99 Percent Mine(13)

“Don’t worry, we’re all good. Make the place beautiful and get me out of here.” He took the crew? I cannot imagine him making that kind of power move. I look at his brute frame in my peripheral vision, and maybe I can. “Take it from me, it’s weird not being on a payroll.” I nudge his shoulder with mine, resisting the urge to rest against him. “Thanks for choosing us over him.”

“Well, thank you. For, ah, employing me.”

“Oh, I’m your boss now?” Just as a dopamine surge fills me and I think of so many sleazy, funny responses that I could go with, the image of Megan’s face makes me bite my lip shut. Teasing him is my Olympic sport, and I can only compete once every four years. But he’s going to be her husband soon. “Think of us as business partners.”

He gives me a strange look. “Are you okay?”

“Sure, I’m fine.”

He gets to his feet. “I was bracing myself for a classic Darcy zinger. How did you manage to resist?” He holds a hand down and pulls me up so easily I momentarily leave the ground.

I sigh. Another of life’s pleasures is over. “I officially retire. For obvious reasons.”

I climb a couple of steps to be closer to his eye level. Patty is still tootling around in the garden. “Hurry it up,” I tell her, hugging my arms around my waist. “I’m getting cold.”

“What’s that?” Tom’s noticed the reddened mark on my wrist. He can always sniff out danger.

“Just a reaction to my new perfume.”

Tom reaches for my arm but stops when an inch separates our skin. He opens his hand over the mark and measures it. He’s pissed. Outraged. Mouth open from the sheer audacity. I’m surprised the sky doesn’t unfurl into black thunderclouds, crackling with lightning. “Who did it?”

“Don’t fuss.” I wrap my forearm behind my back and put more marshmallows into my mouth. Through the white sugar foam I say, “Looks worse than it is.” What a horrible sentence.

“Who did it?” He repeats it, his eyes supernatural orange. He looks back at the street. He’s going to hunt that black car down. He’s going to tear out Vince’s throat.

How does no one else ever notice this beast inside him?

“No, not that guy. Another fucking idiot at work. He knows to not do it again.”

I’ve already got my follow-up retort locked and loaded: I can take care of myself. He knows it. We stare like we hate each other.

I can feel the energy in him shimmering. He’s got thoughts and opinions, but he’s swallowing them, and they taste awful. He’s probably thinking about what he’d do to anyone who put a mark on Megan. He’d lick up blood.

“If he needs reminding, let me know,” he manages at last. He’s twisting away from me now, putting distance between us. This is something he doesn’t like about me. My dark, messy lifestyle scares the shit out of him.

I’m struggling with my temper too, for a different reason. I wouldn’t mind betting Megan’s too simple to realize what she has. She’s at home embalming herself, bleaching her cuticles and lubricating her follicles or whatever it is that well-groomed women do. She’s an aesthetician after all, and no one can trust a slovenly beauty therapist. I bet she’s staring at her own face in the mirror.

Meanwhile, her fiancé is like an apple pie on a windowsill, and this world is full of sugar addicts like me. It’s her goddamn carelessness that has always gotten me.

If he were mine … I can’t let myself think it.

My jaw aches from not blurting everything out. “Let’s go in.”

Valeska shakes the snow from his fur. I shake the snow from mine. He holds up an ancient key ring. “Check it out.”

“Well, that’s a blast from the past.”

It’s a key ring given to Tom by Loretta when we were kids; it’s Garfield, wearing earphones, with Odie next to him, mouth open in a bark. Printed is: SILENCE IS GOLDEN!That was Loretta’s nickname for Tom: Golden. I was Sweetness, and Jamie was Salty.

Nicknames were everywhere, growing up. Prince, Princess. My dad’s special name for Tom that made him go red and pleased: Tiger. Maybe Dad did know what we brought in that night.

“I love that you have a key,” I say without thought, like a creep. “This would be a collector’s item, probably.” I use his Garfield key to unlock the door, and he scrapes his thumbnail into the empty screw holes where my BARRETT WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY brass plaque used to be. He’s probably thinking about how I’ll never shoot his wedding. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry.” But also, I’m not.

I push the door open with my knee. He’s looking now at the remaining plaque that reads MAISON DE DESTIN, hung by Loretta to set the mood for her tarot clients. Ooh. Something about destiny. Fancy. He’s wistful as he uses his thumb to check if it’s screwed tight.

“I miss her so much,” he tells me, and we are sad and silent until Patty does her jackhammer run through our legs, sneezing and huffing. Thank you, little animal.

I click on the nearest lamp, and the first thing we see is my underwear. Above the fireplace, there’s a row of fancy black bras hanging up to dry on the old nails that once held our Christmas stockings.

“Well,” Tom says after a beat. “That would give Santa a stroke.”