At the door to the deli, I grab hold of the handle and yank it open, allowing Kyla to enter first. At the counter, we both place our orders. Mike knows my usual anyway, and Kyla sticks to her smoked salmon bagel.
“Takeaway?” Mike asks, looking between us with interest. The guy is always asking me about my relationship status. He’s Italian and has been married since his late teens. He can’t understand how a man can get to his late twenties and not have a wife.
“Shall we eat here?” Kyla asks, her eyes widening with uncertainty. She’s nervous about something, but I don’t want her to be. I want her to feel comfortable in my presence, but I know women don’t always. Maybe it’s my height. At six-foot-two, I’m towering over Kyla, and she’s not particularly short for a woman. Or maybe it’s my tattoos. My arms are a latticework of hell symbols—demons and skulls, hellfire and death. It all fit with the anger I felt after my dad died, at the same time that I accumulated the faint scars that run up my cheek and the crookedness to my nose. My brother would say I have a short fuse, but it wasn’t really that. My fuse is long. It’s just my nerves were frayed too close to the edge.
“Sure. I don’t have another client for thirty minutes.”
There’s a small table by the window, which Kyla grabs while I settle the check and find our drinks from the open-fronted fridge.
When I sit, Kyla’s twisting her hands together on the table. “What kind of art do you like? What kind of pictures do you have up in your place?” I ask her.
“I don’t have much art. Just photographs of family and friends.”
“Well, if you could choose something, what would you pick?”
“I like black and white photos from the past. You know, the kind of thing that shows an era.”
“Hollywood movie stars?”
She shakes her head, reaching out for the saltshaker even though we don’t have anything to season. “Not well-known people. Just ordinary people.”
“Yeah, I like those too. And the old black and white film reels from the past.”
“Yeah. The days when everyone wore a hat and their Sunday best. People didn’t have a lot, but they always looked well put together.”
“They did. I guess they didn’t have the option to buy fast fashion made in a sweatshop halfway across the world. It was all quality stuff made locally. Tailor-made from natural fabrics.”
“Exactly.” Kyla smiles as she takes a sip of her iced tea, turning to glance out of the window at a passing mom pushing her twins in a double stroller. Her eyes linger on the cute girls, who must be around nine months old. Their hair is secured into topknots, complete with purple bows, and they’re both clutching a white unicorn toy.
Mike crosses the deli to set our food in front of us on white square plates. He’s made an extra effort with the presentation today, as though he wants to contribute to making this thing that he thinks is a date more special. He gives me a wink too. “Let me know if you need anything else,” he says before winking again. Damn, the man has no tact.
“Does he always do that?” Kyla says, taking a bite of her bagel.
“The winking thing?”
She nods, chewing and then rolling her eyes with pleasure.
“He thinks you’re my girlfriend, or at least, he thinks I’m trying to make you my girlfriend.”
“If only he knew what’s really going on at Ink Factor.” Kyla raises a brow and fixes me with a look that is far from shy. It’s a real surprise to see her being so upfront.
“Dex has some interesting ideas.”
“He does,” she says.
“I wrote down my ideas on a piece of paper before we left for lunch, but now I’m thinking to change something.”
“Really? Why?”
“Just something we talked about. It’s steering me in a different direction.”
“Well, now I’m intrigued.”
“You weren’t intrigued before?”
Kyla lowers her bagel, resting it in the white paper it was wrapped in and uses a napkin to dab her lips. “I’m intrigued and a little scared.”
“Well, you definitely don’t need to be scared. There’s not a man at Ink Factor who’d ever do anything to hurt even a hair on your head.”
“I get that,” she says. “But it’s more than that?”
“Oh yeah. What?”
“What happens if I like it too much?”
Now there’s something that none of us had even considered. Or at least, it’s not something that passed through my mind. My focus has been on making everything as good as possible for Kyla, but she’s right. What happens if we all want more than one night? What happens after the game is done? I don’t want to freak her out by adding to her concerns. I guess we’ll all need to live with that risk and deal with it if it happens.