“You miss it? Home?” Reed asked, nibbling on a piece of crust.
Kaia opened her mouth to give Reed her well-rehearsed speech on the wonders of Manhattan, from the sample sales and the galleries to the way the skyscrapers sliced into the sky on a clear winter morning, from sneaking into club openings and showing up on “Page Six,” to meeting up at dawn for a goat cheese omelet and bread fresh from the farmers’ market before sneaking home to bed. But she stopped before she said anything.
“I don’t know,” she admitted-and it was the first time she’d let herself think it, much less speak it aloud. “Sometimes I miss it-I hate it here. But… I hated it there, too.”
Another guy might have seized the moment to put on the fake sympathy, giving her a “comforting” pat on the thigh and maybe letting his hand rest there a bit too long.
Reed simply asked, “Why?”
“I don’t know.” And, with another guy, she would have taken this as her cue to heave a calculated sigh, designed to elicit pity or to highlight her ample, heaving chest. Instead, a small, light shiver of air escaped her as her body sagged with the energy of wondering: What was wrong with her life? “There was my mother. Total bitch. And my-I guess you’d call them my friends.” She laughed harshly at the thought. “But that wasn’t it. I just…”
Reed took her hand-and she knew it wasn’t in sympathy or empathy, but out of a desperate need to touch her, because she felt it too.
“I didn’t fit there. Not that I fit here,” she added, laughing bitterly.
“Know what you mean,” Reed said quietly, shaking his head. “But what can you do?”
Kaia didn’t say anything, just pressed his hand tightly to her lips. She could never say it out loud, but she knew that, bizarrely, she did fit somewhere. Here, with him. And at least there was some comfort in that.
“Are we having a good time yet?” Harper asked snidely, wrinkling her nose after sipping a whiskey sour that tasted more like fermented lemonade. Kane had promised her a night to remember at an exclusive underground after-hours lounge at the outskirts of town. He’d failed to mention that by “exclusive” he meant “restricted to those qualified for membership in the AARP”; “after hours,” on the other hand, apparently meant “after the early bird special.”
“How was I supposed to know that tonight was bingo night?” he protested.
Harper stifled a laugh and glanced around. True, no one was actually playing bingo-but with half the population of Grace’s senior citizens clinking glasses of stale Scotch and swapping sob stories about hip replacements and burst bunions, it seemed only a matter of time. Apparently, once a month the owner let his father use the lounge for his lodge meetings. Harper and Kane had had to sweet-talk their way in, just for the privilege of listening to the Elks, or Buffalo, or whatever they were, reminisce about the war and complain about how their children never came to visit.
It wasn’t quite the pick-me-up they’d had in mind.
“So, let’s hear it, Grace-what can I do to turn that frown upside down?” Kane downed his drink in one shot and rested his chin on his hands, as if overwhelmingly eager to hear her response.
“As if you could help,” Harper said, but without bitterness. They’d known each other too long for her to put up a brave front-or to think that confiding in Kane would yield anything but apathy with a side of scorn. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Don’t want to talk about him, you mean,” Kane said, with a knowing smirk. “Fine, then. What about her?”
“Her who?”
“The Siamese twin from whom you seem to have had a miracle separation? Miranda-who else? Ten years, the two of you are joined at the hip, and then suddenly, in your darkest hour, she’s nowhere to be found? Makes no sense,” Kane complained, shaking his head. “Not unless there’s something I don’t know. And you know how much I hate to be in the dark.”
“Get used to it,” Harper snarled. “There’s a lot you don’t know.” She could tell Kane all about Miranda’s massive crush-after all, she had no reason to keep Miranda’s secret when her own were spread all over school. But Harper couldn’t bring herself to do it, knowing that if there was even a prayer of fixing things-and she had to believe there was-she should keep her mouth shut.
“I can’t imagine that Ms. Stevens would have been so disgusted by your treatment of Adam that she would have walked away,” Kane mused. “After all, she’s nothing but lovely to me, and my behavior was just as… let’s say, repulsive? Stealing my best friend’s girlfriend and all.”
“That’s not guilt I hear, is it?” Harper asked in surprise.
Kane cocked his head. “You know me better than that. It’s just honesty. I’ve been telling you for years, Grace, you should just embrace your dark side. You’ll have more fun.”
“I couldn’t be having any less,” Harper complained, gesturing toward the speakers that had just begun blasting out some big-band golden oldies.
“No, you must have done something to Miranda,” Kane continued. He wouldn’t stop pushing until he figured it out-but Harper wasn’t about to help him along. “And if it’s not about Adam, and not about Beth, it must be something else. Someone else-”
“May I have this dance, madam?”
Harper looked up to face a balding, pockmarked man stooped over their table and extending a liver-spot-sprinkled hand in her direction. Under other circumstances, she might have-oh, who was she kidding, would have-declined. But if it gave her an escape from this conversation…
“I’d be honored,” Harper said, taking his trembling hand and rising from the table.
Kane’s grin widened, and he gave her a jaunty little wave. “Have fun, Grace. Just keep those hands where I can see them…”
The old man danced her away from the table, away from Kane and his nagging questions, and waltzed her across the lounge, proving to be surprisingly nimble. As soon as the song ended, another lodge member hobbled over to take his place. By the time every little old man in the place-at least the ones still mobile enough to shuffle along without a walker-had taken his turn, Kane was slouched on the table, his breathing heavy and his eyes half closed, the Miranda issue forgotten.
“Have fun?” he slurred, without lifting his head from the table.
“Actually, yes.” She hadn’t even minded when one of the men grabbed her ass. It was nice to be an object of desire again, even among the Viagra demographic.
“Told you so,” Kane mumbled, half to himself. “Promised you a night to remember.”
But Harper had done enough remembering for a while. That had been the best part about dancing in the darkness in the palsied arms of a stranger: It became almost possible to forget.
He had to congratulate himself. He’d made it through the evening without allowing his emotions to leak through, his anger to explode. She had no idea that he’d seen her, with him.
Hidden in the shadows, he’d watched her betray him. Even then, he couldn’t help but admire her delicate porcelain skin, pale as ivory against her ink-black hair. She moved like a dancer, every swish of her arm and tilt of her head graceful and deliberate, almost as if she knew he was watching, and was performing just for him. And for a moment, he’d imagined that his hands followed hers, trailing their way across her soft, creamy skin.