Letting Go (Thatch #1)(23)

“Grey, Grey, Grey, Grey, Grey!” Janie yelled as she ran through the apartment to the kitchen. She was out of breath as she set down the three coffees.

“Jesus, did you run to the coffee shop?” I asked, giving her a weird look before going back to the food.

She shook her head as she tried to catch her breath. “There was—I found—hold on!” Grabbing her purse, she dug through it for a few seconds before slamming what looked like a nice-looking brochure onto the bar.

“What is it?”

“It’s for some art gallery place,” Heather mumbled as she looked over it. “Huh. Random.”

Janie snatched it away from her and pointed it at me. “There was a stack of them at the shop, and I grabbed it because the picture on the front is all pretty, see?” She waved it in my direction for half a second before dropping it.

All I had seen was that the brochure was black.

“So I’m looking at it and decide I’m going to go see where this place is to see if it’s close so we could all go, since I love art, you know?”

“You love art?” Heather and I said at the same time.

“Since when?” I asked.

She looked at me for a few seconds before gesturing wildly with her hands. “Since always! That doesn’t matter! So I’m driving, and I find this place, and of course it’s closed since it’s, like, the ass crack of dawn right now. But there are windows, and there was an art piece in the window!”

“It’s an art gallery, you’d figure there—”

“It was of you, Grey!” she said excitedly, cutting me off.

I kept absentmindedly moving around the scrambled eggs, staring at her like she’d gone insane, until it hit me. I inhaled audibly and dropped the spatula. “Jagger,” I breathed.

“Yes! Jagger!”

“Oh my God.”

“I know!” she screeched, and bounced up and down a few times. “He’s having a thing at the gallery place this weekend! We have to go!”

“Wait,” Heather said, grabbing the brochure and looking at it again. “What? What is a jagger?”

“Not a what,” I said, my eyes not focused on anything in the apartment.

“Definitely not a what,” Janie confirmed. “More like a who.”

“Holy shit! Mick Jagger is in Seattle?” Heather yelled.

My lips curved up in a smile, but I still wasn’t able to focus on Heather or Janie. “No, his name is Jagger Easton.”

“Who names their kid Jagger?”

I glanced at Heather and laughed softly. “His mom is kind of obsessed with the Rolling Stones. He even has a sister named Charlie after the drummer, Charlie Watts, and a little brother named after Keith Richards.”

“Okay, so who is he?”

I turned off the stove, and shrugged as my eyes darted over to Janie. “Jagger’s just . . . Jagger.”

Janie was still smiling like it was Christmas, and Heather was now giving me a weird look. “For some reason I don’t think he’s ‘just Jagger’ to you. You’re all smiley and you’re blushing.”

My face fell, and I turned to get plates when Heather turned her stare on Janie.

“And what was this you said? He’s the one with the art show, and there was a picture of Grey in the window? Now that definitely doesn’t seem like a ‘just Jagger’ kind of situation.”

“He’s my friend,” I explained without looking at them.

“Who has pictures of you in an art show?” Heather asked in disbelief.

“Drawings. He does charcoal drawings, he’s really good, actually.” And he has an art show in Seattle this weekend. Does that mean he’s here? A smile slowly tugged at my lips at the same time as the pain in my chest spread.

I hadn’t talked to him since the morning he’d told me he loved me. That’d been almost a month and a half ago, and I missed him. I missed my friend. I missed everything about him. I just didn’t know how to talk to him after what had happened, after I’d run away from him.

“Is he cute?” Heather asked, and Janie snorted.

“Cute is an understatement for him. Hot, rough, rugged, tatted-up-amazing-body-take-me-home is a better description.”

Something I’d never felt when it came to Jagger moved into my stomach, overriding the pain for the moment as I listened to Janie. We’d never talked about the way Jagger looked, so I’d never heard her describe him to anyone. And the way she had . . . I didn’t know how to feel about someone else saying that.

“Well then, I am definitely going just so I can meet him,” Heather said loudly. “God, I haven’t gotten laid in months.”

“What?!” I whirled around, my eyes and mouth wide in horror. Before I could say something stupid—like lay claim to Jagger—I noted both their expressions.

Janie’s smile had turned into some beyond-happy smile that looked painful, and Heather looked like she’d just won something.

A knowing smile crossed Heather’s face. “Do you maybe want to reconsider that whole ‘just Jagger’ bit now?”





Chapter 5

Grey

July 12, 2014



MY STOMACH WAS churning as we walked down the block to where the gallery was. After going back and forth with Heather and Janie for two hours this morning, they’d somehow gotten me into a salon. For the first time in over two years, I’d gotten my nails and hair done while they had gone shopping for me.