Once the lemonade is drained, Mandy says she’s going to see Zachary. That’s cool. I could use some time just playing around on my phone while some quality trashy TV reigns in the background. Perhaps that’s a good way to mourn.
But when I get home, there’s a figure on my steps. Hunched over. Waiting.
“Luke?”
“Hey.” He stands, almost like he’s at attention, except that his lips squish together and his chin and forehead are tense. He has the kind of expression that conveys, hey, we all die, but it still sucks. I walk up the path. I want to ask why he’s here and somehow let him know it’s cool if he doesn’t want to see me, but I’m not sure what combination of verbs and nouns would be right to get that across. Before a word comes out, his arms open, and he pulls me to his chest. His mouth is next to my ear, but blocked by a curtain of my hair, so when he talks, it tickles against my skin. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I wish I could have hugged you this morning.”
I push my face into the crook of his elbow. His palm touches my hair. Something warms in my chest as his thumb runs along the back of my neck. I’m half listening as he says something about how he was working and needed to be professional, etcetera, etcetera. When he asks if I’d like to get a drink, my “yes” is muffled in his suit jacket. It makes us laugh.
It’s not really funny. We just need to laugh.
We walk to Sally’s. Members of the media buzz about outside. There’s a network news van. A reporter tries to catch students and townies alike to get their views on the strange occurrences around Allan. Luke blocks them for me as we head to the pub. The bouncer who usually gives me a wink doesn’t give me one this time. He stands up straighter and nods to Luke and calls him sir. But once we get in, most of the other people skid away from us. They see my purple eyes and they jerk to the left, or dodge to the right, afraid. I’m not the only person with purple eyes, but the others I spot also have a wide berth around them, minus a friend or two.
Luke nabs us a table, but it’s not really private—it’s practically in the center of the room. A girl a few years older than me comes by and places her hand on Luke’s shoulder. “I heard you were back in town.”
“Hey, Jenny,” he says. I want to smack that grin off his face.
“Well,” she says, glancing at me before she leans over and whispers into his ear. I don’t mean she talks quietly in the vicinity of his ear, I mean she cups her palm and eyes me now and then over her gaudy red fingertips as she clearly divulges something I shouldn’t hear. There’s a mean edge to her eyes. Luke laughs.
“That is certainly something I never heard in Richmond,” he says. His tone is polite, but behind it there is this hidden sarcasm that you can only hear if you’re looking for it.
She gives a brilliant smile and an effusively gooey, “Well, keep it in mind,” as she walks away, her hand flowing off his back.
He observes her as she leaves, which makes me want to find some guy and stare at his crotch or something. I mean, he only looks at her for a beat, but sometimes, when I’m up on stage with my troupe, you miss one beat and the whole number is thrown off.
“What?” Luke says when he turns back and sees my slight pout and furrowed eyebrows, an expression I don’t make any attempt to hide.
“Nothing,” I say as I do a yoga breath and take a sip of the wine Sally got me generously fast, considering how busy it is. There-was-a-death-on-campus busy.
“I know that look.” He points at me. “You were jealous.”
“No.” I resist the urge to go on. A staccato “no” is better than a languid denial.
He leans back and folds his arms across his chest. God, he has nice arms. Nice police-trained arms.
“So...you aren’t jealous?” He’s no longer playful. Something has shifted and I don’t know what.
“No,” I say again, but all the oomph from the first “no” has meandered away.
His shoulders loosen and he leans forward. “Look, Quinn, if you’re interested in someone else, just tell me. It’ll hurt, but I’d rather rip off the Band-Aid now. Or at least know I’m competing.”
Competing? What the fuck? “I am not some prize to be won,” I say.
He swallows and moves his hands out, palms down. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He takes a few breaths. “I don’t mean to go off half-cocked. Can you just tell me what’s going on between you and that guy at the hospital?”
You mean Rashid. You mean the guy who kept trying to kiss me in his lab. The guy who held me as I tried to process Danny’s death.
“I don’t know.”
At least I’m honest.
Luke squints and he drinks a large portion of his lager, pounding the empty glass down. “Okay.” He leaves, mumbling something about taking a piss.
I look at how calm my wine looks when it’s just sitting there. Then I disrupt its peace and take a sip.
Sally bustles over. “Two more?”
“Um.” I don’t want to order Luke a drink when he’s clearly going to want to leave after this.
“I’ll just get you two more. A day like this needs it,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. She’s about to turn but a boisterous, ruddy-faced man leans toward her. “Hey, Sally, you sure it’s a good idea to serve someone like her?” He nods to me, and acts like I can’t hear him even though he’s yelling. My chest flushes. But the last thing I want to do is cause problems for Sally.
“I can leave...” I start pulling the maroon cardigan off the back of my chair, but she stops me.
“No, Quinn. You aren’t the only one. And anyway, we’re Allan. We’re in this together.” She frowns at the guy, who looks in his beer and wanders away. She gives me another shoulder squeeze, another leprechaun wink, another whisk of her tray, and she’s gone.
I’m not being paranoid. People are staring at me with their normal eyes. Whispering. Keeping their distance.
