by Amy Vansant
Sebastian sighed.
“I’m going to go watch television in the bedroom.”
Greta remained silent.
The moment Sebastian stood, Binker stretched to his full length and occupied the area on which he’d been sitting. The dog offered a rattly sigh.
Sebastian headed towards the bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt as he went.
“Take a box with you,” called Greta, without turning.
Sebastian paused. He turned, looked at the top cardboard box of his pile, and then walked into the bedroom empty-handed.
Chapter Four
Emily awoke the following morning consumed with how that blue-eyed devil Sebastian had stolen her heart without saying a word. Well, other than hey and olive juice and probably, “I just met the weirdest girl at the bar...” once out of earshot.
She had to know more about him. She had to return to the scene of the crime.
First... What was that smell? Had she woken on the floor of a bus terminal? Had someone directed a film noir in her bedroom? The whole world smelled like smoke.
Emily sniffed her pillow and then jerked away as if it was made of smelling salts.
Yuck.
Before she did anything, she would have to wash her sheets, hair, body and clothes. How did bar people live their lives smelling like an extra on Backdraft? Man hunting at Grounded smelled like dark roast, jazz mix CDs and desperation, but at least she didn’t have to wash it out of her pillowcases. She’d heard they’d soon outlaw smoking in bars. That would save her some detergent.
Emily reached to pet her fuzzy mutt, Duppy, and yelped when pain shot through her right arm. Duppy lifted his head, looked at her, and then flopped back to the mattress.
Emily touched the tender area on the inside of her elbow. She couldn’t recall falling, or arm wrestling a UFC fighter, or betting she could do a hundred pull-ups. She flexed, touching her hand to her shoulder, and then stretched forward to test the ache.
The motion resembled throwing a dart.
Pulling a muscle throwing darts had to be a new low for being out of shape. What next? Tearing a ligament while filing her nails?
Emily offered Duppy a pat to apologize for waking him. Poor Duppy. His hair was thinning. He’d always looked like the offspring of a gorgeous Samoyed and a sewer rat, and age hadn’t enhanced the more suspect aspects of his lineage. Emily imagined that fourteen years ago, Duppy’s purebred mother had confessed to her girlfriend: “Oh Duchess, you wouldn’t believe what I did last night. You know that homeless cur who’s been hanging around the block? The one with the mange? Well, I was in heat and...I slept with him.”
Duppy was the result of that regrettable night of passion.
In college, Emily had found Duppy hiding under a car, the puppy barely bigger than a beer can. After a half-hearted attempt to find his owner, she’d kept him. Around that time, she read the biography of reggae great Bob Marley. In it, the author described duppies, ghosts from Jamaican folklore. The puppy was white and came to Emily mysteriously, so she named him Duppy.
Dup had been Emily’s companion through countless adventures, but at fourteen, he was an old man and did little more than sleep. Emily endeavored daily not to think about her furry son’s advanced age. He would always be her baby.
After showering and throwing the previous night’s clothes in the washer, Emily made herself a cup of coffee and went outside to read the paper. Duppy padded along beside her to do his morning business. Emily lived in a ranch-style house with a brick patio in the back, so neither of them had to deal with many stairs.
After her morning sabbatical, Emily worked on a local electrician’s website and then drove to a dart store called Bullseye’s. When Emily had asked Kady where she could buy her own darts, she'd thought Kady’s answer “the dart store” had been a joke. Pulling into the parking lot, Emily realized she’d passed the dingy strip mall store a million times without noticing it.
She had awakened to a new world; a world of smoke, elbow pain, and weird hole-in-the-wall stores once invisible to the human eye. It was all very exciting.
Emily had to look the part; she was a dart player now. She realized she was no better than Kady’s boyfriend Joe; a test driver of personas. She was going to buy darts to become Emily the Dart Girl just as Joe bought cowboy boots and grew a scruffy beard to become Joe the confused Hippie/Hipster.
Maybe she had been too hard on Joe. She’d have to be easier on him, or buy stock in Windex, what with all her glass houses.
