now. Can’t say I blame him.”
“Oh, shit, Curt.” Grant buried his face in the nest of his arms atop the table.
“You’re lying,” Francesca said. “You’re just trying to amp me up.”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from the Whore of the Baskervilles,” Curt said.
Grant moaned wordlessly into the table. Those three would be at it all night if he didn’t intercede soon. Their last encounter, only three years before, had been the stuff rock ballads were made of. Grant and Francesca had been broken up for more than a year, but she still went around telling everyone what he’d supposedly done to her as if it was some sort of fresh burn. The night of the near fracas, Grant, Curt and Seth were at an event for international students and rather plastered. Francesca stormed into the venue in hysterics and started shrieking her usual accusations about Grant cheating. Grant didn’t deny it, so she stood there screaming at him until Curt and Seth got sick of hearing her voice.
“I’m going to ignore that comment because you are obviously drunk.”
“Whatever. Go away, Seska.”
“Fran-chess-ka. Francesca. Say it. You’re so drunk you can’t even say my name right.”
“Fuck off,” Seth said. “You just cause trouble.”
“Finish your freakin’ dissertation and go back to Russia!”
“Go back to hell.”
Grant sat up and pounded the tabletop. The three louts around him startled. “Hey, you know what, Fran? I’m going to go order a very complicated drink. When I come back, please be gone. That’s the long and short of it, okay?”
“I–”
Grant held up his hand to stave off her interruption. “You’re not going home with me. We broke up for a reason. Probably the wrong one, but we’ll let it stand, yeah?”
He stood and slammed his chair underneath the table, sobering Seth, Curt and Francesca up a bit. He walked toward the bar growling softly and grinding his teeth.
What an awful coincidence. Almost eight years past, he had made the amateur mistake of confiding in Curt and Seth about the crush he had on a lovely young woman in his class. Of course he hadn’t acted on it. He was on and off with Francesca at the time and he wouldn’t have risked losing his job over a flirtation. For the next several years, every time Curt or Seth saw Carla on campus, they’d report back to him–telling him who she was speaking to, what she was wearing… It started as a tease, but later turned into this matter-of-fact thing: “I saw your girl today.”
It got to be damned crazy-making. Francesca had noticed something was off. He was there, but not present. Not as affectionate. Barely listening. There was no way Curt and Seth could have known he’d bumped into Carla that day. It was a mere coincidence that they’d bring the idea of his supposed dalliance up now, but one that chilled him to his core. Francesca had been wrong when she thought he’d cheated, but she’d been right when she accused him of not loving her anymore. That had been true. That had been because of Carla, and he didn’t feel a lick of guilt about it. Without her even knowing it, she had taught him to never settle.
Chapter 4<
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While Carla drove home on the interstate, she got a call from Sharon. Sharon wanted to meet her at a dance club near the university in Chapel Hill. It wasn’t Carla’s favorite sort of scene. She hated crowds. She hated being fondled and groped by strangers even more, but before she could form her refusal, a niggling feeling settled in to remind her she hadn’t done anything social beyond seeing her mother for at least two months. She was generally content with her reclusiveness and valued her quiet time, but every so often she wanted to pop her head out of her shell.
She didn’t live far from the venue, so she went home and put on a clean pair of jeans and teased her straight brown hair a bit at the roots for volume. Her stylist had tried to convince her if she cut off about a foot of hair it might wave and bounce. Carla always refused with the excuse she had to think about it. She’d gotten too used to having what Sharon called “hippie hair.” Cutting her hair would qualify as a Very Big Change. She didn’t handle VBCs with much grace.
She batted on a bit of mascara, smoothed on a slick layer of pale lip gloss and assessed herself in the mirror. Good enough, she thought. She didn’t like looking like she tried. People might grow to expect it.
Sharon kissed both of Carla’s cheeks continental style and slid an arm around her waist as soon as she’d paid her way in and had the bouncer check her purse for weapons. “Come on in. Megan’s holding a table for us,” she yelled over the house music.
“Oh, Meg’s here?”
