Читать книгу When Size Matters - Carly Laine - Страница 11

I’D BEEN LATE getting to Skinny’s. With all that time to spare I’d still managed not to make it on time. No wonder we drove guys crazy! I’d felt better after my talk with Guinness, had taken a quick shower and raced around my apartment trying on different outfits. Good thing my roommate, Andie, hadn’t made it home from the wedding yet, to delay me even more, asking a billion questions I couldn’t answer. I did have to keep stopping to explain to Guinness that we weren’t playing fetch. But that wasn’t why I was late. I’d felt so relaxed in my jeans, short sweater and favorite tennies—really, for the first time in ages—that I’d decided to walk down the long hill from my apartment to the coffee shop instead of driving. Or maybe I was stalling. I never know with me.

Brad was still wearing his suit pants and dress shirt, but he’d pulled off his tie, undone the strangle button on his shirt and rolled up the sleeves a couple of turns. One yummy look.

He was waiting for me in the parking lot, leaning against his old, faded-blue BMW and looking out over Lake Austin, that lengthy stretch of the Colorado River where they’ve dammed it up on the West side of town. I could feel the lick of the flames again as I walked up to those long, long legs. Brad pushed himself off the car—no hands, just legs—told me I looked great and kissed my cheek. There were those lips again, wrapped around the off-center smile. Matt who?

Skinny’s was a big deal to me, my wild life refuge, a place I went by myself not to be lonely. And I never shared it with people who wouldn’t be good to run into at a ragged three in the morning or at ten o’clock on a dateless Saturday night. Brad lived in Dallas, which made him pretty safe.

“Hey, thanks again for the rescue,” I said to fill the silence while we were waiting in line, perusing the pastry case. “I’d been about to do something dire.” It came out breathless. Maybe because of the gravitational pull.

“My pleasure,” Mr. Magnet replied. I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m not really all that fond of bullies.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I answered, witty conversationalist that I am, apparently out of brains as well as breath.

And that was the end of that conversation volley. The quiet grew so thick, it was like having another person there. Then I remembered what Brad had said about Chatty Cheerleader and my vow that Silence was my new best friend. She inched forward in line beside us.

I looked back over my shoulder at him. He stepped closer and smiled. I started rationalizing—we excel at that in my family. Really, Dallas and Austin weren’t all that far apart, less than an hour away on Southwest Airlines. By car, they were hooked together with a straight, flat, slice of the same freeway that linked Mexico to Canada. You just got in the left-hand lane of I-35, set the cruise control for 84 miles per hour, leaned back and prayed. And there was a lot of interface between the people in the two cities. That’s what Brad and I could do, interface.

We moved ahead one half step. Skinny’s was quintessential Austin. Besides the best coffee, Skinny’s could claim the most sinfully decadent desserts on earth. The owner had the genius idea of hiring two pastry chefs: one French pâtissier and one local Austin guy, each to create their own desserts. Hot-blooded sparring between the two had given birth to such creations as Mocha-Morning Blossoms and The Czar’s Chocolate Clouds, Aphrodite’s Cream Puffs and, my favorite, Cupid’s Toes in Cocoa Sauce. Skinny’s wasn’t very big and sometimes the cozy little rooms with the overstuffed chairs weren’t enough to hold the multitudes that crowded there after movies and night classes and on weekends. It didn’t matter. There was always space. Outside, on both sides of the little shop, were acres—okay, maybe not acres—of wood decking, at different levels. On mild nights, like that night in October, you could take your Cupid’s Toes, find a private little world at a table under a gas lamp and contemplate life, talk or just sit there and watch the boats putter by on the lake.

We waited until we’d finally gotten our coffees and cakes, found a secluded table outside and sat down across from each other before we said anything more. “Sorry I let it go on so long. It took me a while to come up with a plan,” he chuckled. I could see him remembering. I hoped he’d had the face view.

“Well, it was perfect and I thank you.” It had come out like a coo. As though I was saying, “Oh, you’re so big and strong…and poor little me.” Except I’m not a very good cooer; I run out of pucker too fast. “You were there on the groom’s side?”

“Yeah, roommates at U.T. Used to play squash, have a beer together whenever I was in town. Good guy. Or he was,” he said wistfully.

“Married, remember?” I reminded him. “Not deceased.” “Well, I haven’t seen him once since she got her princess-cut boulder. Think she’ll let him out now?”

Good point. End of another conversation volley. Dylan: 0.

