One of Those Faces (16)

He hesitated.

“For a quick drink,” I added. He was a good guy. Or at least he thought he was. I’d found that good guys didn’t want transparency. They were too careful. They didn’t want an “easy” girl. Or they didn’t want it to seem like that’s what they wanted. But I wasn’t looking for that tonight anyway. I just couldn’t go back in alone.

Both of Iann’s hands were in the pockets of his jacket. “Are you sure? You have a lot of work to do, right?”

If I was really going to do more work, I definitely couldn’t do it sober. “Screw it.” I waved my hand. “Do you want a drink or not?”

He laughed. “I could go for coffee. I think I still have to power through tonight.”

I shrugged and took the first step toward my door. The heaviness remained but was somewhat lighter. I pulled out my keys and turned the lock. Glancing over my shoulder, I noticed Iann standing two steps below me. When I flicked on the light, Woodstock meowed loudly at me from his perch on my drafting table. Without bothering to make sure the door didn’t slam in Iann’s face, I lunged for the table and shooed Woodstock from my illustrations. Luckily, no smudges. I couldn’t afford another delay.

Iann caught the door and stepped in, then let it go behind him. “Cute cat,” he said, reaching down for Woodstock before the fur ball scurried under my bed and out of reach.

“He is, but is it worth the fur?” I asked myself aloud as I brushed the leftover orange tufts from my table.

Iann observed my apartment. There wasn’t much to see. Erin called it “an artist’s loft,” but it was really a crappy studio efficiency at best. His eyes lingered on the portrait half-hidden below my drafting table. “Can I look at this?” His hand was already on the edge of the dog-eared paper.

My objection never left my mouth.

“Wow, did you make this?” He leaned in closer to the black-and-white portrait of young Issi. I had only been able to afford charcoal and cheap paper in my first days on my own. The portrait had flowed out of me one afternoon when my apartment didn’t even have any furniture other than this table. There were still black smudges on the floorboards where I had gone a little wild with the charcoal and never bothered to clean. I had crammed it behind the leg of the table almost immediately after finishing it. Her long dark hair wasn’t in its usual braid but freely flowing behind her. But her spirit wasn’t in that portrait. It was her dark, angry shell brought to life on paper. She had never been angry like that. “Who is she?” he asked.

No one, not even Erin, had seen this, so I hadn’t needed to generate an explanation before. My mind stalled.

“She looks like you,” he said before I could answer.

I grabbed the paper and slid it back behind the table. “It was an old project.” I started for the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink? I think I have rum.”

He followed behind and leaned against the bar counter, peering into my tiny kitchen. “Do you have coffee?”

“Come on, you’re a bartender, right?” I leaned onto my tiptoes to open the cabinet. There was a full bottle of rum from the last time Erin had come over. She never came to hang out without hard liquor of some sort.

He watched as I shook the bottle and set it onto the counter. “Yeah, but I’m a grad student tonight,” he said, eyeing the bottle. “Okay, maybe one wouldn’t hurt.”





CHAPTER SEVEN


“To be honest, I’m surprised you asked me up,” he said, his cheeks a little flushed. One drink had turned into eight.

I swallowed the last of the copper-colored liquor pooled in the bottom of my chipped coffee cup and poured another halfway. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” He took a quick sip from his cup. “You seemed a little . . . standoffish.”

“What do you mean?” I played dumb.

“I mean, I got the impression you really didn’t want to tell me very much about yourself. Did it bother you when I asked about your family?”

I frowned. “Do you want to add some Coke?”

He tilted his head. “What?”

Without waiting for an answer, I got to my feet, grasping the edge of the table for support. I grabbed a couple of cans and brought them to the kitchen table. “It sounds like your family is really close knit and mine is—” Broken. Fractured. Disturbed. Nonexistent. Dead. Well, mostly dead. “Don’t take it personally. I don’t talk about that with anyone.”

He opened one of the cans and poured it into my glass. “Oh . . . I get it. Sorry.”

I poured him another glass of the cheap rum. My head started dipping forward and my arms felt limp as I held my glass up to my mouth and sipped. The words bubbled at the base of my throat. “Don’t be. I mean, there really isn’t any family to speak of anymore.”

He looked at me expectantly.

“My mom died when I was little, and my sister died in that car accident I told you about.”

His eyes saddened. “I’m so sorry.”

My hand started shaking as I took another sip. “It was a long time ago.” I swallowed and continued, “When I was ten.”

“I can’t imagine. What about your dad?”

It was a reasonable question. The answer was less so. “He kind of lost it after the accident, and we don’t talk anymore.” I glanced up from the table and realized Iann was firmly clutching his glass.