by Anthology
I put down the CD I’d been holding. My fingertips are numb.
“How can I help you?” Cindy hops down from the counter. She wasn’t flirting, but I knew that look. She’s interested. “You look like the kind of guy who’d like The Smiths. We’ve got a bootleg tape of their Meat is Murder tour. The Eden Court Theater in Inverness, as a matter of fact.”
“Now that’s remarkable,” Tom replies. “How could you possibly have known I’d be interested in that?”
I lean against the backside of the counter. His voice is as smooth as I’d remembered. Jesus, every time he goes away, I think I’d dreamt him up.
Cindy shrugs. She nudges me with the toe of her boot. I know what she’s trying to tell me, that I have to come up and see the cutie. We’d done this a hundred times before. For some reason, I am frozen. I want to know who Tom is when I wasn’t around. This seems like the best way. The only way I’d ever really get a peek.
“It’s a gift,” she says. “I don’t know where it comes from. I asked the cosmos for the ability to play music, but this was what I got instead. Not fair.”
“It must hold you well in this business, however.”
I chew the side of my thumb. He sounds like he’s smiling. Just as nice to Cindy as he’s been to me, but without that special burn he gets in his voice around me. I am special. I am actually special to Tom.
I hardly know how to hold that. I want to hold it close. Tuck it in my pocket and keep it for the nights that will get so much longer without him.
“It does me pretty well,” Cindy says with her cheeky grin. “I run this joint.”
“Wonderful. Then you can tell me where to find Roni. I know I’m early, but I’m supposed to meet her.”
I squeeze my eyes shut suddenly. Don’t do it, don’t do it, just don’t, Cindy. When the silence draws out, I peeked up. She’s pointing down. At me. I knew it. I make big eyes at her, begging her to help me out of the awkwardness of getting caught spying, but she only lifts her eyebrows. Her mouth purses as she tries to hold back laughter.
I am going to kill her.
Especially when Tom leans far enough over the counter that I can see him. He grins. I wave only my fingertips.
“Fancy the view from down there?” His hair falls over his forehead in a rakish kind of way.
I wave a couple CDs at him. “I was busy.”
He makes a noncommittal sound, but eases back when I stand. I brush my hands off on my loose, low-slung jeans. Maybe his gaze will be drawn to the two inches of bare skin between my waistband and my T-shirt and not the dust that covered me.
“I can see that.” I don’t think he’s laughing at me. He’s definitely amused though. I like the way his cheeks tuck in and he gets little lines fanning out from his eyes.
“You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I see that as well.”
“I don’t get off for twenty minutes. You should wait…I dunno, outside or something.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll let you off early. It’s no problem.” Cindy is grinning at us both. I just know that tomorrow I’m going to hear all about this. She’s going to want to shake me down for every detail.
I don’t know what I think about that. I want to keep Tom all to myself. “Um, great.” I look helplessly at the stack of CDs that I’d left strewn behind the registers. “I’d say watch out for these, but some scratches might give them character.”
“More character than Jordan ever had on his own.”
I stick my tongue out at her. “Ew. You know I was a Donnie girl.”
“You only say that now to cover your ass.” She makes a shooing motion and her gaze flicks over my shoulder. “Good luck explaining your hideous taste to him.”
“Cindy!” I half whisper it, which is absolutely beyond stupid, since Tom is right here looking over my shoulder. I could choke her. I turn my back to him and give her wide, annoyed eyes.
She smiles blissfully. This is payback for the time I told the mailman that she had a thing for older men, and that he should definitely ask her out.
Friends are hard, sometimes. Especially when they’re your boss.
I half drag Tom away from the register and park him by the front door while I get my bag. He’s not fooled, and I’m not fooled into thinking he’s fooled.
I should just stick my head up my ass while I’m at it. Instead I take half a second in the back room and try to remember what it feels like to breathe normally. It’s a hopeless cause.
