by Nicki Elson
“I’m parked in economy.”
Cliff nodded toward the sliding glass doors that led to the parking shuttles. He angled in that direction, still carrying her suitcase. Chilled air encompassed them as they passed onto the platform, making Cliff wish he’d already put on his coat like Jo had. Her bag was heavy, and he was glad for a chance to set it down while they waited for a train—strategically placing it out of her reach.
Now that they were stopped and not focusing on signs, Cliff was able to take in a full view of her. Below her ribbed down coat, she wore loose-fitting sweatpants. She wore no makeup, and her eyes were puffy, her skin blotchy, the whites of her eyes dull—probably nursing a hangover, he guessed.
“Do you believe my main concern is you and not her?” Cliff asked, pulling on the coat he’d strapped to the top of his suitcase.
Jo shrugged.
When the shuttle ground to a stop in front of them, she stepped aboard without reaching for her bag, letting Cliff take it. They stood at a pole, shifting out of the way of other passengers clambering toward the seats.
“You realize I won’t relinquish your bag until I know you believe me, right?” He quirked a challenging eyebrow. “I have your wig, by the way.”
“You didn’t burn it in effigy?”
He smirked. “Loinerd would never do that to Claire.”
JoJo peered at him through narrowed eyes, her lip kinked at the corner, as if trying to figure out what was behind his playfulness. Cliff wasn’t sure where it had come from, either. He’d only intended to apologize and then let her be.
Her examination continued, and he liked that even though she must realize she looked like hell, she wasn’t embarrassed to look him straight on. There was something attractive about her confidence. This was the PlanetClaire side of her.
The train came to a stop at Jo’s lot, and Cliff snatched up the suitcases. Frigid air nipped at them as they stepped off the train into a glass shelter and descended the escalator. It was going to be a bitch outside. They’d lost two hours returning to the central time zone, and night had fallen.
Cliff half turned in front of Jo. “Let me take you to dinner.”
She stopped short of slamming into him, her brow wrinkled as she stared upward. “Now?”
He laughed at the horror in her expression. “No, not now. Next weekend, if you’re available.”
“You’re asking me out? On a date?”
“Yeah. Why not?” He nodded, sorting his thoughts out loud. “We’ve been having a great time together in Castleabra for the last few months. And we have amazing physical chemistry. Why wouldn’t we go out?”
“I know what you must think after this weekend, and after…everything, but—” Her eyes shifted from side to side at the people who rushed around them. In a lower voice, she continued, “I’m not an easy lay anymore. Goodtime JoJo is gone-gone.”
“I’m not asking you out just for sex, if that’s what you’re implying. I want to get to know you better.”
Her breath clouded into a light mist as she let out a slow huff. “I told you I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
“Do you already have one?” He hadn’t thought of that until just now.
“No.”
“Girlfriend? Husband?”
“No and no.”
“Then what’s the problem with going out on a date with me to see if there might be something here?”
“If there was something here, we’d already have started dating by now.”
“Or maybe fate keeps tossing us together because it knows we’re too stupid to figure it out on our own.” The more he tried to convince her, the more he convinced himself they’d be crazy not to try this. Hadn’t he told himself he ought to try dating beyond his usual type?
Her forehead creased and her eyes darted back and forth over his face. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out.
“Come on,” he continued. “You have to admit it’s pretty freaky that of all the thousands of people playing online, the two of us ended up in an extended questing partnership. Out of everyone there, we chose each other for an in-person hookup. And then we both showed up at Chuck and Amy’s—I barely even know them. What are the chances? And then we’re on the same exact flight? I’d say the Fates are getting impatient with us. Are you willing to piss them off by continuing to ignore them? ’Cuz I’m not.”
Jo let out a small laugh, shifting her gaze away from him and shaking her head. “You’re disturbed.”
She reached for her bag, but again, Cliff was too fast for her and swept it away from her grasp. “The pavement’s bumpy out there. I’ll carry it to your car.”