Emily entered Bullseye’s to discover the store sold pool tables and other bar game accessories. Bullseye’s was Candy Land for bored drinkers. On the recommendation of the strangely greasy gentleman behind the counter, she bought a set of Black Widow darts and some extra flights. Flights, she now knew, were the plastic wings on the back of the dart. She’d seen Kady change her flights the night before, and assumed that meant it was smart to carry a spare set. Apparently, if a dart bounced off the board and hit the floor, the flights often bent, making the dart less accurate. Emily also found it comforting to know that if she threw poorly, she could blame her performance on the flights and change them.
She searched for a lucky pack, and settled on a set featuring four-leaf clovers. While not unique, they suited the Irish Rover, and she was twenty percent Irish, so they seemed apropos.
Emily returned to her car, ruminating upon how many times she would change her flights before becoming a better dart player. Five thousand? Fifty thousand? She whirled and reentered Bullseye’s to buy another set of flights (these with skulls, in case she was feeling particularly bad-ass) and a dart board for practicing at home.
Stalking dart players was proving expensive.
Thank god Joe hadn’t suggested she go to polo night; she’d be walking around with a pony and a backbreaking monthly hay mortgage.
Emily stopped in her tracks.
Oh no.
Was she stalking Sebastian?
Emily had a long and glorious history of crushes. She’d stalked a boy in high school until she broke him and they'd dated for years. Maybe stalked was the wrong word. She hadn't stood in the bushes with binoculars; she’d positioned herself like a vase of flowers in places she knew he would pass. And tailed him a little. She'd found where he walked after school and set herself in his path. It was a “Hey! Fancy meeting you here on the street I have no logical reason to be! What a coincidence! This must be fate!” type of stalking.
Was her new passion for darts all about Sebastian?
No. No, dammit, she liked playing darts. It was fun. It was her new hobby. Hobbies were healthy.
Emily threw the dartboard in her trunk and swore to stop thinking about Sebastian. Mostly. Couldn’t stalking Sebastian be another hobby?
Anyway, she wasn’t stalking. She was giving love a chance. If romance was left to the boys, the human race would die while they logged their fantasy football points and punched each other in the balls.
Everyone knew that.
Emily sighed. Maybe she should talk to Tessa. Tessa would set her straight.
Chapter Five
Sebastian stubbed his cigarette on the side of the porch and stared into the bushes. He pulled at the chest of his t-shirt where it stuck to his skin, the fabric still damp with Greta’s tears.
It’s over. He didn’t love Greta. He’d read her all wrong. Every sweet note in Greta’s voice sang from her ability to play him like a fiddle. With each soft touch, she caressed the strings, manipulating him.
Greta’s affections rang hollow, yet when he tried to leave, she worked feverishly to make him stay. Why? So he could cover half her rent? So he could serve as a security blanket until she found a new man?
A week previous, Greta had traveled to a meeting two hours away in New York. An hour after she was due to return, she'd called from New York to say she’d decided to stay the night at a college friend’s apartment. She said it had been a long day, that she hadn’t seen her friend in years and it just made more sens
e to stay. Sebastian hadn't asked Greta for excuses, but they rained on him like rice at a wedding. She’d thrown a whole handful, hoping one would stick.
Sebastian never questioned Greta’s decision to stay in New York. Maybe he would have months earlier, but now he found it difficult to muster the urge. He hadn't given her plans another thought, even when she called the next day to announce she’d be staying a second night.
He didn’t become suspicious until Greta returned and dumped her dirty clothes in the laundry basket. The lacy, black underwear topping that pile inspired a blip on his radar. It had been a long time since he’d seen that particular pair of underwear. They’d been retired like a racehorse a few weeks after he and Greta started dating.
Sebastian hadn't minded the “retiring of the sexy underwear” routine. He didn’t even like frilly underwear. He preferred the comfort that came with familiarity. But why did that sexy underwear appear in the laundry? Why had Greta dragged them out of retirement like a broke boxer?
