by Unknown
“Try to eat just a little. You look like hell, and getting some food in your stomach might help.”
Eyes narrowing, she glared at him. He’d been telling the truth, though. Her eyes and nose were both puffy and red, her cheeks blotchy. She’d removed most of her makeup, but traces of eyeliner and mascara had run and smeared a bit beneath her lower lashes.
Funny how looking like hell could still look damn good, though. Just because she was all soggy and blanched didn’t mean his little soldier wasn’t willing to wake up and stand at attention.
“You don’t know much about comforting someone in their time of need, do you?” she asked, poking around inside the square white carton.
He blew out a breath and shook his head. “Glad you noticed. No, guys don’t have much experience with random displays of emotion. We’re more the get-pissed-and-punch-something or get-drunk-with-friends-and-complain-for-a-few-hours types.”
Popping a chunk of General Tso’s chicken into his mouth, he chewed and swallowed before saying, “So do you want to talk about it? Whatever has you so upset?”
“And if I say no?” She lifted a small portion of noodles to her mouth, then seemed pleased with the taste and went back for more.
“Then we’ll sit here eating Chinese takeout until our stomachs explode, wait an hour, and eat some more. Maybe we’ll even find a movie on the boob tube to fill the empty silence.”
And for the next several minutes, silence was exactly what he got. He ate a few more pieces of chicken before nudging her in the leg with the container and wordlessly suggesting they trade. She took the chicken and handed over the lo mein.
When he realized they didn’t have drinks or spoons for the egg drop soup, he got up and went to the kitchen for both. She didn’t ask him what he was doing, didn’t chastise him for poking around in her cupboards and drawers, didn’t seem to care one way or the other. It was definitely spooky, considering the old Ronnie—or at least the less upset one—would have had her dander up a good ten or twenty minutes ago.
She even took one of the spoons and shared the soup with him straight out of the same container. It was I see dead people spooky.
Halfway through the fried wonton, she finally spoke. And Dylan nearly jumped out of his shorts because in the deep, dark silence of the room, he’d begun running the most bloodcurdling horror-movie scenes he could think of through his head for entertainment. Her low voice breaking into his thoughts was a little too the call is coming from inside the house for his peace of mind.
“I got some bad news today,” she said.
After his heart returned to a normal rhythm, he wiped his hands on one of the paper napkins the Jade Garden had thrown in with their meal, balled it up, and tossed it among the rest of the mess on the table in front of them.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you want to tell me about it?”
A beat passed, and he started to think she was going to refuse. Then she took a deep breath, set her own food aside, and twisted on the sofa so that her back was against the arm, her legs drawn up to her chest, her feet flat on the floral cushion.
“Not really, but since you’re here and you were nice enough to bring dinner . . .” Reaching behind her, she retrieved a sheet of trifolded paper and handed it to him.
“I applied for a position at another paper. A better paper and a better position,” she said while he unfolded the letter and read. “I didn’t get it.”
“I’m sorry,” he told her, handing the letter back. “But you already have a decent job. Why are you so upset about not getting this one?”
Her eyes filled with moisture again, her lips quivering as her cheeks turned pink. “Because the job I have now isn’t good enough. The salary isn’t high enough. If I get fired tomorrow, I only have enough money to survive five, maybe six months.”
Dylan blinked and then let out a laugh. “That’s what you’re worried about? Geez, Ronnie, I thought you were going to say you’re practically destitute. A lot of people live from paycheck to paycheck, you know, and would be lucky to make it a month or two if they got fired. Sounds to me like you’re doing pretty well if you could go six months with no income. Not that you couldn’t find another job at the drop of a hat. You’re a damn fine writer, Ronnie.”
That was about as close to complimenting her as he’d ever gotten, but it just sort of slipped out. And he didn’t regret it—it was true, and seemed to be what she needed to hear.
Only, apparently it wasn’t. Instead of cheering her up, his comment seemed to distress her all the more. Her entire body tensed and she sat up even straighter.
“You don’t understand!” she charged, vibrating with the intensity of her emotions. “Six months is nothing. What about the rising cost of living? What about the rate of unemployment in this country? There are no guarantees, Dylan. Every minute you can afford to buy groceries and pay your rent could be the last.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?”
“You have no idea,” she charged, hopping off the couch to storm around the open area on the other side of the coffee table. Her posture was rigid, her movements jerky with agitation. “You talk about living from paycheck to paycheck. Try living with no paycheck. You have no idea what it’s like to not know where your next meal is coming from, or if you’ll get to eat at all that day.”
He didn’t miss the frantic glint in her eyes or the desperation in her quavering voice, and he was beginning to appreciate that whatever concerns she had about keeping her current job or finding a new one ran much deeper than just an impressive addition to her résumé.
“You’re right, I don’t,” he said softly.
He was afraid that if he spoke too loudly or made any sudden moves, she would spook and revert back to her Iron Maiden persona. She was just beginning to open up, and he was just starting to get a peek beneath her thick, solid armor. He didn’t want to do anything to screw that up.
“Do you?”
