The Difference Between Us

by Rachel Higginson

  Vera’s arms wrapped around my neck from behind and she squealed, “You’re the beeeessst best friend everrrrr!!!”

  “I know!”

  “And this was the beeessst night everrrr!!”

  I grinned like an idiot and whirled around to face her. “I know!”

  “Thank you for this party,” she told me, glassy eyed but sincere. “It was so unexpected.”

  Even inebriated, I knew I couldn’t take all the credit. “Wyatt and the antichrist did most of the grunt work,” I told her. “I’m just the mastermind. It’s no big deal.”

  Vera giggled. “Antichrist?”

  “Ezra,” I clarified.

  Her forehead wrinkled as she scanned the dance floor. “Where is Ezra anyway? I should thank him too.”

  “He probably had a panda to sacrifice or children to terrorize.”

  Vera snorted. “A panda?”

  I shrugged. “He’s just that mean.”

  She shook her head at me. “Be nice, Molls. At the very least he throws a good party.”

  Linking her arm in mine, she tugged me toward the side of the dance floor. “Did your dad leave?”

  “Oh yeah. A long time ago. So did Vann, I think.”

  “He didn’t stay long,” I said.

  She yawned into her hand. “Well, he doesn’t drink or dance or eat, so there probably wasn’t a whole lot for him to do.”

  “He danced with me,” I laughed. “Not well. But he did dance.”

  I squinted at a table that had been all but ransacked. Stripped toothpicks lay in dry heaps like picked at bones from a battlefield surrounded by smears of wasabi aioli and Sriracha ketchup. One lone cheeseburger slider sat in the middle of a plate, abandoned.

  Squatting down, I searched for my shoes underneath the table. I lifted the tablecloth and lost my balance, falling clumsily gracefully to my knees. “Ouch.”

  Vera’s laughter taunted me from overhead. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for my shoes,” I mumbled.

  “I can see your underwear,” she cackled. “Or where underwear should be.”

  I made a squeaking sound and bolted upright, smoothing my lacy minidress over my bum. It was a bold choice for someone that preferred to blend into the background, but I’d felt pretty in the sheer, cut out long sleeves. Plus, it was semi-backless and I had a moment of arrogant glee, when my back hadn’t looked totally chubby in it.

  But all night long, it had been a constant effort to remember not to bend over at the wrong angle or sit spread eagle in a chair. Mainly, I pretended I was in a three-legged race with myself and my ankles had been invisibly tied together.

  You can see now why I ditched the shoes almost as soon as I’d stepped on the dance floor.

  I spun around, using my toes like rudders, unsure of how I was going to stand up without exposing myself more. “I should have worn pants! Why didn’t I wear pants?”

  Vera bent over, giggling so hard she stopped making sound.

  “Help me!” I demanded. “I can’t get up without flashing all of your friends my girly bits!”

  She wheezed in and out as she struggled to breathe through her laughter.

  I sat back on my heels, tugging at my skirt so the angle didn’t betray me. “Fine. I’ll just sleep here. Sitting up. Don’t worry about me.”

  Killian cast a shadow over me as he stepped up to his fiancée. “Molly, why are you on the floor?”

  “Because she’s not wearing underwear!” Vera exclaimed.

  My face flushed red, cadmium red to be exact, and I said a little prayer for a six point earthquake. I didn’t want one strong enough for like a bunch of fatalities. Just one intense enough so that the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

  When that didn’t happen, I calmly explained to Killian, “I’m wearing underwear.”

  He blinked at me. “I believe you.”

  Vera only laughed harder.

  Wyatt stepped to Killian’s side, followed by a few of the kitchen staff I knew. “Why are you on the floor?” he asked.

  Now how was I supposed to get up? There were too many witnesses and I didn’t have the kind of street cred I needed for a crotch shot!

  I wasn’t even cool enough for a nip slip at this point.

  Although why my alcohol-soaked brain thought those were markers of celebrity right now was beyond my very limited grasp.

  “I’ve decided to live here,” I told Wyatt. Patting the ground next to me, I added, “This is my new home.”