Sebastian knew he wouldn’t ask. There was no point. Greta would never admit to cheating on him. He didn’t want to hear lies or expend energy proving his suspicions. Maybe she just happened to grab that particular pair of underwear. Who was he to say?
Sebastian took a deep inhale through his nose and let it burst from his lips with an exaggerated puhhh that made his cheeks ripple. The whole incident reminded him of his stepfather. As a kid, he’d overheard his stepfather demanding to know why his mother had a spare pair of nylons in her briefcase.
“In case my stockings run,” his mother had answered.
Sebastian remembered his mother’s voice sounding strange; high and pleading. He couldn’t see his mother’s face, but he could hear her shock and pain. Even as a teen, Sebastian knew his stepfather believed the nylons were evidence of an affair.
It was crazy to think his mother would have an affair. Sebastian knew girls at school who kept a spare pair of nylons in their lockers. Spare nylons were Girl 101.
Sebastian wouldn’t be that guy. He wouldn’t accuse Greta of having an affair just because an unfamiliar, believed-retired pair of sexy underwear reappeared.
A month before the underwear incident, Sebastian had raised the courage to tell Greta he wanted out of their relationship. He'd left work early and waited at the apartment, steeling himself for his well-rehearsed break-up speech.
Then Greta had walked through the door crying; newly fired from her job. He couldn’t dump a girl an hour after she lost her job. She needed a shoulder to cry on, and his half of the rent, more than ever.
Sebastian had waited a few more weeks. Greta had found a new job. A great job, working with the big sport stadium’s hospitality group, and she seemed happy. Sebastian again rehearsed his easy letdown speech. He made it a full three words into it before Greta’s sister, Kimi, appeared at the door, sobbing that she was pregnant.
Houdini wouldn’t be able to extract himself from a life with Greta.
Sebastian had tried to inspire Greta to break up with him. He intimated they weren’t a match made in heaven, but Greta never agreed. The more he suggested they should break up, the more she dug in.
Unfortunately, his relationship with Greta wasn’t horrific enough to demand resolution. It wasn’t painful living with Greta. Thanks to their job schedules, they barely saw each other. They didn’t have anything in common, but it wasn’t like Greta was slowly poisoning his coffee. As far as he knew. Moving on meant the hassle of moving out and finding a new apartment.
Days came and went; it proved easier to stay.
Tonight, Sebastian had planned to talk to Greta about moving out. His stay at her house was always supposed to be temporary. Maybe the phrase “move out” instead of “break up” would allow him to sneak the separation past Greta’s drama radar.
The second he said, “my own apartment,” Greta burst into tears.
“Why baby?” she whined. She ran to where he sat on the sofa and jumped into his lap. Straddling him, she sobbed into his neck, shifting her hips just enough to make it clear the grinding effect was no accident.
“You can’t leave me now,” she said, her voice cracking. “This thing with my sister... You can’t leave me now. Why would you want to leave?”
His chin rested against her tear-soaked cleavage, her chest heaving with staccato sobs.
At that point, things got a little fuzzy. Ten minutes earlier, Sebastian had had an excellent argument for all Greta’s questions. Now...
Well, now he was on the porch having a post-coital cigarette.
Sebastian heard the sliding door open behind him.
“Baby, I’m going out.”
Sebastian turned. Greta wore full makeup. They had barely been out of bed fifteen minutes and she was already dressed for a night on the town. He didn’t remember an invitation to join.
“Where? It’s almost ten!”
“It’s my sister. She wanted me to meet her and I totally forgot,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You know how dizzy I can be.”
Greta tossed her head to flick the hair from her face. The top of her breasts bounced from behind her low-cut tee, and then settled back into the comfort of her “lift and shove together” bra.
“Why don’t you just ask her to come here?”
“Sydney is coming, too. We’re going to the Stone Horse Tavern for a quickie.”
Sebastian grimaced. Greta’s friend Sydney was always in the middle of everything.
If only he knew what Sydney knew...
“Whatever.”
“Thanks baby,” said Greta, stepping out to kiss the top of his head. “Don’t wait up, you know how Sydney gets!”