She laughed, a high-pitched, near-hysterical sound. If he hadn’t had a couple of chopsticks in his hand that could double as defensive stabby devices, he might have been concerned.
“Boy, do I. I may look like I’ve got it all together, without a care in the world, but I’ve been fucked up since the day I was born. For most of my life, my family wasn’t just poor, but impoverished. I don’t know what my parents were thinking, having children when they could barely support themselves.”
Long strides eating up the neutral, tan-crossed-with-mustard-yellow carpeting, she wrapped her arms around her waist as though trying to keep herself from twisting inside out with uncontrollable, renegade emotions.
“My father was injured on a factory assembly line, and my mother simply had too many babies tied to her apron strings to work outside the home.”
“Not big believers in birth control, huh?” he asked quietly.
She snorted. “Definitely not. I’m not even sure they knew about the rhythm method. I mean, my God, who continues to bring children into this world when they can’t support them? When they don’t have a steady job, and have to live in a car three or four months out of every year.”
Dylan’s heart hitched at that disclosure. Was she serious? Had she really had to live out of a car as a kid?
It was almost too incredible to imagine. He understood that poverty existed, knew that not everyone was as lucky as he was to come from a fairly happy, average, middle-class family. There had always been food on the table when he was growing up. A roof over his head, a pool in the backyard, Christmas presents under the tree.
They hadn’t been rich, but they hadn’t really wanted for anything, either. He wouldn’t say he or his brothers had been spoiled—his parents would have neither tolerated nor contributed to that—but their toy boxes had certainly been full.
Ronnie must have spotted the look of astonishment on his face because she paused in her pacing to confront him. “That’s right, I lived in a car. Six or seven of us squeezed into this old, beat-up station wag
on that had seen better days. Most of the time, there was no money for gas, so my father would park somewhere out of the way where we wouldn’t be noticed. We went to the bathroom in the woods, bathed in creeks or streams, ate whatever we could find. My father worked odd jobs when he could find them; and when we had enough money, we would rent a run-down house or apartment somewhere, but that never seemed to last very long.”
Tapping her foot, she stood just on the other side of the coffee table, staring daggers at him, her brows drawn tight over her blazing, coffee-brown eyes.
“So now you know,” she told him, the words both watery and scalding at the same time. “Are you happy?”
Why in God’s name would she expect him to be happy? Did she think he was some kind of soulless, demonic bastard?
Well, okay, up until recently, she probably had thought that, and for good reason. They’d both worked hard to put their very worst feet forward where the other was concerned.
But a lot had happened in the last few weeks, including a long, tooth-rattling bout of truly incredible sex. They may not have parted the next morning with hugs and kisses and whispered endearments, but he’d like to believe they hadn’t fallen right back into their old, back-stabbing, hiss-and-spit routine, either.
“Of course not,” he said carefully. “Why would I be?”
“Because now you know that I’m a complete fraud. The clothes, the attitude, the self-confident air. It’s all an act, and I’m sure you’ll have a jolly good time outing me to everyone in Cleveland in your next column.”
He had to admit that for a brief second, he imagined doing just that. The journalist gene of his DNA itched at the prospect of revealing a secret . . . any secret, about anyone. But regardless of her apparently low opinion of him, he had no intention of repeating what she’d told him.
It explained a lot, though, now that he thought about it. The secondhand furniture, the generic drugs in the medicine cabinet, the do-it-yourself hair color and manicure set.
She was a woman who had grown up with nothing, or close to nothing, and still pinched pennies to keep from ever having to experience that sort of lifestyle again. A woman who, amazingly enough, managed to look like a million bucks every single day without spending loads of cash on herself.
Did he know anyone else who’d be able to pull it off so well with so little? He doubted it.
“I’m not going to write about this,” he assured her with a small shake of his head. “And I don’t think that being frugal and living within your means makes you a fraud. Way more people would go in the other direction, spending more than they could afford on clothes and shoes and trips to the salon, digging themselves into such a deep debt pit, they’d never get out.”
She studied him for a moment, her mouth turned down in obvious doubt.
“You’re just saying that,” she told him. “As soon as you leave, you’ll run to your computer and whip out a great big belly-laugh piece about poor, pathetic Ronnie Chasen, growing up like the Boxcar Children.”
He chuckled at that. Arms on his knees, hands clasped between his legs, he shook his head again. “No, I won’t. What happens in knitting group stays in knitting group, right? Didn’t I hear one of you ladies say that at the last meeting? I figure it applies to private knitting lessons, too.”
She eyed him warily, her gaze sweeping over the plethora of open Chinese take-out containers and his pile of yarn and needles resting at the edge of the table.
“We haven’t done any knitting yet,” she pointed out, and he could hear the doubt in her voice.
“No, but that is why I came over, so I suppose it counts.”
Leaning back, he lifted his leg to rest one ankle on the opposite knee, and stretched his arms along the back of the couch. “Would it make you feel better if I told you something personal and private that I’d prefer didn’t get out? That would make us even, and if I ever told your secret, then you could get back at me by telling mine.”
