Trade Me (Cyclone #1)(5)
He shrugs. “You’re right. It’s not my place to say it doesn’t matter what people say about you. And I should have stopped that before it turned into a pile-on.” He indicates the room we just came from with a tilt of his head. “I was just taken aback.”
He looks at me like he expects me to shrug it all off, like I’m supposed to pat him on the shoulder and say that it’s okay.
But it’s not. And the fact that he thinks it can be just makes me feel worse. Nothing about my life is okay right now, and he can’t change that.
“Can I…” He takes a deep breath, and then, that cocky smile is back on his face, like he’s sure of himself again. “Can I get you coffee or something as an apology?”
He holds his hand out to me, like I’m supposed to shake it. When he does, his coat—impeccably tailored gray wool—pulls back from his sleeve. For a second, with his hand outstretched, I see dark ink against his wrist, the edge of a tattoo that seems completely at odds with everything I know about him.
For just that second, I wonder if I’m imagining it. His life has been an open book to the world ever since his father first put him in a television commercial at the tender age of twenty months.
Everyone knows everything about Blake Reynolds, boy prodigy, certain successor to Cyclone Systems. Everything…except I’ve never heard of that tattoo.
I take another step away from him, putting my hands behind my back.
“Let me explain something,” I say. “You get to park in a spot reserved for the Chancellor’s Office.”
He grimaces. “Yeah. I usually don’t. But when I started school, he…um.” He trails off, as if realizing that now is not the time to remind me that the entire university administration is no doubt slavering over the potential endowment boost his attendance represents.
“By contrast,” I say, “I have an hour between this class and my next one. If I can’t knock off one of my assignments in that time, I will be up until two tonight.”
His smile fades.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re probably a legitimately decent person. But I don’t have time for your apology.”
“Two-second version, then. I’m sorry I was clueless. I’ll try to do better.”
He looks at me, his eyes serious, and that damned something, that coiling awareness in my stomach starts up again. It almost makes me mad that he won’t let me walk off steeping in my anger. No; he has to take that away from me, too.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” I say, and I start to leave.
“Tina.”
I turn back reluctantly.
“You were right about almost everything you said,” he says. “But there was one thing you were really wrong about.”
“Oh?”
He gives me another one of his smiles, and this one seems to curl around me, catching me up in a wave of warmth. “You said that I didn’t notice people like you.” His voice lowers. His eyes are relentlessly blue, and they cut into me. “That’s completely false. You’ve never been invisible to me. I saw you the first day we crossed paths, and I’ve been seeing you ever since.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. Against my better judgment, that little spark of something ignites in my stomach. A flame dances, ready to catch fire.
But I have to be vigilant.
“On the contrary,” I hear myself say. “This morning, you cut in front of me in the parking lot. You were three inches from me. And…” I hold up my sleeve, showing the damage.
He winces.
“So when I said you didn’t see me, I meant it. Literally.”
His eyes shut. “Shit.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m used to it.”
2.
BLAKE
The kitchen window of my house high up in the Berkeley Hills overlooks fog-shrouded waters, interrupted by the bulk of San Francisco to the south and the illuminated towers of the Golden Gate Bridge further north.
Twilight is coming and I haven’t turned on any lights. I’m surrounded by granite and stainless steel, and I’m considering the benefits of an apple that I’ve rinsed, when my phone rings.
To be precise, it’s not actually my phone. It’s the highly experimental video chat app on my even more experimental watch.
My pulse picks up a few beats. I love my dad. But there is, after all, a reason why his ring tone is the ominous-sounding Imperial March from Star Wars. He’s difficult, demanding…and I’m not about to make him wait. I tap my watch, accepting the call.
He appears on the tiny watch screen. Reduced to thumbnail size, he looks exactly like his publicity photos. His eyebrows are thick and bushy; his hair is turning to salt and pepper. Other than the hair, though, he looks a lot like me. Same wiry build. Same blue eyes; same Roman-centurion nose.
“Blake.” He must be at one of his standing desks, because he paces back and forth, his head shifting. In the back of my mind, I notice that the video is finally following his movements with nary a glitch. He frowns at me. “You’re backlit.”
“Julio,” I say. “Lights.”
My kitchen lights come on in a dazzle of brilliance—all of them, from the bright, recessed LEDs overhead to the warm under-cabinet lights that catch the gold flecks in the granite counter.