Greta spun on her toe and bounced back into the house.
“Wait, isn’t your sister pregnant?” called Sebastian. “Should she be at a smoky bar?”
The slider door thudded shut.
“Don’t lock the—”
He heard the flick of the lock.
Dammit.
Habit. Greta didn’t mean to lock him out. It didn’t matter; she never remembered to lock the front door when she left. He’d just walk around and use the front entrance.
Sebastian looked sideways at the pack of cigarettes beside him and grabbed them. He flicked open the top to retrieve another.
A dog barked and Sebastian jumped.
He turned. Greta’s Shih Tzu stared at him through the slider glass. He ignored the dog and pulled a cigarette from his pack.
Binker woofed again.
“Shut up.”
As Sebastian put the cigarette to his lips, a symphony of yapping burst from inside the house. Gritting his teeth, he flicked his lighter. The barking became louder and more frantic as Binker scratched at the glass.
Sebastian let the lighter die and hung his head. The barking stopped. He lit the lighter.
The barking resumed.
“Blind, my ass.”
He twisted to glare at the dog. The barking stopped.
“Fine. I’ll come inside.”
Sebastian put the cigarette back in the box.
“You don’t even like me, you little jerk.”
Binker’s tail wagged.
Chapter Six
Emily called Tessa to an emergency meeting at Nice Legs! wine bar. Usually, she had to plan Tessa meetings months in advance, but she’d done some of her best begging and gotten lucky. Her friend had kids now, and Emily scheduled time with her like one of Tessa’s law clients. Kids were like little client meetings that never ended.
“I think the first step is to admit I’ve always been a tad stalky,” Emily said, spinning her wine glass on the table the way she always did right before she spilled wine everywhere.
Tessa put her hand on Emily’s to stop her from twirling, her jaw clenched, her eyes gunslinger-squinty.
Emily met Tessa’s gaze and froze. Ever so slowly, Emily released the stem of her wine glass and pulled her hand away like a camper who’d reached for a soda only to find a snarling wolf on the o
ther side of the cooler.
Tessa was small, but terrifying.
Emily knew she could probably spin Tessa like a wine glass if she had to, but it didn’t matter. Like a ferocious Chihuahua, Tessa refused to recognize her diminutive stature. For every teaspoon of Emily’s slapdash nature, Tessa was one full cup of precise. Not only did she not do dumb things, she prevented others from doing dumb things, like stopping Emily from playing with her stemware.
Tessa was like a bitchy superhero.
“So you’re officially admitting you’re a little stalky?” Tessa asked. She held Emily’s gaze a moment longer. Emily understood this meant that if she resumed sloshing her wine glass, Tessa would exact vengeance.
Emily wasn’t sure what that meant, but she shuddered.
“Little Stalky,” echoed Emily. “Sounds like The Green Giant’s son, doesn’t it? Lil’ Stalky?”
“The Green Giant has a son?”
“Well, there’s Sprout, of course. The little Brussels-sprout-looking kid, and Lil’ Stalky is his tall, gangly son.”
“Ah, I remember. Sprout was stout.”
Emily nodded. “Right. And I’m thinking Lil’ Stalky looks just enough not like Sprout for Green Giant to wonder if Mrs. Giant was maybe messing around with the milkman.”
“Do vegetables drink milk? Who has a milkman? Is it always 1860 in Green Giant Land? And why are milkmen always so horny?”
“These are all very good questions.”
Tessa looked very serious. She leaned forward and whispered, “What does Mrs. Giant do when the Green G’s away at the canning convention? Hmm? I ask you that.”
Emily snickered. Tessa was both fierce and fun. Her personality was like using a knife to tickle someone.
“I think Jack climbed more than the beanstalk if you know what I mean,” Emily said, her eyebrows dancing, Groucho Marx-style. “Luckily for Mrs. Giant, DNA testing hasn’t been invented in magical canned-vegetable land.”
“Indeed,” agreed Tessa. “Lucky Ho Ho Ho.”