by Kendra Mase
“No.”
“It’s so close I figured you probably would’ve stopped in at some point since you got to the city this past summer.”
“How did you know when I got here?”
He paused. “You’re not the only one who asks people questions, Kit. Seriously though, why haven’t you been out? You basically missed a prime Ashton season. The winters are too cold and gross to do anything worthwhile.”
“I don’t exactly leave the shop much.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have to?”
“No, but you don’t have to be scared in Ashton. At least not most of the time.”
Emilie told her that.
“It’s not that. At least not all the time,” she said, phrasing her words similarly.
He noticed with a light smile.
She couldn’t look at Jack when he did that. It was like when he smirked, the devil came out to play just like he did on stage at DuCain, and she couldn’t concentrate or find the right words.
Already she barely felt like she could do that. Most of the time, she was sure it was like he was talking to a child who didn’t know their alphabet yet. “I have a lot to do in the shop. Emilie has been training me and I don’t always have the time…”
Peeking back up, Jack was still smirking at her.
They both knew that was all a bit of a stretch. Especially whenever she left the shop, she got a wave of Emilie’s hand and a shout for her to have fun. A careless sense of permission.
“I don’t want to let her down.”
“By going out?”
He didn’t understand. She barely understood, but she owed Emilie in a sense.
She shrugged.
“How did you end up here, then? Working for Emilie?”
The moment she moved in with Emilie, her aunt acted as if she had always been there, no questions asked. “My father left after I graduated,” was the best answer Katherine could come up with as she worked out what to say next.
“What do you mean?”
This was usually where Katherine stopped. Her eyes flicked to Jack, trying to gauge whether or not he was actually interested.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“If you want to know.” For some reason, Katherine shrugged, willing to give it. She settled farther into the couch seat, glancing so she didn’t nudge the other girl with glowing skin and perfectly straight hair next to her, tapping her pencil against the edge of a workbook. Music notes were scattered across it.
“He was a single father for a long time. More or less. He wasn’t around a lot.”
He did what he had to do, but not much more. He left money for groceries or takeout and enrolled her in school, however, a year later than the rest of her peers. Otherwise, he was gone most of the day and usually the nights at work.
Her father was a business director of a bank of some sort—she wasn’t quite sure. Katherine never had the time or nerve to ask what he did when he was dressed up in his worn business suits. They were patched instead of traded out for new ever since Katherine’s mother left. She was four when her mother abandoned them. The only reason she remembered the exact date was because it was her birthday. A pink cake with yellow flowers.
When Katherine’s father left her, he picked a much more unassuming date.
One very hot day, she walked home from her job at the thrift store, squeezed into a strip mall not so far that it was painful to walk to, even in the rain. “I came into the house and saw the note on the table. He left for a last-minute job opening in Chicago. Couldn’t pass it up. He also left the number for my aunt.”
Though it would be a lie not to say she didn’t have to go searching for it among the receipts and birthday cards he would never let her throw out. Kitchen drawers were always full of paper and mess, as if her father were building a nest instead of a home for Katherine to grow up in.
Jack’s forehead was as creased as hers as he listened. Maybe she said too much.
She had a habit of doing that.
“He wasn’t much for pleasantries. Goodbyes. I mean, at least he put the house up before he left,” Katherine tried to rephrase. That didn’t sound much better, heart pounding in her chest took up the room between the words she rushed through. “The realtor called before I left for here.”
“That—that really sucks. You just packed up and left home?” His expression turned slightly stunned as he sought more words that weren’t there.
Katherine couldn’t blame him. “Well, there was a deal at the bus station for terrible Tuesdays, so.”
Jack paused before finally giving a short laugh. “Did you just try to make a joke?”
Katherine bit her lip and said nothing.
“It was good.”
She was terrible with jokes. Even her English teacher said her narrative papers came off as self-deprecating.
“I took the bus in when I left home too,” Jack said, easily pulling the heavy weight of his attention away from her. She was able to breathe as she listened. “The city is a far cry from where I was.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“South from here with the rest of the rural hillbillies. Grew up on a farm actually.”
“A farm?”
“What?” Jack countered. “Can’t see it?”
“No,” Katherine said, but she smiled.
Jack snorted at the attempt to hide her emotions.
She definitely could see it.
The dark vampire coming to debase the dark city streets turned into a cowboy. She could see a wide-brimmed hat and a strip of wheat hanging from his curled lips. She leaned farther into the love seat to get a better view of him as a strip of light traveled over his nose all the way down his chest, where a dark mark trailed out of the corner of his shirt.
He cocked his head at her expression.
He didn’t have to say it.
She was staring again.
Covering it with another sip of her coffee, she realized she must’ve been doing so all along. It was halfway gone. “So a farm, like, with sheep and horses?”
“Cows. I’m a big fan of cows. Better behaved than any of my three brothers.” Jack smiled at the thought. Oddly enough, it was a different sort of smile than he had given her before, lighter, but when he looked at her, the expression faded. “Sorry to pry again, by the way.”