Outside the store, the sun is cutting through the rooftops to the west of us. Across the street is the leafy spread of UC Berkeley’s campus. I squint up at Tom. I forgot my sunglasses again. “Come on, this way,” I say as I turn toward Telegraph Avenue.
“You seem to have an interesting relationship with your manager.”
“She’s the owner, even.” I roll my eyes. “Cindy’s a handful, yeah.”
“Do you like working there?”
I nod. “I know it inside and out. I like being good at things.”
The silence gets long and surprisingly heavy considering that we’re walking through the late afternoon college students spilling out from the campus toward their night’s plans. I love this area. It’s alive in a really awesome way. I think it’s the fact that all the students at Cal know their life is spreading out ahead of them.
It only takes me about fifty feet before I can’t take it anymore. “What are you thinking?”
He shakes his head more as if he’s shaking off his thoughts instead of actually answering me. “It’s no matter. Don’t mind me.”
“I want to know.” My feet pull to a stop. I slip my hand into Tom’s. It’s tempting to think he’s the one holding on to me, instead of the other way around. I could close my eyes and play pretend. If this is the time we have, I want every minute of it. “Tell me what you were thinking about.”
“Even if you’re not pleased with it?”
“Maybe especially then.” Maybe he’d give me some piece to focus on in the future. Some way to forget about him. Something I could hold on to and remind myself of when I was pissed and drunk about why it was okay to not be with him anymore.
“I was wondering why.” He slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow and drew me forward. “Why you work across the street from a university that you did not attend. Did you want to?”
I want to laugh. I try to. Instead I look in the window of a store selling souvenirs and Cal sweatshirts and try to blink away the stinging feeling at the back of my eyes. “I don’t have the money for school.”
I can feel him looking at me. It’s a weight. I don’t like it. If he’s going to be studying me so closely, I need it to be about his need to kiss me. To fuck me. All that, I know how to deal with.
“That’s not an answer.”
I sigh and pull him to a stop outside the café. “Yes. Fine, I’d wanted to go. And I probably had the grades to get in. I did alright in school despite the moving around. But I didn’t do well enough for scholarships, not without taking out a butt load of loans. So I didn’t do it. Okay?”
His expression remains impassive, but at least that wasn’t the same thing as pity. “Okay,” he echoed.
The glass door pushes open under my hand. Behind me, Tom follows. I grab a tray and start at the end of the semi-cafeteria style layout. I’m watching Tom out of the corner of my eye, wondering if he’ll be a fish out of water in a place so obviously down market than he’s used to. He isn’t, of course. He’s as cool as chilled wine on a summer evening.
I order an enormous salad with sunflower seeds and cheese and every topping they’ve got in the salad bar, plus an order of completely loaded nachos. The two items are big enough to cover my whole tray. I tuck my sparkling water under my arm as Tom pays for my food and the grilled club sandwich and fries that he has to hand-carry.
I find us a table in the outside seating and my tray covers most of the wrought iron table. I tuck into my nachos, picking one that’s covered in most
ly meat and sour cream. Salt and smooth together. I let my eyes close as I make a happy sound. “God, that’s good.”
“May I?” He points at one with a healthy serving of cheese.
“Sure.” I sit back as I crack my water open.
And shit. I’m still waiting. The realization breaks open over my head like a smack from a baseball bat. A very large part of me is expecting him to say something about how much food I ordered. Defensive words swell up in my throat, and I shove them back down again. I don’t think it’s strength so much as timing him. I want to know how long it takes.
But the question never comes. He never teases me about being starved and he never asks if I skipped lunch. I mostly eat from the nachos, but I have a couple bites of salad too. Sometimes I struggle to get enough servings of vegetables in my diet. It’s hard when I don’t have my own kitchen. Well, honestly, it’s hard when you’re only twenty and don’t really give a shit about balanced eating.