  Vera leaned heavily on Killian and explained, “She’s stuck.”

  I let out a huff that tossed my bangs in the air. At least she hadn’t brought up my underwear again.

  A hand stretched out in front of me. I looked up at Ezra’s disappointed expression and cringed. “So by all means just stare at her,” he deadpanned.

  My cheeks flamed a brighter red. But I wasn’t the only one sporting a fierce blush after his admonishment.

  I put my hand in his just to make this moment end, and he tugged me to standing. To be honest, it wasn’t my most graceful rise from the ashes moment, but I was happy to be on my bare feet once again.

  Pulling my hand from Ezra’s as soon as I could—ignoring the heat, strength and perfection of his hand completely—I forced myself to mumble a quick, “Thank you.”

  He raised his stupid eyebrows. “How did you end up on the floor?”

  “I was looking for my shoes.”

  Without flinching or acknowledging the weirdness of his words, he said, “I put them in my office so they wouldn’t get lost.”

  Raising my chin to keep from dropping my mouth open, I accepted his words with my very best poker face.

  Vera was less smooth. “That was so nice of you, Ezra! You are the nicest ever! Molly, wasn’t Ezra so nice to do that for you?”

  Killian and I stared at Vera in horror. I called Ezra Killian’s BFF, but only because there wasn’t an easier way to explain their relationship. From everything that Vera had told me, things were always strained between the two. She said the bromance was of the die-for-you variety, but neither of them really liked the other one.

  Vera and I were also a Bryan Adam’s song. But we were all about the love.

  “You don’t have to answer that, Molly,” Killian offered. “My drunk girlfriend doesn’t know what she’s asking you.”

  Ezra shot Killian a murderous look and I heard myself snort a laugh. “I think after tonight she’s officially your drunk fiancée,” I told him, ignoring the Ezra bunny trail altogether. “But she’s definitely drunk. You should probably get her home before she starts singing.”

  “Singing?” Wyatt asked.

  “When Vera drinks too much she starts acting like she’s in a musical. She starts singing everything.”

  Killian nodded somberly. “It’s true. And terrifying.”

  Wyatt barked a laugh. “I’d like to see that.”

  This time the murderous glare came from Killian. “That’s all right. I’ll get her home before we get to that part.”

  It was my turn to cackle. “He’s only saying that because after the singing comes the stripping!”

  Wyatt tossed his head back, his whole body shaking from laughter. Killian put his arm around Vera just in case she jumped the gun. “Thank you all for a fantastic night,” he said sincerely. “You guys are the best.”

  I grinned with pride, but before I could say anything, Vera belted out a loud, sing-songy, “Thank youuuuuuu!”

  Killian shook his head at her, but his expression was complete adoration. “And that’s our cue to leave.”

  “Mine too.” I hid a yawn behind my hand. “Although I should help you guys clean up.”

  “Don’t let him make you,” Killian warned. “He has people for that.”

  “Yeah, people like me,” Wyatt grumbled.

  Ezra looked at him. “Since when have I made you clean up front of house?”

  Wyatt swiped his hand over his mouth and I suspected it was to hide
a smile. “Tonight?”

  Ezra made an exasperated face. “No, not tonight. Killian’s right. I do pay people for this.” He placed his hands on his hips and looked around at the mess. “Although I suspect they’re going to charge me double this time.”

  Killian made a sound. “At least.”

  I shuffled over to the table I’d just been peering under, horrified that Ezra was going to have to put more money into this party that was all my idea. “I don’t mind helping. Really.”

  Wyatt beat me to it, clearing the plates. “Don’t touch those,” he ordered. “They’re mine.”

  I let him stack serving dishes and gather cutlery, waiting for the linens I had no idea what to do with. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Molls!” Vera shouted behind me.

  “Not till after lunch,” I called back. Watching Killian guide Vera out of the restaurant did something funny to my insides. My heart swelled at the same time my stomach wobbled and pitched.