It was Brad’s serve. Silence sat down, hung around, watched the boats with us. And then finally, he said, “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a bridesmaid. Certified.”

He smiled his smile. Thank goodness. When you joke around as much as I do, you have a better-than-even chance of a flop. “Full-time?” he asked, eyebrows up.

“Nope. Believe it or not, it’s actually not much of a moneymaker. I have to sell stuff to support the habit.” I realized, all of a sudden, that I hate telling guys what I do. It was one of those midchat epiphanies I get sometimes. And midchat, I started to wonder why.

“Like what stuff?”

“Services.” It wasn’t the job I hated, so much. I was new at it but that wasn’t it. The real problem was trying to explain my industry to people who had no idea what the whole thing was about. It could get painful. They usually ended up saying something like, “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

“Are you makin’ me guess or somethin’? All right…I know. Wedding services? No, no. I got it. Dance lessons.”

At least he didn’t say peep show. “Professional.” Now comes the painful part.

“What kind?” he asked.

“Um…professional services.”

“Yes, Dylan, I got that part,” he laughed. “What…kind of…professional…services?” His slow Texas syllables got even slower. As though I was deaf. Or really stupid.

I didn’t want to get into all this. I wanted us to be on the same page. I can’t believe I said that. I hate that stupid expression. But I knew Manly Man wasn’t going to know about all this stuff and it was going to get embarrassing. For both of us. “How do you like Cupid’s Toes?” I asked.

One eyebrow shot up. I’d kill to be able to do that. Maybe I should start interpreting his eyebrows instead of his eyes.

“Your little cakes,” I answered the eyebrow.

“Dylan,” he said with a big, exasperated sigh. “This is real painful. Are you gonna tell me what you do or not?”

“I sell professional services. B-to-B. Um, that’s business-to-business—Internet logistics, human contact technologies. Stuff like collaborative browsing.” I waited for the zone-out.

“What? Like e-Boost?”

Okay, maybe someone else could have seen that coming. If I’d had any fillings, he’d have had a great view. It took me a while to get my jaw back in its socket. “That’s my company,” I said with a big, old, toothy grin. In the collaborative browsing world, happiness is being on the same page.

“Sales, huh? Seems like I’m remembering somebody told me you were a programmer or analyst. Designer or something like that. Something super…nerdy.” He gave me one of his scrumptious grins so I wouldn’t be offended. I pursed my lips and pretended to consider it. But I was really just thinking about his mouth.

And then I got the uneasy feeling that maybe he knew more about me than I knew about him. Like maybe that’s where he’d gotten the idea about thick glasses and stringy hair. Another midchat epiphany: Duh, Dylan. It’s the job, not the name. Damn. I’d rattled on about my name for no reason. Talk about paranoid. Get over the name thing, Dylan. Lots of people have weird names—Pawnee, Breeze Zed, not to mention Keanu and…Rats! What had my friends said about him? I couldn’t recall. Did he really bowl and skin opossums and pick his teeth with a knife? No clue.

He was waiting with Silence.

“Yeah, I was. All of the above. Except for the part about being nerdy.” I gave him a little stink eye for that. “In the business, we prefer to call it technical,” I informed him. He kept grinning at me, enjoying himself. “But I decided to get into sales instead. Something opened up and I went for it.”

“Why?” he asked.

I had to think a little about what to say in response. There was no way I was going to tell him the real reason.

“Money?” he guessed, while I was doing my pondering.

“No, not really.” I mumbled it.

“Did you like your job, like being…technical?” he asked. “Yeah. I did. It’s who I am.”

“Then why?” He really wanted to know. This was one of those first-date tests, I could tell. What if I did switch for the money, was he going to think less of me? Probably. And why did I care what he thought? Because I did. For some dumb reason, I cared a lot. And why do you suppose that is, Dylan? I asked myself. Because, I answered a bit testily, gravity is one hell of a force to resist, that’s why.

“If I tell you, could we talk about you for a while?” “Sure, if you want. Not much to tell.”

“Deal,” I said. “But you’re going to be sorry you asked, and, okay, here it is. I got out of development because I have a good friend, Rex, who’s one of the best technical guys I’ve ever seen and we were talking one day and he said if I wanted to be really good at it—I mean, really, really good—then I’d have to turn off certain areas of my brain so that more blood could flow to other parts, the analytical ones.”

His left eyebrow rose slowly toward his hairline.