“Fine, but you better hand it over then or I’ll scream for security.” She went out the door, and he followed her to a tiny hatchback. The shock of the cold and his shivering kept him silent along the way. She popped the hatch door. “Throw yours in, too. I’ll drive you to your car.”
Cliff grinned and hoisted only her suitcase. “I’m actually parked by the terminals. I’ll catch the tram back.”
She whipped around to face him full-on with a disbelieving smile twitching the corners of her mouth. The brisk air energized her complexion and gave her eyes a bright spark under the towering parking lot lamp.
He tilted his head forward, looking at her through sweet, puppy dog eyes. How can she resist a guy who went this far out of his way just so he could carry her bag?
“I have to work next weekend,” Jo said. “But I can do something Sunday night.”
Apparently his actions had spoken louder than all of his words.
Chapter 14
LIKE FAIRIES SPARKING TO LIFE in an urban wonderland, the city lights punched their glow through violet dusk. Cliff and JoAnne floated amid the scene, sitting at a table for two inside the glass atrium of a rooftop restaurant. They’d met there after Jo’s shift had ended Sunday evening.
“You mentioned that you’re an event planner,” Cliff said, making his first stab at conversation unrelated to the menu. They’d ordered an assortment of appetizers and small bites along with their drinks. “Where do you do it?”
“I’m the director of event planning for a boutique hotel in Logan Square—the Robb Inn. It’s in a really cool old mansion, so we host lots of smaller weddings and corporate dinners.”
“Director, huh? Sounds important.”
Jo shrugged but smiled. “As important as one can be at a venue that size—which isn’t very.” She hadn’t had much time to change after work and dressed casually in a navy-blue turtleneck sweater. The knitted ribbing stretched into bowed lines over her chest. Her hair was pulled back and twisted into a sloppy bun at the nape of her neck.
Upon first seeing her that night, Cliff had felt an uncomfortable twist in his gut, like maybe this was a mistake. He didn’t feel the happy fluttering that usually accompanied Trish’s appearance. But the other night, some instinct had urged him to coax her here, so he’d trust that and give this a chance.
“How long have you been doing that?” he asked.
“A year and a half as the lady in charge. Before that, I was an events assistant, and before that, hostess of the restaurant. Actually, that day I ran into you and Trish at Baja Barneys, after the airshow, I was celebrating my promotion.”
That had been the day Cliff hadn’t remembered her, his first time seeing her since college. Jo watched her fingertips as she ran them around the rim of her wine glass. Cliff noticed she hadn’t yet taken a sip.
“Afraid that wasn’t one of my finest hours,” she said.
He recalled her slurred words and the copious amounts of vomit she’d spewed that day at the beach-themed bar. The twist returned to his gut. This had definitely been a mistake. “We all have our bad moments,” he offered as the only thing he could think to say.
“Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of them. Too many. That’s why I’m saying goodbye to Goodtime JoJo.”
“Was that day a turning point?”
“Ya’d thin
k, right? But it wasn’t until the last morning in Saint Lucia that I knew something had to change.” She reached for her water and took a large swig, holding it in her mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. “I woke up half naked on one of the loungers by the pool. The last thing I remembered from the night before was making out with a waiter or a busboy or maybe a bartender. Then I reached for my diamond pendant—it was a college graduation gift from my parents—and it was gone. I looked around the pool deck and racked my brain for where I might’ve taken it off, but it wasn’t anywhere.
“I’ve never had trouble with the clasp, so I’m pretty sure the guy I was with, or maybe someone who came along during the night, must’ve taken it. I’ve been plenty embarrassed during my life, but that moment…” She swayed her head back and forth, her lips curved downward. “It was utter humiliation. Rock bottom.”
Her eyes stayed downcast on the plate of meats and cheeses. Cliff was surprised at how much she’d opened up. Rather than being repulsed by her story, he felt compassion. No girl deserved to be treated like that. He kept his eyes on her so that if she looked up, she’d see understanding, not judgment. But he stayed silent, letting her get it all out.