  Vera was so comfortable with Killian. In a way I had never seen her before. I hadn’t gotten to know Derrek very well while she’d dated him, but the little bits I had seen were unsettling and worrisome. With Killian, she was herself. She laughed loudly and smiled all the time, she was obsessive over her craft and their restaurant, and honest with her weird sense of humor. She didn’t put up with Killian’s shit, but in this totally adorably infatuated way gave it right back. She was in love—totally, completely, healthily in love.

  And I hated that I was jealous of her.

  Dancing with Trent tonight had reinforced my staying single policy. He’d been obnoxiously over the top in his efforts to seduce me and yet I found all of them tacky and easy to decline. It had been nice of Steph to think of me, but I was over being the single friend everybody wanted to set up.

  Next time somebody came at me with a blind date, I was going to point them in the direction of Wyatt or Vann. They were just as single as me.

  Hopefully.

  At least I liked to think they were.

  Chapter Eight

  “Leave them,” a rumbly voice ordered.

  If I hadn’t been so inebriated, I would have jumped. Ezra had snuck up on me and I didn’t even notice him standing to my right. “It’s fine,” I told him. “I want to help.”

  He dangled my strappy stilettos from his fingertips. Pointing at the tablecloth I was wadding up from the tabletop, he said, “Tell me where they go and I’ll let you handle them, but right now you’re more of a menace than anything else.”

  Glaring at him, I continued to ball the tablecloth in my hands. “Obviously they go in the hamper.” It was the first thing that came to mind and I realized how idiotic it sounded. The hamper? Because Lilou also had a laundry room?

  “So wrong,” he murmured. “So very wrong. Besides it’s a trick question. When the cleaning crew comes in, they’ll take the linens with them. It would be helpful though if you left them where they are instead of making the nice, hourly-waged people hunt them down.”

  Throwing the linens back on the table, I reached for my shoes. He pulled them out of reach and I swayed trying to right my drunken self. “If you’re not going to let me help, then you might as well let me go home and go to bed.”

  “How are you getting home?” he asked while holding my shoes in the air where I could not reach them.

  I looked up at my shoes, debating on how badly I needed them. It didn’t matter how cold it had gotten outside or that I was pretty sure it was illegal to drive without shoes on in North Carolina.

  Just to be difficult, I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “Are you hitting on me, Baptiste? Because holding my shoes captive is a tactic I’ve never seen before. Or maybe it’s old school? Is this how people your age get dates?”

  His eyes widened in surprise. He wasn’t expecting snark. “People my age and everyone else that doesn’t want you to die on the way home tonight. I’ll give you a ride.”

  “I was going to call an Uber,” I admitted.

  He turned around, taking my shoes with him. “I’m cheaper.”

  You’re also an asshole. But I didn’t say that out loud. “Seriously, it’s no big deal!” I hollered after him. “I have the app!”

  Only, judging by his Lilou website, he probably didn’t even know what an app was. Great. Now I was going to have to explain all of modern technology to him. This night was never going to end.

  “I also have your phone,” Ezra shot back. When Wyatt stepped out of the kitchen, Ezra paused to ask him to lock up.

  Shoes were one thing, but my phone was vitally important to every aspect of my life. It was basically my soul locked up in gadget form. If he confiscated my baby, he’d have access to allllll of my life—including my very secret, very private Candy Crush obsession.

  Ezra disappeared into the kitchen and I hurried after him.

  “Is he really giving you a ride home?” Wyatt asked as I zipped by.

  “He’s holding my accessories hostage,” I told him.

  Wyatt stared at me agape, but I didn’t have time to explain before I disappeared into the kitchen. All the lights were on while Wyatt’s skeleton staff cleaned the remaining dishes and put away food. Ezra waited for me by the side door, holding my shoes and my purse.

  “I’ve already cleaned out your bank accounts,” he said when I finally caught up to him. “And destroyed your credit.”

  I stilled. “Was that a joke?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a barely-there shrug. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “It makes sense,” I told him. “Your restaurants aren’t named after ex-girlfriends. They’re stolen identities.”

  His lips twitched once, but he held back his smile. My drunken brain convinced me that I needed to see it. That I needed to witness it one more time just to prove that it was real. I tried smiling at him, hoping to coax something out of him. But he only stared at me and then finally thrust my shoes out like he couldn’t stand the idea of holding them for a second longer.

