I tried to focus on her discount customers, whose job it was to inhale copious amounts of food in her low-class cafeteria while simultaneously trying to suck a little more life out of me, but I couldn’t. Despite everything else that had been happening, for some reason my mind was drifting to my gym, or better yet, to someone at my gym.
That was the first time I had let myself think of him since I saw him at New Year’s. I gazed into the nothingness of the restaurant, past the chintzy decorations, fake brass accents, and caricature sketches on the walls, and let myself wonder what it’d be like to kiss him again.
My apron buzzed me out of my day dream, and I ducked behind one of the room’s giant, splinter-wood support poles to check my phone.
“Equinox, 10:00 p.m.,” a text from Liv said, speaking directly to my need to disconnect from my mind.
There was no way that the Wicked Bitch of the West was going to release my soul from her talon-like clutches until at least eleven, but I desperately needed to be anywhere in the world but there.
Time for an out.
I walked over to one of the server stations. Ms. Monica had perched herself on a tall stool behind the hostess stand a few feet away. My stomach started to slowly gurgle, and the back of my throat sank. At first, the convulsions were light, almost like a cough to stop the tickle in the back of your throat. Soon, with the aid of the rotting fish smell from the garbage, and my hand pressed against my stomach, the gagging noises started. When I finally heaved what was left of my barbeque burger dinner into the trash can next to me, all heads turned to look at me.
Covering my mouth, I ran past Ms. Monica and into the bathroom. I cleaned myself up and flushed the toilet a few times for good measure. I splashed a bit of water on my forehead and exited the bathroom holding my stomach, worriedly wiping the water off with a paper towel as if it was sweat from my brow.
Ms. Monica pushed her way through a pack of customers over to me. “What’s wrong with you?”
I looked at her through innocent eyes. “I don’t know what happened. I just couldn’t keep it down. I don’t know if it was something I ate here or what,” I said a little too loudly, and the group of customers next to us started stirring.
Ms. Monica was the type of person who, after you’d burnt yourself severely on a coffee pot, would hand you an ace bandage and some ointment, and then tell you to pick up your table’s food from the kitchen and get back to work. I did know her pretty well though, and not only did she not have the stomach to see or smell vomit, she’d recently gotten busted by the health department for knowingly keeping a waitress on her shift after she’d gotten sick.
“She’ll take your tables then. Get outta here,” Ms. Monica said, pointing to another waitress before fleeing into her office holding her stomach. I gave the sincerest apology to the other waitress that I could, although I was neither sincere nor sorry, before bolting for the exit. As I was opening the door, seconds from freedom, Ms. Monica emerged from her office and screamed at me. “Manhattan, make sure you go ahead and tell Mr. Graham that I’m gonna need both of you on Friday. We got ourselves a big party and I need hands.”
You also need brains. Fuck.
“Sure thing, Ms. Monica,” I said, still projecting my best queasy voice. It would have been Talia’s turn to take the next shift, but Ms. Monica had completely puked all over that plan by demanding both of us. I waved meekly, with all the strength a sick person like me could muster.
Eh . . . that’s Friday’s problem.
Pushing through the crowds at Equinox later that night, I made my way up the private stairs and smirked at the commoners who were without that luxury. At only ten minutes late, I considered my arrival time a personal record. A crew of men was setting up the stage in the back of the room. The bar was packed full of people waving cash and shiny credit cards in hopes of getting a drink, and the bartenders practically sprinted back and forth behind the bar to accommodate all of them. Cooper was there, standing near the corner in the server’s station, talking closely to another man I didn’t know. The older man handed Cooper a picture with a piece of paper stapled to it and Cooper looked at it closely as they continued their quiet conversation.
“Hey Coop,” I said, coming back down from the stairs and walking up behind the man.
Cooper quickly stuck the image in his pocket and reached for my hand around the other man. “‘Ello.”
The other man looked annoyed when he turned around to face me. “We’ll talk later then,” he said before walking away.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said, shrugging.
“No worries. We were done anyway.”
When Cooper and I made our way upstairs, Elle handed me a full glass of Blue Ice and kissed me on the cheek. Everyone appeared to be in extra high spirits, bouncy even, with the prospect of another exciting evening ahead, full of doing whatever they damn well pleased.
“What’s that?” Liv pointed to my neck when I went over to say hello. A glob of ketchup from behind my ear came off as I wiped it with a bar napkin. “Ew,” she said.
“I know. I was working at that dump of a restaurant when you texted me, and I didn’t have time to shower after I made my escape.”
“You didn’t have to bag out of work.”
“Trust me, I don’t mind. I’m sure they can keep working on that cancer cure without me for tonight.”
“We’re about to start, Coop,” one of Cooper’s employees said, trying to get his attention. He had pulled Elle to the couch and they laughed to one another seductively, stopping only to sip from their glasses of Blue Ice.
“That doesn’t bother you?” I asked Liv, looking over to the couple in dire need of getting a room.
