“Oh, fuck off,” she says. I grin and she frowns, then shakes her head, and then she’s trying not to smile. “Sorry. That was the wrong response.”
“Telling me to fuck off?”
“No, all of it. I stand by telling you to fuck off. I know I should be nicer but that’s not—it’s not always my first impulse,” she says, dark eyes looking away from me. It feels like half apology and half confession.
“I’m tired of nice,” I tell her. “I’d rather have—”
I’d rather have what you give me.The thought runs into me headlong, stops my mouth.
“—honest. Unvarnished. I don’t know. Just not fucking nice.”
“You probably shouldn’t encourage me,” she says.
“Why, because you were holding back before?”
Kat makes a face, and I have the urge to—I don’t know. Kiss her, yes, but take her face in my hand again. Feel her cheekbone under my thumb. Wind her hair between my fingers, see if I can get her eyes to close in a moment of unguarded familiarity.
Instead I lean against the door, put my hands in my pockets.
“I’m about to get a ride back to my truck at the bar,” I tell her. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home.”
She regards me for half a second more, like she has to process something, and then she nods.
“Sure,” she finally says. “Thanks.”
* * *
“Kat stayed overnight?”Levi asks. He’s got his hands on his hips, both of us facing the forest that surrounds his house. It’s a hot day but cooler here, in the woods on the side of a mountain.
“Yeah. We watched movies,” I say. “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.”
“That one’s a classic.”
“Is it?”
“I’ve heard of it, at least,” he says. There’s a moment of silence where Levi weighs his words, as if he’s hopping from rock to rock across a creek and wants to keep his feet dry.
It’s a longer silence than usual.
“She do okay?” he finally asks.
It’s not the question I was expecting, and I take a moment to answer. Levi’s habit for deliberation wears off on me, sometimes.
“Yeah,” I say, still looking at trees, the hot August breeze moving the leaves. I wonder if it’ll storm later. Levi would know. “I guess she did.”
I get an odd look, then, maybe the hint of a smile behind his beard.
“That’s good,” he says.
“You looking to get rid of me?”
“Always,” he says, and the hint of a smile deepens. “Maybe I needed to find you a woman who could take over.”
“She’s not—” I almost say not a woman, but that’s nonsense, and what I really mean is not a woman the way you mean when you say that. “She was just being…”
Not nice.
“Diligent,” I finish. “I did her a favor last weekend.”