Sharon giggled. “I know, right? Her hubby’s out of town. We would never have gotten her out, otherwise. Don’t say anything about her weight, okay?” She said that last part in an almost whisper, bending in close to Carla’s ear and making Carla’s eyes water with the scent of her new perfume. Carla crinkled her nose at the overly floral scent, a far cry from Sharon’s usual fruity mist. She took one more deep inhale just to be sure it was Sharon and not some passerby. The fragrance smelled like something her grandmother would wear. She coughed and straightened up.
At the bar, she availed herself of a double whiskey sour. The bartender was extra busy, fielding orders while simultaneously trying to maintain polite conversations with some boisterous male patrons on the bar stools. A few lushes at the tables just beyond were shouting out crude comments at the busy employee, but their distance made them easier to ignore. Carla itched to tell them to shut up. Catcalling was one of her biggest pet peeves, but she held her tongue. She didn’t want to start an altercation with a bunch of drunks and end up carted handcuffed into one of the police stations she worked with. It had happened before. She winced, recalling how a woman had made a rude comment about the way her ass looked in her jeans. Carla, drunker than she’d ever been in life, had thrown her drink in her face.
Carla stood on her toes and looked into the sea of tables to spot the miniscule Meg, and sipped her drink as she thought about how that heckler had ended up a victim of the Gill Right Hook. The members of that particular police department had razzed her about it for six months.
Ah, there she is.
“What’s wrong with her weight?” Carla asked while stuffing a five-dollar bill into the bartender’s tip vase and receiving a wink from her in thanks.
“Well, nothing labor and delivery can’t fix. She’s pregnant, and she thinks it’s a secret. Better not to discuss it.”
“That’s weird. I mean, the silence part, not the pregnancy part.”
“I’m sure Spike put her up to it. I don’t see him as the paternal sort. His fans might be turned off by it.”
Carla shrugged. Sharon was probably right. Spike was the guitarist for an indie rock band that spent a lot of time on the road. Usually Megan, who didn’t work under edict of Spike, tagged along. Sometimes she stayed home to recharge. When she did, Sharon and Carla swooped in to scoop her up. Carla wasn’t a fan of Spike specifically because he was possessive, but the band as a whole was excellent. Both she and Sharon felt dirty whenever they bought their music or attended their concerts because of the dichotomy.
Sharon and Carla maneuvered around some very energetic dancers at the periphery of the dance floor and found Megan at a tiny square table sipping lemon-lime soda from a trough-sized cup. Carla smiled at the sight. It was such a familiar one with Meg, whose biggest vice was soda. She kept promising to cut down on her sugar intake because she her family had a history of diabetes, but she couldn’t resist cold soda from the fountain. She claimed soda was why she spent an hour on the treadmill every morning.
Carla had always felt a bit maternal toward the surly petite redhead since she’d befriended Megan the fall of freshman year. Megan was an out-of-state student and had showed up at the dorms on move-in day all alone towing a small trailer behind her sedan. Carla was on the way back from the student store with her first pile of textbooks and spotted Meg trying to lug her minifridge up onto the curb. Carla made her wait, called Tony, who was at the student rec center playing basketball and had him haul Meg’s heavy items up the four flights of stairs to her room. A few hours later, Sharon arrived. She had the only single room on the floor, but Carla and Meg spent most nights in it that year. Their own roommates were insufferable.
“Carla!” Megan shrieked, putting down her massive soda and holding her arms out wide for a hug. Carla deposited her drink onto the table and bent down to receive her embrace, unable to ignore the wide elastic waistband of Meg’s stretch jeans. How far along was Meg? When had she seen her last? Had it been that long? It was hard to keep track.
“Hey, honey.” Sharon and Carla took the seats adjacent to Megan and scooted as close to the table edges as they could to minimize some of the bumping of their chair backs from the people sidling through the club around them.
Sharon took a medicinal gulp of her Long Island Iced Tea. “Okay, so, we’ll dance two at a time so that there’s always someone at the table,” she reminded them. “I can’t believe how packed this place is tonight. I haven’t seen it this busy since Maracas got shut down by ATF. Did you know I was there when they came in and pepper-sprayed the whole damn building?”
