Real Men Knit(31)
Zig frowned. “Mind on her work? If you say so.”
Now it was Jesse’s turn to frown. “What’s with the ‘If you say so’? You all know Kerry. She’s the girl who worked in the shop all these years helping out Mama Joy.” He shook his head. “Maybe you didn’t notice her. Brown skinned, glasses, kind of unassuming, but a nice smile.”
Ziggy laughed. “Oh, we noticed her all right. We been noticing her. Just like half the guys over by the bar right now. I don’t know what’s wrong with your eyes—that woman is no girl.”
Jesse spun around quick enough to catch a crick in his neck, but still didn’t see Kerry.
Zig laughed. “You don’t see her because she’s got guys on each side of her jockeying to buy her a cheap drink. Look to the right. She’s with that friend of hers with the ample assets and the dimples.”
It took another second, but then he spotted her. There was Kerry, and just as Zig had said, she was flanked by more than a few dudes and her friend Val. She’d changed from the simple jeans and loose top she’d been wearing earlier and was in really tight jeans paired with a tank top that showed more than it hid. She wore her twists up high, showing off her long neck, and large hoop earrings made her skin glow with a kind of iridescent invitation.
Jesse felt his heart begin to thump with a wild beat. Why had he never seen her like this before? Why was he suddenly seeing her in all sorts of ways that made little to no sense? He stared. This woman holding court at the bar was definitely not the shop’s Kerry Girl but some alternate of her morphed into his dream and nightmare. This woman was Kerry Fuller and more than he could probably handle.
Jesse polished off his beer and put it down with a thud as he turned to his friends. “I could use another drink. What about you guys? Next round’s on me?”
Ziggy and Craig looked at each other with caution then back at him and shrugged. “Well, if it’s on you, then yeah,” Craig said as Jesse got up. “Just make sure you only get the drink. Don’t go over there starting shit. She’s off the clock, so not your employee tonight.”
But he was already on his way to the bar, their voices growing distant. Right now it was as if he was being pulled by an invisible thread straight toward Kerry Fuller.
8
Kerry was pissed as well as a little buzzed when she stripped off her clothes to shower that night.
It was moments like these when—though she missed her mother since she’d up and moved to Virginia, following behind the hopes of yet another love—Kerry was at least grateful to have their tiny Harlem apartment all to herself. This way her mother wasn’t home to cast judgment on her condition, not that Kerry hadn’t seen her more than way past buzzed more than a time or three. Also, Kerry no longer had to sleep on the old pullout in the living room, since the apartment was only a modest one bedroom.
Still, being both pissed and buzzed made Kerry slightly uncomfortable in her own skin as she went through the motions of taking off her hoops and putting them in her jewelry dish, then lathering makeup remover on her already smudged-beyond-belief eyes. She added more of the oil-based cleanser to her lips, working it in to get off the deep berry stain that had looked so good when she’d first left with Val for drinks but over the course of the night had turned dry and cakey. Like so many other things, not living up to advertised expectations.
She stared at herself as the makeup came off but still couldn’t quite settle herself, no matter how she tried. This low-grade out-of-body thing she was experiencing was probably welcome to some, but to her, it just felt off. It made her wonder if it was the drinks or scarily something more. Usually she was a one-and-done type of girl, preferring to stay fully in control at all times. Buzzed was not a feeling that appealed to her. But for some reason just one drink hadn’t cut it tonight. Not with Jesse Strong all around her. In her mind and then in the flesh.
And as for being pissed, though it was not entirely new, of course, she hated that feeling all the more, especially seeing where tonight’s unsettling pissery came from.
Damn him, he was putting her off her game. Messing up the well-crafted persona she’d spent the better part of her adolescence and twenties creating for herself. Kerry liked to think of herself as a calm spirit and wanted others to think of her as one too. It was part of her armor. And it worked for her. Some did the whole tough-bravado thing. She did the sweet-unflappable-sensitive-caregiver deal. She’d worked hard to create a safe space in her mind where everything stayed calm. But now with Mama Joy gone, and taking on the shop with Jesse, it seemed that space was under constant attack. So much so that she couldn’t even go out, feel uninhibited for just a moment and have a good time without the reminder of her troubles, the shop and how they wove too closely together. Yes, Kerry could easily admit, at least to herself, that she cared about the Strong brothers. All the Strong brothers. But damn Jesse for taking her feelings and things too far tonight.
She turned on the shower and debated whether to make the water extra hot or extra cool, wondering which would regulate her mood in its current state. Sure, she was being flirty but she was also, as usual, on alert while at Bird’s, being extra careful given the energy of the restaurant that night.
Kerry was no fool. She wasn’t about to just take a drink from any stranger on the street. Man, woman, hot or not. But the offers hadn’t been bad. At least it was interest, she’d first embarrassingly thought. No one was looking at her tonight with pity or, worse, tolerance. No, she wasn’t just a fixture. She was a living, breathing woman, and for a while she liked it. So Jesse, helpful as he may have been, had a lot of nerve swooping in like he did and ruining her good time when he didn’t even know about the situation.