“Them? No. Should it?” She reached into her pocket and unfolded a tiny mirror to look at herself. Her eyes were smoky and sculpted, with long lashes that framed her beautiful blue eyes, and her lips were an extra-luscious shade of pink. Her hair shimmered against the lights of the room, and every piece of clothing she was wearing was just a step above sexy and stylish. Everything was different about her that night.
“I don’t know . . . I thought you two had a history,” I said.
“So?” She pulled herself in closer to me. “Being like us is about more than just the magic, it’s a state of mind—an attitude. We live in the now and own every moment because it’s ours to own. Live more and worry less. Remember? Try letting go of the past and just let yourself be, Hat, like him,” she whispered intensely into my ear. “Do what makes you happy, when it makes you happy, and don’t apologize or regret it.”
“Equinox is proud to welcome back Providence native, Olivia Vanguard,” the announcer yelled into a microphone from the stage. Liv broke away from me and ran down the stairs to meet him, pushing through the crowd and jumping on stage to take the microphone before signaling the band to start.
I ran out onto the balcony. “She sings?” I asked, pushing myself up next to Elle.
“She sings good . . . ,” she said. “But don’t tell her I told you that.”
The drums started first, and then lights illuminated the stage behind Liv. The crowd cheered unabashedly. She brought the microphone to her lips and the words from her song rebounded off the walls, bringing a euphoric energy to the room. Her body moved to the beat of the song and no one, including me, could take their eyes off her.
You could lose yourself in her lyrics. And each time she touched her hip or shrugged her shoulders as she sang, it was like she was reaching out and kissing your mind with hers. But she didn’t need magic for that. Her voice touched every part of your body all at the same time. It is hard to describe, but when you can close your eyes and hear someone’s voice singing from inside you, you know that their music has touched you in ways that no music has ever touched you before.
“She’s amazing! Why is she singing here and not off recording records somewhere?” I aske
d to no one in particular.
“Are you saying that she’s too good to sing at my club?” Cooper asked. His smile was like that of a small child’s who had just put a bug in your pocket when you weren’t looking. “She’s done a couple of tours regionally, but I do think she’s pretty happy to just be a big fish in our small pond.”
Liv joined us during the band’s break, reeling off the high that she had sung everyone into. She was still in the ‘zone’, something she’d later tell me was a hyperactive yet almost spacey place she went to in order to bring herself in front of all those people. And performing, that was her way of living in the moment.
Looking at Liv, I thought about what an extraordinary woman she was. If, in her words, I should just be, then why couldn’t I just be with her? Then I remembered the last time I finally let go of my need to control how I felt, and how freeing that was. I finished the rest of my drink and headed for the door.
“Hey, where are you going?” Liv called behind me as I walked toward the stairs.
“To own my moment.”
Chapter 21
The road to the club was disappearing into my rearview mirror as I sped down the streets of Providence. My hands were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel as I refused to lose my nerve to do what I really wanted to do. There was only one possible destination.
I walked confidently into my gym, breezing past the main desk and not bothering to stop and swipe my member card. Max was standing in gym clothes by the door to his classroom, washing the interior window. I picked up my pace and rushed toward him with a passionate, if not urgent, fearlessness that I had never before experienced.
He turned to silently watch me walk toward him; his beautiful gray eyes the only thing I could see. He tried to say something, but my lips were already over his before he could get it out. I refused to think of or focus on anything except for that moment. No internal debating, no questions, and no hesitation. I was living more and worrying less.
Eagerly, I continued to kiss him, gently holding the back of his neck with one hand and using the other to press him up against the wall. He moaned playfully at my aggression and wasn’t able to hide a smile as he kissed me back. I bit his lower lip on the next kiss, running my hand up his shirt and feeling his hard stomach.
Then Max pushed me away a little. “Hat . . .”
I wouldn’t listen; I just went back at him, kissing his neck and pulling at his shirt. Before he could protest further, his shirt was over his head.
“Hat . . . ,” he said in between kisses. “Wait . . .”
His shirt was on the ground by then, tossed aside with my inhibitions.
“What?” I finally asked with a growl, when he held me back again. He gave a breathy laugh and looked out past me at the rest of the gym. With eyes shut tight, I dropped my head onto his bare chest. “We’re in a room full of people, aren’t we?”
His chest bounced up and down against my forehead as he laughed harder. “I wouldn’t say full.”
Smooth, Hat. Really smooth.
“That’s so not how I thought this would happen.” If given the option, I would have taken a guillotine dropping from the ceiling and chopping off my head rather than having to turn around and face the room of people.
Max grabbed my hair gently, pulling my eyes up from the ground and said, “My office. Now.”
We never did leave Max’s office that night. The whole experience was surreal, exciting, and almost never-ending. By the time we finally laid still on his daybed, sweaty and exhausted, the early morning gym crowd was already congregating outside his office. Unable to fully catch my breath, I laid my head against his stomach and he absentmindedly played with my hair.
