“Yeah.” She shifted away from me, just a tad, but enough that I definitely noticed. She twisted her hands so tightly together that her fingertips turned red.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded to know, even though secretly I was glad to see her. My eyes drank her in head to bare toes in a greedy gulp, cataloguing every line and curve. It’d been too long since I’d seen her. “I thought you were with Martin now.” Lace had started up with him right after we’d signed our first record deal. War had been apoplectic. I’d just hidden how I felt like I’d been doing for as long as I could remember. My friendship with War left me with no other choice. “He’d kick your ass if he knew you were here. War’s, too.”
I’d been joking around, but when she turned her head, I sucked in a sharp breath wishing I hadn’t. The left side of her face was a collage of overlapping fading purple and yellow bruises. It was obvious she had been hit hard, multiple times.
I squeezed the side of the table with both hands wishing I could get ahold of Martin’s neck instead.
I was going to kill that mother fucker.
“Yeah, well, as you can see he already took care of that.” A spark of defiance brightened her eyes, giving me a glimpse of the vibrant woman I remembered. “I didn’t stick around to give him the chance to make both sides match.”
“What the hell happened?”
Her shoulders sagged, the momentary flash of sass disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. She was quiet for so long I didn’t think she planned to answer. “It’s not important. Not anymore. It’s over between us.” She had that stubborn tilt to her jaw that I recognized. I wasn’t going to get any more information out of her than she wanted to give.
“Does Martin know it’s over?”
“Oh yeah, I think his fists made that perfectly clear.”
“You mean to tell me that he broke it off with you?” I asked unable to disguise the disbelief in my tone. The guy was an idiot as well as an asshole. What man in his right mind would give up Lace if he had her?
Her eyes slid to her lap. After a brief pause, she nodded. Her sexy lips pressed together into a tight line. “I pawned the engagement ring he gave me for a bus ticket out here,” she confided.
Most women I knew would’ve teared up after all this, but not Lace. She never cried. Strike that. She never cried anymore. When we’d been kids she cried a helluva lot. But the last time had been that horrible night, the night we were supposed to go to the Metallica concert.
“I’m sorry.” I reached over and covered her delicate hand with my own.
“Don’t be,” she returned evenly, slowly sliding her hand out from under mine. “Martin was just another mistake in a long line of them.” She watched me through a gap in the curtain of her gold hair. “What about you, Bullet?” Her eyes took on a mischievous glint. “Or should I say?” She paused and added in an orgasmic sounding breathless moan. “Oh Bullet! Faster! Harder!’” The corner of her mouth lifted with amusement at my expense.
I winced. Shit. She’d heard me in the back bedroom with the twins. I didn’t usually go for multiples. It was too much work, but after getting the brush off from Avery, the beautiful lead guitarist of Brutal Strength, I’d felt as if I had something to prove.
“You know me, Lace.” I watched her face carefully. “I don’t do relationships.” I got up and moved to the refrigerator, pulling out a couple of bottled waters.
“Yeah, that’s not something I’m likely to forget.” Her voice sounded strained. I felt the undercurrent of meaning just beneath the surface of the words we were saying to each other. I swung back around, but her eyes didn’t give anything away. “I’m sorry. I was just messing with you,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hands that I didn’t buy. “What you do with your personal life is none of my business. No offense, ok?”
“None taken,” I replied uneasily. I handed her one of the waters, and she took it before turning away to look out the window. I grabbed the Tylenol bottle from the table and knocked back a couple of tablets while watching her.
We were silent for a while, both lost in our own thoughts. There was tension between us, but it was familiar and not entirely uncomfortable. I had known Lace Lowell practically all my life. I’d never forget our first meeting at the apartment where we lived at the University House. I had been seven. She had been five.
14 years ago
“Get the door Bry.” My mom was cooking in the open galley kitchen, but her voice carried easily across the small space separating it from the living room where I’d been sitting playing my video game.
“Sure, Mom.” The sizzle of the cooking meat and the aroma of garlic and cheese from my favorite flavor of Hamburger Helper filled the apartment. It made my stomach grumble. I dropped the controller onto the soft throw my mom used to make the old couch from Goodwill look nicer and stomped over to the door. “Who is it?” I asked before opening it just like she’d taught me to do.
“Dizzy Lowell,” was the muffled reply.
I grinned. Dizzy was my new best friend, and yeah that was his real name. His mom felt that way a lot before he was born. He sat in the desk in front of me in Miss Harper’s second grade class. We traded Pokemon cards at recess and played this really fun game at lunch where we tried to gross each other out mixing different items from our lunch trays. Today, Dizzy won. He had stuffed his bread roll into his chocolate milk carton and added ketchup. I’d laughed so hard at the face he had made that milk had come out my nose.
“Hey,” he said when I opened the door. His long blond hair was all messed up. My mom would not have let me out of the house with my hair like that. But Dizzy looked like that all the time. His clothes were usually dirty, too. “I had to bring my little sister with me. Is that ok?”
“Sure.” I opened the door wider and watched the little girl follow him inside. Her hair and eyes were the same color as his, and her small hand was fisted in the material of his worn out jeans.
Dizzy stopped in front of our TV. His mouth dropped open. “You have Pokemon!” he shouted.
I nodded. “I told you. My mom says we can play until dinner is ready.”
Dizzy spun around and squatted down in front of his sister. He put his hands on her shoulders. Her bottom lip stuck out and she looked like she wanted to cry. “Lace, don’t be afraid, ok? Bryan’s cool.” He tugged on one of her braids and helped her up on the couch. “Sit here, right next to me.” She watched me with her light brown eyes, but she didn’t move or make a sound the entire time we played. That was weird. I was used to my younger sisters. When they were awake, they were a royal pain in the rear. They got into all my stuff and they never shut up.
“Bry,” my mom called out after we had been playing for a while. Beside me, Lace squeaked and tried to climb behind her brother’s back.
Shoot, I thought. We were just getting to the good part.
“Time to stop.” My mom came in. She was drying her hand on a kitchen towel. Lace started shaking. My mom frowned as she looked at her. “I’m going to wake your sisters from their nap,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll be right back.”
“Why’s she so scared?” I whispered to Dizzy after she left the room.
“Lace is afraid of grown-ups.” He turned around and touched her back. “Come on. Stop hiding. It’s time to go.”