Her eyes flicked up at him, tentatively, and she gave him a sad smile. “Let’s face it, that’s probably the only diamond I’ll ever get. I was furious with myself for losing it in such a stupid, stupid way. So I left that godforsaken island determined to make a change. I’m good at my job, and I like it—I mean, hey, where else will they pay me to be a bossy-ass bitch? So that’s where I’ve been focusing my energy for the last few months. That and online gaming.” She let out a small laugh. “I’m drinking less and laying off the promiscuity.”
Cliff felt his forehead pinch before he could stop it.
“I know, I know. The Claire-Loinerd rendezvous.” She lifted her hands, palms up, next to her shoulders and shrugged. “Can’t expect a party girl to go cold turkey. I thought the scenario would be perfect. You seemed like a nice guy and we’d never see each other again. I thought I could get away with one wild night of no consequences.”
She’d turned redder and redder as she spoke and had dropped her hands to her lap, fidgeting instead of eating or drinking. Cliff wanted to ease her nerves. “If it makes you feel any better, I broke a hiatus from women to be with you, too. Maybe that’s why it was so amazing—because neither of us had had any in a while and were extra hungry for it.”
It certainly had been amazing, he thought, taking a sip of his drink. The spiced rum lit a trail down his throat, warming his impression of the woman in front of him.
“Were you on the hiatus because of Trish?”
Cliff stared at her, taken off guard that she’d guess that.
JoJo winked and finally lifted her wine glass, saying before she sipped, “I put it together that she’s the one you wanted to be more than friends with.”
“Has she talked to you about it at all?”
“Sort of.” Jo moved some bites of food to her plate.
“What did she say?”
“Just that you guys had a disagreement and weren’t hanging out anymore. She never told me what the fight was about—I only got that information from you.”
Cliff wanted to ask if Trish had at least seemed sad about it, but when he thought of the look on Jo’s face when he’d asked her not to tell Trish about their tryst, he decided against it. Tonight wasn’t about Trish; it was about getting to know Jo better. He smiled and leaned forward, lifting his glass for a toast. “Sometimes crappy things happen so they can lead to something good. Here’s to both of us being so sexually starved that we were once again thrown together and arrived here.”
Jo clinked her glass against his. “Yay, me—a lifetime of bad decisions scored me a pity date.”
“This isn’t a pity date!” As the words flew out of his mouth, he accepted them as true. There was much more to Jo than he’d ever given her credit for. “Why is it so hard for you to believe I find you interesting?”
She scrunched her lips. Only a faint trace of her lipstick remained. “Because we’ve known each other for eight years and this is the first time you’ve ever asked me out.”
“Okay, fine, so sometimes it takes me a while to recognize a good thing, but I eventually catch up. You’ve got interesting layers, girl. Not only did you surprise me by turning out to be a gamer, you’re an artist, too, and now I discover you’re a maven of the hotel industry.”
JoAnne’s eyeballs looked ready to spin right off her head with all the rolling they were doing. Cliff noticed she wore hardly any eye makeup, almost as if she’d purposely not made an effort on her appearance tonight.
He chuckled. “Go ahead and be modest, but you can’t deny our explosive physical chemistry.”
Pink crept across her round cheeks. “Right—so explosive it blew my hair right off.”
Cliff barked out a laugh, remembering her wide-eyed look when he’d yanked the wig from her head. “I’ll be more careful next time.”
She arched an eyebrow at “next time.”
“Don’t worry,” he was quick to assure. “I heard you before. I know that if and when there’s a next time, it’ll be a while before it happens—and I respect that.”
She nodded, pressing her lips together and flicking her eyes over the emptying plates on the table.
He judged it to be time for a subject change. “How long have you been an artist?”
“I’m not an artist. I just like to draw and paint. It helps me clear my head. What do you do when you’re not lawyering or gaming? How do you clear your head?”