I ignored it, took a breath and pushed on. “And the parts Rex was talking about shutting off were the social parts, the parts that care about other things besides geeky stuff, the parts that make normal people different from techies. I thought a lot about what Rex had said and I knew what he meant. And also knew he was right. But I couldn’t do it, didn’t want to do it—I like those social parts—so I got out.”

Both eyebrows were up. He just sat there looking pleased.

It was essentially the truth. My decision had been only a little bit about the money. Okay, maybe more than a little bit. But did I pass his test? I wanted to pass. I could tell he was getting ready to follow up with a whole barrage of other questions. I’d never been with a guy who wanted to talk about me so much. You think that’s what you want, what’ll make you really happy, but then it happens and it’s sort of weird. I cut him off before he could launch them. “Okay. It’s your turn. How did you know about e-Boost?”

I could see him switching gears. Whatever he was going to say about my career strategy, he let it go. “A while back I was considering contracting with them. But—” he took a breath and tried to make his voice small “—‘Y’all are tooo ‘spensive,’ as my little sister would say.”

What a tempting serving of data that was, all piled up and steaming on the output platter. It looked as if Silence was going to be gone for a while. Which tidbit to munch on first, family or job? I’m a sucker for kids. “You have a little sister, too? How old?”

“Four. She’s my half sister. Emily. She’s my dad’s kid with his new wife. But, man, she’s a great little kid.” His grin got even bigger, if that’s possible. Or maybe it got less lopsided.

More data. My mom always said to avoid relationships with men from broken homes. This from a woman who’d busted up at least three.

“We’re not allowed to say that,” I told him.

“Which?” he asked.

“Half. I have a half sister, too, but my mom turns purple if anyone says that. ‘There are no half people in my house.’” I did a pretty good impersonation of her.

“Hey, I agree with that. Emily’s my sister. She calls me bro. So you got any others? Halves or steps or…half steps?”

I thought we were going to talk about him. How did we get down in this Dumpster so quick? It was one of the few situations where I followed my mom’s advice. “Avoid revealing the details,” she always said, “until they’re hopelessly in love and less likely to bolt.”

But it was getting embarrassing avoiding his questions. I opted for a quick, emotionless inventory. Be honest, be light, get it over with. “Yeah, I’ve got a few. Let’s see—one current stepfather, one current stepmother, four ex-stepmothers who each had a kid, so three ex-stepsisters and one exstepbrother, three ex-stepfathers, so add one more exstepbrother, one half sister—no make that one real sister who had a different dad—and one real brother who has a really different dad. Is that right? No, sorry. Only three step-fathers, total. She didn’t marry Asia’s dad.”

I’d caught him midbite. He didn’t react or say anything, just sat there slowly chewing the little cocoa-dipped toes, watching me. His eyes scanned mine, then my mouth, my forehead, down again to my mouth. He swallowed, took a sip of coffee, swallowed that, eyes studying me the whole time.

What? That was supposed to be light. What would he have done if I’d gone into some of the nauseating details? Bolt?

I’d sure been wrong about one thing: Silence was back, filling the space. Boats floated by, people at the other tables talked and laughed and no one at this table made a sound.

Then a picture of Dr. Matt Sears, erstwhile wedding date, popped into my head. I saw him like one of those white mannequins in the window of some posh store, wearing nice shoes.

“Hi,” a voice said before he appeared. “I thought I’d find you here.” And his Cole Haan loafers stepped into our silent little world under the gas lamp.

“Hey, Matt,” I said, looking up at him and smiling, and willed myself physically out of the equation. Whatever happened next, I wasn’t going to be one of the parameters.

Matt put out his you-could-have-been-a-surgeon hand and said, “Hi. Matt Sears. And you must be the White Knight.”

Brad beamed his smile in Matt’s direction, stood and introduced himself. We were all just so happy to be there.

I was left looking at trouser flies. We don’t like to do that nearly as much as guys think. Eyes, I liked gazing at eyes. I moved over on my bench to make room for Prudence. “All right,” I said. “Everybody sit. I’m getting a crick in my neck.”

Brad said, “Yes, ma’am,” and sat.

Matt watched Brad sit and then looked back at me, amused. “No, thanks, Dyl. I was just dropping this by your house. Your Jeep was there and you weren’t so I figured you’d be here.” He handed me a white napkin. “I’ll see you guys later. Nice meeting you, Brad.” Prudence was always nice. Super nice.