Katherine shook her head again, still stunned he was talking to her. And how she managed to talk back. “Don’t be. No one ever asks.”
“So! What are we talking about?” Avril jumped between the two of them as she sat down.
“Who were you talking to?”
“An old friend who is none of your business. Unfortunately, it looks like everyone is down for the count this weekend.”
“It is Sunday.”
“Sundays are for quitters. Speaking of which, you both are going to be having a good time with me at Rosin on Saturday, right?”
“I have a thing before, but I’ll be there.”
She nodded before turning to Kit. “And you. Pregaming with me and the rest of the Rosin gals?”
“Kit is actually going to be with me beforehand.”
Both of their heads swung toward Jack.
“Don’t worry.” He took a sip of his coffee. “We’ll both make it back to Rosin with plenty of time to spare before and after.”
Blinking twice, Avril leaned back as she stared at Jack. “You better.”
“Where are we going?” Katherine asked after another moment. Was Jack inviting her out?
“It looks like you have a severe lack of knowing just how amazing Ashton is. We are going to fix that. And I also have some work to do before we head over to Rosin, but all in good time, Kit.”
“Am I not invited?” Avril asked.
“No.”
She glared at him.
“What? You have warm-ups and shit before the show, do you not?”
With a roll of her eyes, they all had t
he answer. “Fine. But you could at least extend the offer to be polite.”
“Me?”
“I know, since when has that word been in your vocabulary?”
Katherine couldn’t help herself; she barked a laugh.
The student now squished next to her on the couch turned her head with a look.
Katherine pressed her lips together as both Jack’s and Avril’s eyes landed on her. “Are you two done? I’m tired.”
“We just got here.”
“And the open mic is almost as bad as folk night.”
“Folk night wasn’t that bad,” Jack countered.
“Only because you went home with the one singer.”
Jack nodded, thinking back, his face slowly transformed into an appreciative smile. “Oh, right.”
“So we’re going?”
“Let me just tell Marley goodbye.”
Avril turned her focus back to Kit as they sat. “What? You don’t look too pleased. Don’t want to go back to your ball and chain yet?”
Katherine shook her head, it wasn’t that, but she knew what would be waiting for her when she did. Finishing her coffee, she set it on the table beside her.
“What? Not living up to dear Em’s expectations? You wouldn’t be the first.”
“No, it’s just.” Katherine shut her eyes with a smile. It sounded so simple out loud, silly even. “I can’t make a corset.”
Avril cocked her head. “You mean that ugly ass thing I walked in on you trying to put together?”
“I can make nearly everything else in the shop, but corsets.” She shook her head as she looked around the café. Books were even lined up under the bay window seat. If she’d gone to school, would there have been a shop just like this she’d be sitting in? “I just can’t get it right.”
“They can’t all be that bad.”
Katherine looked the Queen of the night dead in the eye. “They come out so lopsided every time that the only person who would wear them is the one French queen who liked painters to depict her with her favorite breast hanging out.”
Avril made a low-humored sound. “At least you have an audience.”
Katherine only shrugged. She was only born a few centuries too late.
“I want it,” Avril said suddenly.
Katherine lifted her chin to look at her again. “What?”
“Your corset. The first one you make that you have the tiniest bit of pride or whatever it is your anxiety-riddled brain feels. I want your first corset.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I look like I joke, darling?”
No. No, she didn’t. At least not right then.
“Whether or not I’m here.” She looked around her as if looking for the gods to be watching her as she said the words. At the very least, the SLAM poet may have been. “I want it. Hell or high water, or you have to bury me in the ugly son of a bitch, I want it.”
Katherine didn’t realize she was smiling until she was. “Deal.”
Avril’s eyes flashed in devilish delight at the word.
“A deal it is.”
Jack rounded back around, twirling his keys around his finger. “Did I miss something?”
“The start of a beautiful friendship, my dear.”
“Those are the devil’s words right there,” Jack responded to Katherine with amused sincerity.
She only gave a small shrug.
Then why did she just feel like she’d just spoken some of the best words of her life?
Chapter Seven
Each stair creaked under her weight, but Katherine was barely paying attention as she mounted them back up to the separate door leading to the apartment.
She was going on a date with Jack.
Or not a date, but she was spending Saturday with him. How did this happen? Besides the fact that he didn’t ask her first so she could say no, she was going out on the town with Jack… Jack…she wasn’t sure what his last name was, but that didn’t even matter. Nor did the fact that she never pressed to know what they’d be doing.
She was going to see Ashton with Jack.
Locking the door behind her, Katherine dropped her bag by the door and walked farther into the apartment, glancing around the place where the kitchen light and a lamp in the living area were switched on to a low glow. However, there was no Emilie.