“Racquetball. Treadmill, weights. I like to run by the lake when the weather’s nice.” The conversation turned to safe subjects, and they talked for another couple of hours. The more time they spent together, the more he was able to merge PlanetClaire with JoAnne in his mind. He had a nice enough time that at the end of the date, he suggested they should do it again. And he meant it.
The following week, Cliff texted Jo:
I’ve got the perfect place for date number 2.
Yeah? Where?
What’s your work schedule this weekend?
I’m off early on Saturday.
Saturday night, then?
Sure. Where?
You’ll see on Saturday. I’ll pick you up at your place. 8?
See you then.
JoAnne was waiting outside her greystone two-flat when Cliff pulled up in a hired car. The mid-March day was cool and damp, but not unpleasant. All of Chicagoland seemed to be in a brighter mood with hopes of spring.
Cliff had already told the driver the address for their next destination, and soon they pulled in front of a brick building with lighted neon tubes twisted into letters spelling “beer” and “arcade.”
Cliff waggled his eyebrows when Jo shot him a sideways glance and a grin. “The mecca of retro video games,” he explained.
Inside, the dark space beeped and blinked with unnatural pinpoints of light in yellows, blues, and whites. Jo hadn’t known what they were doing, but she was dressed perfectly for the occasion in tight distressed jeans, ankle-high boots, and a thin leather jacket. She looked ready to kick video-game ass. Cliff slid something into her hand.
“Is that a roll of quarters or are you just happy to see me?” she asked.
“Both.” He gave her a spontaneous kiss on the cheek, feeling as giddy as a little kid being set loose at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Instead of a giant rat and Mountain Dew, he had a pretty girl on one hand and would soon have a frosty bottle of beer in the other.
“Oh, man. This is my game!” Jo veered toward a giant box reading “Berserk” across the top. “I haven’t seen it in forever.”
The open room was lined with games along exposed brick walls. At the center of the black painted floor, a group of games stood back-to-back in a long row. Since it was Saturday night, the place was packed and lines formed in front of most games.
“Go ahead and grab a place in line,” Cliff said. “I
’ll grab us drinks. What’ll you have?”
“312 if they have it. Otherwise, surprise me.”
Several minutes later, Cliff waded through the crowd back to Jo. She was next up for the game, but they had a few minutes to fill each other in on their video gaming days as youngsters. Jo explained that her brothers had first turned her on to gaming. But she usually had to wait for them to abandon the family gaming console before she got a turn, so she’d often walk to the neighborhood candy store in the small town where she grew up to play the older arcade games. That’s where she’d discovered and—according to her—mastered Berserk.
They looked around the room, spotting other favorites to target next. “You can go ahead and play something else instead of waiting for me,” Jo said.
“Nah, I want to watch the master.”
She stepped up to the machine and dodged lasers while she wove through a simple maze and blasted pixelated robots. She was rusty on her first few tries and lost all three of her men quickly, but during her next round, she found her footing. The robots vowed that the “humanoid must not escape” every time she exited a screen.
Cliff was impressed with her forethought and dexterity in taking down each roomful of enemies. The game got more intense when Otto, a bouncing smiley face, entered. Jo squealed and shouted at the machine, whooping whenever she made a narrow escape and banging on it when she got killed. Cliff laughed and downed his beer while he watched.
“You’re up next,” Jo said.
He shook his head. “I’ve never played this one before. Let me warm up on Donkey Kong and Space Invaders first.”
“Okay, chicken.” She wrinkled her nose at him while she took a long sip of her beer.
They wandered around the arcade, stopping to take turns at playing. They mostly stayed together to cheer and jeer each other on, and went head-to-head on a simulated race track. Jo threw shade at him throughout the race. She didn’t suck up or pretend to be anyone but herself. Cliff liked that he already felt comfortable being a smartass with her. She wasn’t too fragile to take it and usually threw it right back in his face.