Once I’ve had my fill, and once Tom has polished off his sandwich and most of his fries, the sun is setting behind our heads. I check my watch. Close enough. “Stay here,” I order him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he teases, but his eyes let me know exactly who’s in charge.
I’m walking on clouds as I slip back into the café to get To Go boxes. While I wait at the register after I’ve asked for them, I look back out the big plate glass windows. They’re green tinted, and I keep thinking about how I’ve wandered into the Emerald City. Tom’s the wizard, except he doesn’t seem to be a puissant little man hiding behind curtains. He’s the real deal.
Who’s going to get swept up in a tornado and dragged back home any minute.
God, I’m mixing my metaphors. It’s hard to think straight when my heart’s breaking though. I could almost be angry with him but it turns around and shines right back at me instead. I’ve never known a guy like him, and here I am finding his brother. The one thing he wants in order to go back home.
Away from me.
“Here you go,” the server says, pushing two black boxes toward me.
“What?” I have to blink a few times and focus on where I am.
Instead of dreaming of where I’ll never be—with Tom, far away. I don’t think I even care where.
He smiles at me when I come back outside. A breeze is playing with the ends of his hair. I want to touch him too, and suddenly I realize that nothing’s stopping me. I might as well touch him while I still can.
So I stop behind his chair and run my fingers through his hair. It feels like the rawest kind of silk. He leans his head back and rests against my breasts. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head instead of answering. I don’t even want to look at his eyes. I watch my fingers combing through his hair instead. I could do this for hours, but we have to be at the corner before it gets too late and they pack it up and head inside. Still avoiding his gaze, I pack my food up. “Come on. We’ve got to get going.”
He’s watching me, and he knows there’s something going on. He has the courtesy to give me space though.
Maybe I don’t want him to. Maybe I want him to chase me.
I don’t always get what I want. I don’t often get it, for that matter.
A block away, a group of kids are hanging out against the side of a tourist emporium. With their punk-rock black jackets and beat up cargo pants, they’re all in complete contrast to the window full of Cal T-shirts and tennis visors above their heads. Two are at the edge of the sidewalk, pestering passersby for change. Three lean against the column of stucco that edges the emporium. They sit on a couple pieces of cardboard.
Tom’s eyes narrow and that inward curve beneath his cheeks becomes even more pronounced. He’s upset, of course.
Well too bad. This is what was real.
I sit next to a girl with violet purple chunks died in her otherwise dirty blonde hair.
“Roni!” Michelle lights up when she sees me. “I heard you went down at the party the other night.”
My eyes widen. I hadn’t realized that anyone else had seen. For some reason, I’d imagined me and Tom inside our own hidden bubble. “Yeah. Wasn’t my finest moment.”
“Skittles said you were being taken care of.” Her gaze flicks over to Tom, but then right back again to me.
The street kids are good at not asking questions. When everyone you know has secrets to keep, it becomes a skill that’s as second nature as breathing.
“Yeah, I got home safe.” And then I got to a hotel. And then I got…off. I bat down the memories of Tom’s mouth against my stomach and the sudden flash of sensation, as if I can feel the ends of his hair on my skin. I hold out the box that has the salad in it. “I brought you something.”
A little line appears between her eyebrows. She frowns. “I’m not a charity case, dude.”
“It’s not charity.” I pop open the top and let her see how it’s been eaten off of. “It’s left-overs. Either you get them or they go in the trash.”
“If you put it that way.” She grins.
I gave her the salad because she’s a vegetarian, and I give the nachos to a couple of the guys to split. Tom leans against the wall. He’s not being standoffish, but he’s not exactly blending either. He smiles at Michelle whenever she looks up at him. He never gets impatient, even though I hang around chatting with Michelle until the guys start packing up.
“We’re heading to Tony’s place tonight,” Ryan tells me. Except he usually doesn’t go by the name of Ryan. He wants everyone to call him Stud. We don’t. “His roommates are out of town.”
