Sign Here(12)

I wasn’t watching Cal. I didn’t even think to.

That was my mistake.

First of many.

After an hour of deliberation, I got three women to buy us all drinks if I paid them double. It was a fair-enough deal, all things considered. If this helped Cal and me get out of this nightmare, it was worth it. I paid them up front to secure their secrecy. When we got back to our table, it was already crowded with slick skin and bikini strings and empty shot glasses. A few men orbited nearby, panting. I pushed forward, looking for Trey.

“Hey, I got three ladies here who would like to—” But I stopped when I saw Cal.

On our table, a woman lay splayed out on her back, naked save a lime in her mouth and a full shot glass balancing over her belly button. Cal knelt between her split thighs and took the shot glass in her teeth. She gave a little twitch as the booze went down, and then she pulled herself up the length of the other woman’s body to the lime, pausing over her bottom lip long enough to get a “Sweet Jesus” out of Trey. Then she flipped the lime into her mouth and bit down, juice running down her neck.

The woman rose on towering heels and sent an empty glass to the floor, where it shattered, all sparkle against the liquor-soaked laminate.

“I’ll get a broom,” the next in line said, but Cal shook her head.

“Don’t bother.” And to the crowd’s delight, she sank back to her knees. Then she looked up at me. Her cheeks were red, but a different kind of red than I had seen before. This looked less like blood and more like fire. The girls I’d paid fidgeted behind me, embarrassed to be on my team.

“Welcome back, Pey,” she said, balancing a new shot on the next stripper’s stomach. “I honestly thought you would pussy out.”

Trey laughed.

“Good one, Cal! Pey is a pussy!”

She ignored him, holding my gaze.

“Nobody eats limes with J?ger shots,” I said, shock rendering me dumb.

“This is Hell, Pey.”

Cal stood up and turned away from the table, from the woman on the table, from Trey. She turned away from everyone but me. Then she bent over and dragged one finger along the club’s floor, glistening with glass and booze and blood.

“We can do whatever the fuck we want.”

She put her finger in her mouth, and the crowd went wild.





SILAS





“HOW WAS SOCCER?” SILAS asked when Mickey came through the front door. He stood over the stove, stirring paella. Recently, Lily had been working late most nights at the gallery, even though it was left to her when her parents died and was run seamlessly by the primary curator, to whom she had nothing to prove. Silas guest taught at the local college’s business school, but the semester was over and he had given the final tests to his TA to grade, so he was officially on summer vacation, waiting for everyone to catch up. He heard Mickey kick off her sneakers and drop her bag on the staircase before she walked back to the kitchen.

“Hi, Dad,” she said, stepping up to the stove and putting her head under his elbow. He opened his arm and pulled her against his chest, keeping the spoon in the pot. Sometimes his daughter reminded him so much of Lily, he would forget, just for a second, who was who. Mickey looked more and more like her mother every day. She was getting closer to the age Lily and Silas were when they met—closer than he felt comfortable with. He kissed the top of her head, which was a different color from her mother’s, but not by much.

“What am I missing?” he asked, holding out the steaming spoon. Mickey touched her lips to the wood and scrunched her nose. She looked the most like Lily when she concentrated, Silas thought.

“Cayenne,” Mickey said.

“God, you’re good,” Silas answered, and nodded toward the cabinet. Mickey hitched herself up on the counter and pulled down the spice. She stayed there, her knees squared with his hips, golden hairs on her long legs. Legs like her mother’s, he thought. He searched her face, looking for something of his. He could hear himself in her voice sometimes, but he was hard to find in anything physical.

“How was soccer?” he asked again.

“Good.”

“Oh yeah?” Usually, she would only shrug or beg him to let her quit. “Good” was a whole new ball game.

“I think I made a friend,” Mickey said, dipping her finger into the pot and sticking it in her mouth. She nodded. “That’s better.”

“A friend, huh? No one as cool as your old man, though, right?”

He handed her the cayenne, and she twisted around to put it back on the shelf.

“She helped me out at practice.”

“With your footwork?”

“With some asshole.”

Silas raised his eyebrows at his daughter. “What asshole? Also, don’t say ‘asshole.’?”

“Some kid was being an ass—was being a jerk,” Mickey said, swinging her legs a little, just enough to make a hollow sound on the cabinets below. “She stood up for me.”

“Do you need me to break some kneecaps?” Silas said.

Mickey smiled. “No, thanks. She pantsed him.”

Silas laughed, despite himself. He hadn’t heard that word in a long time. He wanted to tell Lily, see if she had the same memory of that away game senior year.

“Who is this girl?”