“No, you never told us that!” Meg said with a huff. “You said you’d never step foot into that club because it was owned by that guy you used to date. You told us if you ever caught us there you’d disown us.”
Sharon shrugged. “I lied. Sue me. I needed someplace cheap to throw a party and the rates were right. Boy, did that fall through.”
“I’ll stay,” Carla volunteered, pointing to her unfinished drink. “I’ll dance the next shift.”
Megan and Sharon didn’t wait around for her to change her mind. They made a beeline for the dance floor and disappeared into the crowd before she could get her cocktail straw back up to her lips.
She was staring down at the collage of black-and-white photographs under the tabletop’s protective sheet of hard plastic when she heard the scrape of a chair being pulled back from the table. Without even looking up, she hooked her foot into the rung of Sharon’s chair and yanked it back. “Someone’s sitting there,” she snapped into her drink.
“Yes, I know. I just thought I’d say hello,” Grant said as he let go of the chair back. He smiled down with more pleasantness than she deserved after that rude quip.
She blushed so hot she could feel the sear in her ear canals, and removed her foot from the chair leg. He looked pretty red himself. “Sorry about that. Please, sit down. People always try to filch the chairs for their own tables as soon as they see people get up to dance. I’ve grown a bit crusty about it over the years.”
Grant tried the chair for resistance, and finding none, pulled it out to sit. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. Imagine my surprise when I saw you walk in.”
“I know. Twice in one day.”
He smiled so the creases at the corners of his eyes wrinkled.
For the second time that day, her tongue turned to cotton. Fortunately her wit was intact. “You might want to buy a lottery ticket.”
“I’ll do that. Maybe even tonight.”
He turned to scan the crowd encroaching on the little table from the dance floor. “You here with friends, or looking to pick up a hot date?”
She scoffed. Hot date? With Sharon and Meg’s scrutinizing attention? Hardly. “Friends. They’re out on the floor somewhere.” She turned her head to look through the packed sea of bodies and saw a bare glimpse of red hair and the glint off the rhinestones on Sharon’s big gaudy bracelet. “I don’t get out very much, so I figured I owed them tonight. I’m a horrible friend. I haven’t seen Meg in months and we live a mile apart.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m not much for social engagements, either.” He leaned back against his borrowed chair and hooked a thumb in the direction of the bar. “I got forced out tonight to chauffeur a couple of friends. See? The Neanderthals over there by the bar carefully watching the barmaid’s every move with their jaws scraping the ground?”
She turned her head to see the two men, one in a gray fedora, the other bald with a scruffy orange beard, unabashedly ogling the bartender and occasionally heckling a nearby tall woman. The woman seemed somehow familiar, but she couldn’t put a finger on why. She had walked right past them without realizing he was among them.
“Oh.”
“Complete geeks. So, do you want to dance? I’m no Baryshnikov, but I can keep a beat pretty well.” He bobbed his head to the music to demonstrate.
She smiled and couldn’t help it. She couldn’t do much beyond swaying side to side to the beat herself.
As tempting at the offer was, she shook her head. Maybe if it’d been a slow song she might have felt differently. “Sorry, I gotta hold down the fort. We always keep an anchor at the table so we have a home base and can find each other. Once you give up your table here, it’s nearly impossible to swipe another.”
“Ah. Probably smart to have somewhere to keep your purses.”
“Exactly. The one time I checked mine at the door, I left the building fifty bucks lighter.”
Grant cringed. They stared at the undulating crowd for a while and settled into a companionable silence. She didn’t feel the need to talk. Sitting there with him just felt right. The nervousness she’d been feeling at his arrival had abated in exchange for an odd hyperawareness. She could feel his gaze occasionally flitting to the side of her face as she watched for her friends on the dance floor. Without looking, she could tell when he’d leaned forward a bit and breached what she typically would have considered personal space. She felt his hand on her shoulder long before he actually touched it.