Pausing on a creaky length of wood, Katherine heard something that from the past months she’d already gotten used to when neither her aunt nor her could sleep. Katherine grabbed a heavy quilt from the pile layered on the pull-out bed and wrapped it around her shoulders as she followed the deep bellow of sound.
Music, loaded with heady singers, pulsed with each step Katherine took downstairs toward the workroom. The record player ground out lyrics of ’40s swing over the sound of Emilie sewing to the beat with each tap from her fluffy slipper to the machine’s pedal.
The quilt puddled around Katherine like a cape as she waited in the doorway.
There was an easy movement Emilie had while sewing, as easy as breathing.
Katherine watched her now as each detailed curve of pastel yellow bloomed from Emilie’s practiced fingers.
Emilie peeked up over what she called her sewing specs of narrow wire glasses, noticing her. She gave a little shimmy as she stood up to the beat, dropping everything to make her way to Katherine.
She shook her head.
Emilie only responded with another roll of her shoulders. She extended her hand out in front of her as the chorus started, and Katherine had no other place to go but to take it.
Pulling her farther into the workroom, Emilie lifted her arm and twirled Katherine around once before they were both there in the middle of the shop, dancing and knowing that no one was watching except for Betsy, the sewing machine, who had long since stopped whining.
Katherine closed her eyes and wiggled her hips down and back up again to her aunt’s hoots.
Laughing, she smiled wide, just as wide as Emilie, who gulped down big streams of air from the strenuous movement. She sat back down in the bowed chair, covered in a pillow and blanket.
She sighed. “Back already?”
Katherine nodded.
“Did you have fun tonight?” her aunt asked her again.
“I think I’m going out on Saturday.”
“On your own?”
Katherine glanced down and breathed a short laugh. “No.”
Emilie nodded sagely. “You look lovely, lovely.”
Debating her answer, Katherine let out a deep breath, thinking about Avril and Jack.
How Jack smiled at her, even if it was only for a moment.
She could tell that smile was only to be seen by her.
Katherine shook her head as something tangled tight inside her. It knotted and turned taut until it wrapped around and around each of her ribs, like a spool of string in her chest. “I think so too.”
“Good. Then come here and help me with this.”
Chapter Eight
When Jack realized that he was in love with Avril Queen, it felt like he was slapped around the face and left to sting. She promised him that she would be on her best behavior on stage with him at DuCain during one of his first packed night performances.
That meant very little when it was obvious she had already told the rest of the world she was always poised to be at her worst.
For some reason, he didn’t think that he had to worry about that when it came to Kit.
But then again, he didn’t really know that either. For the past week when Avril was home, she teased him about the fact that he invited the girl out before he worked that Saturday evening without thinking after they talked for less than an hour at Keys.
One minute, Kit was some sweet new girl to Ashton who can barely string together a sentence without stuttering. He thought Queen took pity on along with her tendency to collect the sort of shiny things Kit made.
And then the next… he couldn’t put a finger on it. All he knew from what he overhe
ard was when Queen was bumping shoulders with the brown-eyed little seamstress, teasing her, she fed off it. Kit managed to snap back with more wit than Jack ever imagined anyone could possess wearing a fifties housewife skirt.
What the hell was he thinking?
Jack ran a hand through his hair like a nervous tic. If he kept it up, he would likely end up with a forced receding hairline like his dad.
They were another thing he couldn’t stop thinking about ever since he talked about them with Kit and all her questions, he couldn’t help but find himself answering with a sort of ease. Now, when he closed his eyes to get some sleep before going to work the next day, his calendar in the past week oddly full and exhausting, Jack saw the farm.
He saw the willow trees where leaves caught on the rain gutters and remembered how high his brother had climbed one near the barn before he fell, grunting out noises with every branch he hit on the way down.
His thoughts and schedule had only been interrupted when Penelope would not stop fucking calling him. After not answering a dozen times, he would have thought she would’ve gotten the message.
He didn’t want to talk to her.
At least not right now.
He knew what would happen when he finally did pick up. She’d yell at him. Then she’d complain about him ignoring her in that constant screech she did when she was pissed, then he’d screw her to shut her up, or at least make the screeches more manageable. Maybe he’d reach over to the arm of the couch in her studio apartment and knock over the god-ugly lamp her parents gifted her for a housewarming.
It didn’t sound too awful right now, actually.
If anything, it would equal the odd discomfort that clenched his chest tight with anxiety until he tasted sour apples on the back of his tongue, like poison. He couldn’t imagine how Kit managed to deal with whatever this feeling was all the time. She was sharp with anxiety and always on the edge of feeling like tiny strings were pulling her ribs apart, medieval torture style.
He felt it the moment he stood out on the sidewalk outside of Emilie’s shop. Kit clomped down the side staircase leading up to the apartment. Her loose tennis shoes slapped each red-painted step.
She gave an uneasy smile, tucking her hands into the pleats of her yellow skirt as she stood in front of Jack. “Hi.”