Luke comes back and instead of standing next to his chair and saying he’s tired or something, he settles back in. I had not planned on what I would say if he settled back in.
A big football-y looking guy comes over and slaps Luke’s back. Hard. He flinches a little before turning around.
“Mike,” he says, his voice like lavender. “I should have known it was you.”
“Of course, you big dipshit. What are you doing back in town?” He steps back, but stumbles a little. “Oh wait, your sister is going to die, I remember now.”
Luke’s smile lapses. Every other muscle in his face tenses.
“Oh shit,” this douche says. I reach under the table and grab Luke’s knee. He brings one of his hands to meet mine and holds on. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just mean, yeah, she’s sick. Which is too bad, I mean, she used to be hot.”
Luke jerks. I squeeze his knee harder. He looks back at the table. The douche jams in next to me. “Anyway, sorry man. That sucks.” Douche looks into his beer, as though he is contemplating all the suckiness in the world, which is apparently mixed in with some hops. Then his face springs up and his drunken red cheeks are aimed directly at me. “So, I’m Mike.”
He brings his hand up to shake mine. And you know what? I don’t give a shit if it’s rude. I don’t give a shit if this guy is just having a night. I cross my arms and stare at him.
Evidently, the proper Emily Post response to that is to squeeze the woman’s thigh, closer to the panties than to the knee, and say, “Why don’t you lighten up?”
Luke couldn’t see Mike’s hand, but I guess he saw the surprise in my face and my intake of breath. I guess he knows this guy. Luke stands up and takes my arm, pulling me to him more forcefully than I would like. I mean, unwanted leg touching is nothing to sneeze at, but I don’t need some man on a white horse to save me from it.
“This is my girlfriend,” Luke says, clenching his fists and glaring at Mike. I’m struck by two things simultaneously. One, I evidently don’t deserve a proper noun. And two, I get the girlfriend status without having agreed to it.
Mike sees nothing more of value in the situation. He gets up, ready to pursue his next skirt.
Luke puts his hand on my waist and tries to draw me close to him. I pull away.
“I’m going to go home,” I say. “It’s been a long day.”
“I’ll come with you.”
I can’t shrug this guy off. Aside from some blips, and aside from the gun, he is nice to me. And he has a sister who I adore, and another sister who is dying. Emily Post, where are you for shit like this?
We walk along the cold bricks. The three blocks home suddenly seem inconveniently far. And I normally love to walk.
“Why are you upset?” he asks.
“You said we were together,” I say. “We aren’t dating. Did we have some sort of DTR chat that I’m unaware of? We just hung out a couple times, that’s all.” The raw emotion rises in my voice.
“DTR?” He cocks his head in an annoyingly adorable way.
“Defining the relationship. This is not defined,” I say, my fists tight.
He stops in the sidewalk. I stop too, but I look to the side, at a tree, not at him. I don’t want to look at him.
“Okay,” he says. “I get this. You need time to realize that other guy isn’t right for you. You want to move slowly. I can move slowly.”
He moves like a mime, deliberate but in exaggerated slow motion, as he reaches toward my face and then, centimeter by centimeter, he brings his lips to mine. I twist away so he can’t see my smile. Once I’m sure my voice can be steady, serious, I say, “You shouldn’t kiss me. I might be contagious.”
“You’re probably right.”
I should hate that he admits this. But I don’t. He’s sensible. For some reason I like sensible. It makes my chest feel warm, even though I don’t like losing him. It makes too much sense.
“Yeah, so, I guess that’s that.” I start walking away from him, for good. While my cheeks tense with sadness, my shoulders relax. A weight is gone.
“What do you mean?” he says, jogging to get around me, stopping me in my path. The weight returns.
“We can’t do anything, so, well...” I say.
“I still want to hang out,” Luke says, his gaze hard. “And I don’t like you kissing anyone else.”
My heart beats rapidly and my jaw hurts from clenching it. Who does he think he is, steamrolling me into a serious relationship after a few fucking dates.
“I’m not looking for a relationship,” I say, mumbling into my chest, staring at my shoes. “I told you that.”
“Why not?” He opens his arms and steps back, as though the world is our oyster and I am free to claim him. But these are disjointed thoughts. If I was with him, I’d be confined. Trapped.
I hold my elbows. He rubs his eyes. “Look, my life is shitty right now. But when I’m with you, I feel good. It’s like all that other shit is manageable.”
“But don’t you get it, you’re happy because we were just having a good time. And this is never going to be more than that. Especially not now.”
He takes my hand, holding it loosely, his thumb rubbing my wrist. “We could still be something good.”
Dammit. He has a response for everything. He keeps fighting me. In a fury to win, I latch on to the thing that will get him to stop looking at me like I’m his savior. “We were never going to be anything, Luke. Don’t you get it? I’m a...well...it doesn’t matter who I am. But we know who you are. You’re just a townie.”
He drops my hand. His jaw tightens. His shoulders stiffen. His fingers clump into his fists. I wait for his riposte, but it never comes. Instead those sharp green eyes glisten in the moonlight. He walks away.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” I say into the dark. But his figure keeps moving away from me, getting smaller and smaller until he turns a corner.