The intense and warm ecstasy we shared that night was everything I had always been looking for, but never found. I never expected to find it with another man, but somehow in that tiny office, just before the sun came up, it didn’t matter who it was with. Something inside me changed and I let it. He was what I’d been looking for, I just didn’t know it until now.
My inexperience certainly didn’t seem to bother Max or stop us from diving off the deep end of each other. Reflecting on the short hours we were together, I couldn’t help but feel sad . . . not because of what happened, but because being there, in his arms, was the closest thing to a perfect moment I’d ever felt, and I was sad that we’d have to let that moment go at some point.
I sat up and stretched. “I have to go,” I said groggily, looking around for the remains of my clothes.
He rolled over and pulled the blanket around his shoulders. “Don’t rush off.”
“Rush off?” I laughed. “I’ve been here all night. I need to shower before my sister’s birthday party.” I feared showing up at Sydney’s house smelling of gym mats and sex. One of my cousins was bound to notice. “And if I don’t go home and feed my cat he’ll murder me in my sleep tomorrow.”
I was forcing my shoe on, unwilling to expend the energy to actually untie it, when Max pulled me back into the bed playfully by my shirt. He put his arm against my chest and used his weight to hold me down. “I’m not letting you up until you say you’ll go on a date with me.”
“A date?” I asked with a flat grin. “Hmm.” Even if I had wanted to say no, I knew those big gray eyes would have been enough to stop me. “Wasn’t this a date?”
He leaned in and kissed me, still holding my chest down with his strong arm. “I could keep you here all day,” he said, still just inches from my face.
“Alright, alright . . . I submit.” I grabbed his phone on the nearby desk and put in my number. “You’re better off texting me, I don’t usually answer calls.”
Max still didn’t have any clothes on when I opened his office door, which opened up behind the front desk of the gym. I pulled it shut quickly to shield him and it slammed, causing the chipper five-a.m.-ers, who stood around waiting for their ridiculously early spin class to start, to turn and stare at me.
My shirt was untucked, my hair was . . . well, inexplicable, and since I hadn’t bothered to put my underwear on, it stuck out a little from the pocket where I had stuffed it. I gave a gritted-teeth smile and slowly made my way through the hordes of spandex-loving spinners with their fluffy fresh towels and reusable, green-living water bottles. None of them made any effort to move as I struggled to get to the door, knocking into their stuffed gym bags as I walked along what I’d always remember being the longest walk of shame ever.
“May or may not have just had sex with Max,” I wrote to Damon in a text message before starting my car.
I got to my house just in time to cross paths with my landlord as he opened his store. I slid meekly past him with a small wave as he pulled up the metal gates covering the main door and windows. He gave me an odd smile, as if to say ‘I know what you did last night . . . “ and ‘don’t come anywhere near my daughters.’
If he only knew.
I was all the way past him and almost in my apartment when I noticed that my shirt was not only untucked, it was also on inside-out.
“About damn time,” a text from Damon said.
* * * * *
When I arrived at Sydney’s house, it was filled to the brim with cousins, siblings, aunts, and even one uncle for good measure. In total, I hadn’t gotten more than a few hours of sleep in days and would have rather poked my eye with a rusty nail and walked around for the rest of my days with an eye patch (complete with the pointing and laughing of small children) than face the Walker clan that day. But I also didn’t want to take it out on Sydney. It was her first birthday without our mom and I knew that would be hard.
“Uncle!” My plan to slip into the house undetected was thwarted when my nephew jumped into my arms loudly from a nearby chair. Zoe followed, attaching herself to my side. I picked her up too and pretended that I was strong enough to hold both of them up. We fell into the couch and they laugh
ed at me for being a silly adult.
“You made it,” Sydney said, as the kids left to cause trouble where everyone would least expect it.
“Wouldn’t have missed it,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. “Happy birthday, sis.” She was still giving me that look, the one our mother always gave us, and the same one she had been giving me each time I saw her since our mother’s death. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said, leaving me in the living room and taking the empty iced tea pitcher to the kitchen.
She had every right to her feelings about me though. We hadn’t been nearly as close as we once were, and I was even more distant since finding out the truth behind our mother’s death. I didn’t want to be like our mom and keep secrets from her and everyone else, but how could I be the one to tell them she was murdered? And even if I did, how could I rationally explain knowing it was true?
Later, I was trapped in a conversation with one of my aunts’ insanely boring boyfriends. I never figured out which aunt, because he was too new to know that when he said “your aunt,” he could have been talking about nearly a dozen different people. He also had no idea that talking to him was like talking to a beige chair. Actually, I would have rather been talking to a beige chair. I was only catching every other word he said, just enough to “uh huh” and “sure” in the right places and maintain the illusion of a conversation.
“That makes sense,” I said without any idea of what he was talking about. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out immediately, pretending it was much more urgent than it could ever be to cut off his attempt to continue the conversation.
“I’m not going to let you forget about that date,” a text message from a number I didn’t have saved said. I slid my phone back in my pocket, unanswered. Waiting a little while for my response wouldn’t kill him.
Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1) Page 17