I grimace a little bit. “Don’t trash his place again, okay? You guys have been over there so often lately.”
“If you’d ever tell us where you lived, we’d come visit you for a while.” Matt and I made out at a couple parties. I regret nothing, but I also wasn’t any interested in delving deeper with a guy who’d seemed to forget what a toothbrush was for. I guess I couldn’t fault him that much, since he lived in a squat the last time I checked.
Tom’s eyes narrow and his shoulders tighten though. It’s the first hint of impatience I’ve seen in him since we’ve arrived. “Perhaps that’s what she fears.”
Ryan shows a blade thin smile. His brown eyes flash with something mean. I’ve kept my distance from him for a reason. I wish Michelle would too, but at least she hasn’t let him knock her up. “What are you, Australian?”
Tom’s eyebrows fly up and I step between them out of instinct. There’s nothing reckless about Tom though. He never moves an inch from the wall. I still know he could be very, very dangerous to Ryan. It’s in the way he smiles so subtly.
“He’s English,” I answer. “And he’s going back home soon, which means he needs to see Skittles. Tell him we’ll be at the park, okay?”
It’s not my smoothest transition ever, but I think it works. Ryan and Matt sneer, but Michelle sends me a look that says she understands.
“What makes you think we’re going to see him?” Matt folds up the piece of cardboard he’d been sitting on and tucks it under his arm. He hitches his drooping jeans up over his butt.
I don’t roll my eyes, but it’s a close call. “You never have a party without Skittles. If he doesn’t show, you wait.”
“She’s got you there,” Michelle teases. She leans against Ryan’s side. He puts his arm around her. They’re both so skinny. I can hardly stand it. I don’t know how they manage. I worry about them all the time. I’d probably invite Michelle to stay with me for a little while if it weren’t for Ryan.
I wind my arm through Tom’s, mostly because I can. I’ve got that right, for however long it lasts. “The park, okay? Tell him.”
“I will,” Michelle promises. Her gaze jumps to Tom. “I can’t promise he’ll show though.”
Chapter 6
People’s Park is never really empty. We manage to find a spot under a spreading oak tree with a gnarled trunk. From there, we can see the knot of homeless people waiting for the evening meal to come fr
om volunteers. One man roots through the Free Box, probably looking for something in his size, or as near as he’s going to manage.
I sit with my back against the oak tree, and when Tom sits down next to me, I find myself a little surprised. I don’t think I should be anymore. He doesn’t do anything the usual way.
His shoulder brushes mine. I lean into him. I can’t give myself permission to put my head on his shoulder, not quite. It’s kind of sad how much I want to though.
I could care so much about this man, if I had even half a chance. If he weren’t going away soon I’d be done for.
So maybe I should go ahead and do whatever the hell I want anyway. If I embarrass myself, it’s not like I’ll have to see his face smirking at me.
I let my neck bend, let my head rest on his shoulder. He’s firm, and I have to shift a little so that the cap of his bone isn’t jutting into my temple. I find a soft spot though.
He puts his arm around my shoulders. I melt from the inside out. It’s nothing I can control, and part of me wants to say that I don’t care, but that’s not true. I care too much. So much it’s an ache inside my chest, keeping me from swallowing. Keeping me from breathing.
I try looking out across the park, but there’s something wrong with my vision. It hurts to focus. I blink a few times but the feeling doesn’t go away.
His fingertips catch in my hair, which is falling down around my shoulders. I try to swallow around the knot in my throat.
“What do you want most in the world, Roni?”
Hearing his voice is even more compelling when I feel it at the same time. The rumble comes through his chest and purrs against my throat. I don’t know how to answer though.
“I don’t know,” I say after a long pause. “Maybe the chance to find out what I actually want.”
“What’s stopping you?” The question might have sounded obnoxious coming from someone else, but the deliberate and considered measure of Tom’s speech said he really wanted to know.