  “I presume you didn’t wear a coat tonight,” he said as way of getting my ass out the door.

  With one hand poised against the wall to keep my balance, I bent over just enough to slide each one on. “My weatherman told me it was supposed to be warm this weekend and I stupidly believed him.”

  “Your weatherman said it was going to be warmer this weekend and it is.”

  Losing control of my motor functions, I reached out and brushed my knuckle over the wrinkled space between Ezra’s consternated eyebrows. “You’re always so serious,” I told him.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time, choosing instead to examine my face, and my dress, and the shoes that had already started pinching my toes again.

  Imagining what he probably thought of me made me shrink back. I wasn’t like the girls he normally dated. Not that I knew what kind of girls he normally dated. But I had to be so different than what he was used to. With names like Lilou, Bianca, and Sarita, they sounded exotic, interesting. I imagined long-legged pinup models with perfectly coiffed hair and million dollar smiles. They would tie scarves around their heads when Ezra took them for Sunday drives in his red convertible, and smoke cigarettes out of cigarette holders.

  He was basically a Cary Grant movie. And I was so different than anything he was used to. My cheeks flushed for the hundredth time tonight, and I contemplated moving out of Durham and North Carolina, and possibly the entire continent of North America.

  “If I drive, can you give me directions to your house?” he asked, pulling me from my spiraling thoughts. His voice had pitched low, going extra deep and rumbly in the silence of the empty kitchen.

  “Yes. But you can also put me in the back of an Uber and I can give them directions too. I’m very good at giving directions. I can give them to almost anybody. It’s just one of my many talents.”

  “You’re drunk,” he said as way of argument. “I’m not handing you off to a stranger.”

  He was driving me home for my own protection? I stared at hi
m, trying to make sense of his harsh words on the dance floor and his thoughtfulness in the kitchen. “Okay.” Again, I tried to reconcile his generosity. And failed. “Thank you.”

  Holding his elbow out to me, he led me through the big steel door and toward his waiting sleek, sporty, super-expensive black car parked in the alley directly next to Lilou. It sat beneath a rough garage-like structure covered in ivy.

  “This is your car?” I asked, dumbfounded. There was obviously no way I could ride in it. It looked more expensive than my entire life. And I didn’t mean that in an accumulated-assets kind of way. I meant on like a physical, existential, me-plus-my-assets-plus-every-other-thing-about-me-past-present-and-future-plus-potential-cats kind of way. This car was insane.

  “Pretty, isn’t she?”

  I could only nod dumbly.

  “She’s an Alfa Romeo,” he told me. “She’s new.”

  Holding back a sigh, I said, “Of course she is.” That’s Alfa Ro-may-o for those of you reading it like Romeo and Juliet. Because this isn’t that kind of story, yo.

  Ezra held the door open for me and I sobered a little as I slid onto buttery leather. He climbed in a second later and handed me my purse.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I’m still holding onto it.”

  “Clearly you want a restaurant called Molly,” I teased. “You’re trying to steal my identity after all.”

  He stared at me, his eyes shrewd and investigative. I stared back, brave with liquid courage and unafraid of what he would find. Although I didn’t know what he was looking for or why he was suddenly being nice to me.

  “It does have a nice ring to it.” Just one side of his mouth lifted. “Or maybe I would call it MM. M’s? Maverick? The thing about you is that there are just so many possibilities.”

  Sliding my tongue over my dry bottom lip, I didn’t know what to make of this sudden sense of humor. “Maverick sounds like a sports bar and that doesn’t really seem like your type.”

  “You say that, but you don’t really know what my type is, do you?” Before I could respond, he turned back to his new car.

  The car purred to life, rumbling and growling, and making all kinds of sounds I’d never heard a car make before. He expertly reversed out of the alley and then went forward into the flow of traffic. For a few minutes, I just listened to the hum of the engine and wondered if I would henceforth compare all other cars to this one—which was clearly setting me up for a very disappointing life.