Humiliation burned beneath my skin. “Please excuse me,” I said, grabbing the bag and jerking open the door. I rushed into the frozen air again. The jacket helped, but it wouldn’t have mattered either way. I ran as fast as I could without slipping on the ice, embarrassment and a devastating sense of loss driving me forward.
I didn’t realize until I locked the door to my apartment and leaned against it, panting, that my cheeks were covered in frozen tears. I was such an idiot. And my heart hurt. Bad. Every beat sent an ache rocketing through my body. I was having a heart attack. Or, more likely, my heart had just broken.
Either way, I realized my mistake – my attention was not where it should have been – when a man walked up beside me and grabbed my arm.
8
A lot of people are alive because
I shed too much hair to get away with murder.
—INTERNET MEME
My heart lurched and lodged somewhere in my esophagus as I tried to karate-chop the intruder. Sadly, I didn’t know karate. And he was very well versed in escape and evasion. He easily sidestepped my blow and ducked past the next one.
“It’s me¸” he said, catching my arm again.
I jerked out of his grip. “What the fuck, Ian?”
“Where have you been?”
I gaped at him. He’d essentially broken into my apartment and he was grilling me? “How did you get in here?”
He dangled a key in front of my face, his watery blue eyes waterier than usual. He’d been drinking. “I was worried about you.” As though that would explain away the key.
“How did you get a key to my apartment?” I asked, strolling to my cracker-box kitchen and setting the bag on the counter, thoroughly annoyed with myself. I’d forgotten to get James his sandwich, as frozen and mushed as it was.
James was a homeless guy who lived in an abandoned, partially collapsed shed across the street from me. I’d never actually seen him. I’d heard him. He always sang as I walked home from work, and I finally stopped to talk to him one day. He wouldn’t come out of his cubby of boxes and blankets, but he did tell me his name was James and that he was from the planet Hazelnut. Before that, I’d had no idea there even was a planet named Hazelnut, but I totally wanted to move there. Hazelnut tasted great in coffee. I fucking loved science.
“I had one made in case of emergency,” he said.
I wiped at my face furiously. This had gone too far. It was time to end it. Right after he gave me a ride back to the café. I would have borrowed Mabel’s car, which had actually been my plan, but it wasn’t in the drive. Apparently her great-nephew had borrowed it again. That kid was such an inconvenience.
“I was worried about you,” Ian continued. “You freaking passed out at work. You could have a concussion.”
“I don’t. Someone caught me before I hit the floor.”
Emotion spiked inside him. “Who?”
“A guy. You don’t know him. Wait, how did you get into my apartment again?”
When he dangled the key a second time, I swiped it out of his hand.
“What the hell?” he asked, trying to swipe it back, but I’d curled it into my fist and stuck it behind my back. If he wanted it, he was going to have to fight me for it, and I was not above swallowing it, though the key ring might present a problem. Also, I didn’t particularly cherish the thought of another visit to the emergency room. That would take some explaining.
“You don’t get to just make copies of people’s keys, Ian. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.”
“Not when they’re dating.”
I leveled a warning glare on him as I took off Reyes’s jacket and walked back to my bathroom. I’d wanted a scorching-hot Reyes, but a scorching-hot shower would have to do. Yet I couldn’t even have that with Ian here. “Ian, we’re not dating. We talked about this.”
“What do you call it then?”
He followed me. Into the bathroom. Unbelievable.
“We go out to eat,” he argued. “We go to the movies. We watch television together.”
When I looked in the mirror, I wanted to cry. I really was blue. My lips were a particularly pretty shade of violet, had they been a sweater or a sport drink. And my hair resembled a wig that had caught fire.
I ran my fingers through it and cringed. Reyes had seen me like this. I couldn’t have looked worse if I’d had scales and a forked tongue.
“What do you call that?”
“Hanging,” I said, dragging out the tiny travel blow dryer I found at Goodwill. It was worth every cent of that two dollars and, sadly, not much more. It would take forever to dry my hair, so I concentrated on the roots. I yelled at Ian over the sound of the dryer. “That’s what friends do, Ian. They hang.” Not for much longer, though, if I had anything to say about it. This was getting downright creepy.
I rethought telling Ian about Mr. Vandenberg. He didn’t seem the most stable of men. Maybe Bobert would come through and I could talk to the FBI tomorrow. Until then, Mr. V and his family were in mortal danger. I needed to get to the café and check to see if he’d gone back to the shop. If those men were still with him. Maybe they got what they were after and left, but I doubted it. I tried to come up with a plan. If only I could slip a note to Mr. V somehow. I’d have to think on it.
“We going to dinner?” Ian asked over the hum of the dryer, dismissing the conversation we’d been having.
“If you want to eat at the café, we are.”
He wilted. “I wanted to take you somewhere nice.”
“I’m not dressed for nice. I look like a blue Popsicle with hair.”
A smile slid across his face. He was trying to make amends. “I like Popsicles.”
It didn’t work. Sadly, if Reyes had said that, I would have melted into a pretty blue puddle. Ian didn’t give my girly bits quite the same zing.
“Out,” I said once I got my roots fairly dry and the rest of my hair pulled up into a ponytail. I pointed to the door, ordering my unwanted company out. I had to change if I was going anywhere, and the last thing I wanted to do was give Ian another reason to think there was more between us than there was by changing in front of him. That would be equivalent to throwing gasoline onto a fire.
He backed out, his slow moves evidence of his reluctance. What did he think? I’d scramble out the window? I looked toward it. It was way too small. I’d never make it.
“I’ll warm up the car,” he said.
I gave him a thumbs-up, then shut the door and collapsed against it. The Reyes Effect was still screaming though me, pulsing along my nerve endings, whetting my appetite for more. But it didn’t matter. I had to get my hormones under control. He loved someone else, and there was nothing I could do about it. Absolutely nothing.
I changed clothes, then pulled Reyes’s jacket on, breathing him in as I did so. Before I left, I said a quick good-bye to Irma.
“Hold down the fort, Irm!”
I had no idea what her name really was. She was there when I’d rented the apartment, hovering with her nose in a corner, never moving, never speaking, her toes several inches from the floor. She wore a bright floral muumuu and love beads despite her tiny stature and advanced age. She was old enough for blue hair, so I was guessing she was at least seventy.