Brad raised that eyebrow of his. “Dill? Like pickle?” I shrugged, thinking about the napkin and what was inside.

We stared at each other a minute and then I unwrapped it. A champagne glass. I set it on the table between us.

“Oh,” I said. That was a loaded “oh,” meaning, “What in hell?”

“A souvenir,” Brad answered.

“Oh.” This time I meant “Souvenir of what? Me leaving with another guy?”

“Or,” Brad suggested, “it was an excuse to come see you tonight.”

No comment. I was visualizing Matt walking back to his car alone, head down, shoulders slumped. One of those sad country songs playing in the background. This was Austin, so the singer would be Willie Nelson. I didn’t exactly know any of the words to his songs, but probably he’d be singing something about hell is having a heart in this heartless old world.

“Who is Matt?”

“A friend.”

He looked at my eyes a minute. One at a time, back and forth. “And who is Asia?”

I laughed. Because it was good to not be talking about Prudence. I’d been holding the guilt off, but just barely, and my wrists were getting tired. “Asia is my sister. My beautiful, mysterious, little sister. Asia Cézanne McKay.”

“Man, I love these names. What’s your little brother’s name?” Jeez, he’d heard that part, too.

“Greyson. Greyson Carter McKay. We call him Grey.” His lips worked their way over to the right into his sexy, crooked grin. The one that showed all of his pretty white teeth. I may have mentioned it…

“Their last names are both McKay? I thought you said they had different dads.”

“Yeah, that’s right, but remember? We were talking about you and your family.”

“We were?”

We weren’t but I nodded my head.

“I got a mom who didn’t remarry, a dad who did, a stepmother a couple years younger than me and a real sister, Emily.”

I tried to keep my face impassive, the whole time thinking, Whoa! Younger than you? Out loud I asked, “What’s that like?” Seemed like the Magnet Man and I had some family tree mutations in common.

“Oh, you know, strange at first. But she’s a good mom to Emily and a nice tasty treat for the old man. She and I get along okay. Not too friendly, though.” He chuckled to himself, popping his eyebrows up and down. “She’s pretty hot.”

Trophy wife. Arm candy. I named her Candy Love. Man, oh, man. You just knew Candy Love was a card-carrying Diamond Girl.

“Big diamond?” I asked.

“Huge,” he answered, deadpan.

I knew it! Older = bigger. At least when it came to men and diamonds.

We sat at our little table, pleased with ourselves, as though we shared some secret or maybe an inside joke. I didn’t need my grandma’s antennae to read the vibes. He wasn’t into the whole carat thing. You could just tell. And I was grinning, letting him think we were on the same page. But I wasn’t really opposed to carats. In fact, getting some would be nice, before I was too old and wrinkly to wear them. I knew they didn’t measure love. But if love went with it, a little, itty-bitty carat—or three or five—would have been fine with me. I got squirmy then, knowing I was deceiving him by allowing him to think I was above it all. And then the air changed, the moment was gone.

Acting on some parallel cosmic impulse, we both reached for the champagne glass at the exact same time and knocked it on its side. It didn’t break. Of course not. If it could withstand Groom Daddy’s affections it could withstand anything. Brad reached for my hand with one of his and used his other one to hand me the glass. I took it but he didn’t let go and we became a completed electrical circuit. Switched on.

“You gonna keep it?” he asked, lightly rubbing my palm with his thumb, increasing the voltage.

I barely nodded.

“Good,” he whispered.

Another nod from me. What that thumb was doing to my insides!

“And, Dylan,” he said in that soft, growly voice of his. “I wanna promise you something…”

This time, I just let my eyebrows speak. Up they went.

Both of them. I sat very still, watching him across the table and holding my breath. Waiting with Silence.

“Sky Dylan Stone, I promise I, Bradley Hamilton Davis—”

Oh, nice name. But I wasn’t about to distract him.

“Also known as the Brad Davis and Brad Davis of Dallas—”

No breath would pass my lips until he finished.

“—will never, ever—” he said, dropping his voice even more, but still managing to heat up the “ever.” He paused and looked right into my eyes. Both of them. At the same time. And his thumb kept circling my palm. “—ever…call you Dill.”

I took a deep breath and looked past his upturned lips, straight into the quiet of his charcoal eyes and I felt the rubber bands around my heart begin to snap apart, one by one, and that big, hard knot inside of me start to melt away. And I fell again, for the second time that day. Crashed hard. But this time there was no puffy orange dress to break my fall.