She thought about that for a minute, and he could see the tension leaking from her limbs. Her eyes softened, losing their sharp intensity. Even her pale skin seemed to be less taut over her bones and muscles.
“All right,” she agreed slowly. “But it better be good.”
Hiding a grin, Dylan turned slightly, patting one of the cushions beside him. It took her a minute, but finally Ronnie made her way around the table and sat cross-legged against the far arm of the sofa.
Taking a deep breath, he admitted, “It seems we’re both working at jobs that are less than our ideal, just waiting for a better one to come along.”
She tipped her head to the side, her straightforward gaze meeting his own. Only the twist of her bubblegum lips alerted him to her rising ire.
“Are you saying you took the position at the Herald, stole it away from me, when you didn’t even want it?”
He bit back a grin. Her reaction was so Ronnie-typical, he could have scripted it.
“Yeah, I guess I did. Do you want to hear this, or not?”
The fire in her eyes banked, but only slightly. “Keep going.”
“I want to be a sports reporter. Have since I was a kid. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, tennis, soccer, golf . . . I love them all. I’ve got stats whipping through my head twelve hours a day.”
“What do you think about the other twelve?” she asked.
“Sex,” he deadpanned.
Her mouth quirked up at the corner and he found himself almost smiling in return.
“I keep interviewing and putting in my résumé for sports positions. The only reason I moved to the Herald is because the old sports reporter was set to retire, and I figured if I was there, as soon as his job opened up, I could slip right in and take over.”
He made a face, the annoyance at being shut out once again as fresh as it had been the day it happened.
“Makes sense, right? Except the old guy had a nephew, and they gave him the job instead. This bean-pole geek with flood pants and tape on his glasses, who wouldn’t know a layup from a slam dunk, has my column. Every single time I come close to catching a break and getting the chance to write what I really want, I get knocked on my ass.”
Reaching out, he snatched his glass of soda—generic, of course; after all, he’d gotten it out of Ronnie’s fridge—and took a long gulp. He was just swallowing when his head snapped forward, nearly causing him to choke and break a tooth on the rim of the glass.
Pulling back, he turned to look at Ronnie, who’d leaned forward and was even now pulling back for another slap.
“That’s for stealing my job,” she told him.
Whap! to the back of his head a second time.
“And that’s for being an idiot.”
“Geez,” he said, rubbing the stinging area. “Thanks for being a sympathetic listener.”
“What’s to sympathize with?” she demanded. “You took a job you didn’t want—that I not only wanted, but needed, you dumb jerk—because you’re too stupid to go after what you really do want more directly.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, ticking items off on his fingers. “Idiot, dumb jerk, stupid . . . You forgot dim, dense, slow, moronic, doofus.”
“I didn’t forget them, I just haven’t worked them in yet.”
“What’s so stupid about trying to climb the ladder, trying to get closer to your dream?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. But that’s not what you’re doing.”
She was worked up again, but this time with a passion for her subject rather than shame and upset over her own circumstances.
“You’re hiding. Playing it safe. Rolling over and playing dead just because things haven’t worked out exactly the way you’d hoped.”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do?” he charged back, starting to get riled up himself. “Walk into the paper of my choice and demand the sports-writer position at gunpoint?”
“Of course not, but am I the only one who’s noticed that one of your best friends happens to be the star go
alie of the Cleveland Rockets?”
He held her gaze for a moment, then blinked. “So?”
Her eyes went wide and she sat up straighter on the sofa, leaning forward to give him another whap. This one wasn’t as hard, though, and caught him on the shoulder because he saw it coming.
“Sooooo,” she stressed, as though he was, indeed, slow on the mental uptake. “Zack is your best friend. He’s known for being tight-lipped with the press. Imagine the attention you would get if you convinced him to give you an exclusive interview. You could take it to any paper in the city . . . any paper or magazine in the country, and they’d trip over themselves to hire you.”
Feeling like he’d just been smacked between the eyes with a two-by-four, he stared at her, dumbfounded. He’d honest to God never considered such a thing before, but now that she’d verbalized it, it sounded so simple, so sensible, so obvious.
If there had been a brick wall nearby, he’d have jumped up and started pounding his brain against it. Duh, duh, duh.
Ronnie was right, he was an idiot. He’d always planned to get the ideal job, then take advantage of his friendships, not the other way around. And though Zack was his closest professional athlete friend, he had others. Some he’d met through Zack, some he’d met on his own simply by virtue of his huge love of all things sports-related.
The idea was so phenomenal, he wanted to rush out, track down Zack, and talk him into doing an interview right then. But of course it was late, Zack was likely busy with something else—even if it was only heating up the sheets with Grace—and he didn’t have a single question in mind for his friend yet.
He would have to go back through past articles and interviews with Zack. There weren’t many, but if he could hit on some questions and areas that hadn’t been covered by anyone else, it really would be exclusive enough to garner major media interest. And as long as he didn’t print anything too personal, he was almost certain Zack would agree.
It wasn’t until he came back down to earth that he realized Ronnie hadn’t moved. He hadn’t, either, actually; he’d been too busy mapping out his future now that he was no longer burdened by Dumb Fuck Syndrome.