Well Met(62)

Simon walked past me into the kitchen, where he got two shot glasses down off a shelf. I opened the bottle of rum, and he poured us shots.

“So what are you doing here?” He slid one of the shot glasses across the kitchen counter to me.

Good question. I downed the shot in an effort to stall and shuddered at the bite of the alcohol. So many questions bubbled to the surface of my brain in answer to his. So many things I wanted to know. About him. About us. Was there even an us? Where could I possibly start?

Sensing none of my inner turmoil, he sipped from his shot glass, savoring the rum, keeping his eyes on me. He looked as placid as always, while the top of my head was about to fly off. How dare he kiss me like that and not give a shit about it afterward.

There was a good starting point. “You kissed me.” I spat the words out, accused him.

“Ah.” He set his glass down and fiddled with the cap on the rum bottle. “I did.”

“More than once. You kissed me today.”

He picked up his shot glass again and knocked back the rest of the rum before splashing in a little more. “I did. In character.”

“What?”

“Your character likes my character. The pirate.” He picked up the bottle of rum, sloshing the liquid in illustration. “You kissed me back, you know.”

“You kissed me out of character too.” I waved off his offer of a refill. I’d had half a beer at Jackson’s and wanted to keep my head clear. “Last Saturday, when you were yelling at me for missing pub sing and moving some tables around.”

He clucked his tongue before taking another sip of rum. “The tables were fine where they were.”

“They’re even better where they are now.” I sucked in an annoyed breath. This was not what I had come here to talk about. “And then you kissed me.” There. Back on topic. “That was not in character.”

“You’re right.” He closed his eyes and dropped his head. “I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “Sorry?” That was the last thing I’d expected to hear, and the word stung. I remembered our kiss, our real kiss. How he’d pulled away, tried to apologize. And I hadn’t let him. I’d pulled him back and made him kiss me again, and he hadn’t wanted to.

Oh, God. I’d misread everything. I wanted to get out of this kitchen, run out of his house and forget I’d ever met him. But, like poking at a bruise, I had a morbid desire to make it hurt more. “You’re sorry you kissed me.” Yep, that hurt worse. Nausea rose in my stomach. I couldn’t look at him; it hurt too much. So I kept my eyes trained on the kitchen floor. On his bare feet, poking out from the bottoms of those old, frayed jeans.

“Yeah.” His voice sounded like gravel, and his toes flexed against the floor. “I shouldn’t have. And I really shouldn’t have kissed you today at the chess match. That was a shitty thing to do. I thought it would be . . .” He sighed, and I still couldn’t look at him. I examined his lower kitchen cabinets as he spoke. “It was for the bit, you know? When I’m . . . when I’m him it’s okay to do that. Because it’s not really me.”

“So it’s okay when it’s fake. It’s all been fake between us.” I tried to force a laugh, but it came out as an embarrassing cross between a hiccup and a sob. The sound fell flat in the quiet kitchen. “Of course, I get it. I forgot, you think I’m just this stupid college dropout, so why would you . . .” I had to get out of there. I was equal parts enraged and mortified, I was about to cry, and I couldn’t let him see. I took a deep, shaking breath and pushed all the emotion down, forcing a smile to my face instead. “Sorry to bother you. Keep the rum.” I pushed off the counter and started for the front hallway. “Enjoy your night.”

“Hey.” I didn’t see him move, but he’d crossed the room in an instant, catching my arm before I could leave. “No. This has nothing to do with you dropping out of . . . why would you think that?”

“That day I first told you,” I shot back. I was barely holding it together, but if he wouldn’t let me leave with dignity, I may as well let him have it. “At the bookstore? I told you I hadn’t finished college and you looked at me like I was nothing.”

“No.” He didn’t let go of my arm, but he softened his grip from grasping to holding. “That wasn’t it at all. We were joking about Shakespeare and it was . . .” His expression gentled. “It was really nice. But then I saw your face when you said you hadn’t finished school. You looked disappointed. In yourself. I hated that for you.” His thumb stroked my arm while we talked, both soothing me and heating up my blood in a way that had nothing to do with anger.

“Then why?” I shook my head as I tried to reorder my thinking. All this time, I’d thought he’d looked down on me from day one. But this sounded more like empathy. “Why was it a mistake to kiss me?”

He dropped his hand, and now it was his turn to study the floor. “I . . . I can’t imagine Mitch likes it much when I do.” He cast a rueful smile at the linoleum. “That’s why I’m sorry. Not for kissing you. And that’s why I did it today. At the chess match, in front of everyone. Because we’d established these characters, and that story line. It was like a loophole. Just this once, I could kiss the girl I wanted and there wasn’t a damn thing Mitch could do about it.”