My eyes narrow. “I don’t give a damn if I was supposed to be here or not. It’s my fucking apartment.”
“Fine. Get out of here and I’ll get my stuff together and go.”
“Oh no,” I say, standing. Grabbing the chair, I fling it behind me. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“You start running your mouth and distract me and make me forget what I was going to say. I have a point, and I haven’t made it yet.”
“Then you better make it.”
She grins a cocky, I-got-you kind of smile. If she only knew.
“I can’t with you,” I say, shaking my head.
Her grin fades. Her eyes drop too. “I think we’ve already established that.”
Our eyes lock together over the thirty-year-old carpet. The exchange says more than her lips ever could and, quite frankly, more than I could ever hear her say out loud.
The wind is knocked out of my lungs at the emotion in her eyes. “That’s not what I meant to say.”
“No. But I’m glad you did.” She shakes her head as if the motion will rid her of thoughts of me. “Anyway, back to the point at hand. Don’t even think about bringing this up to Peck.”
“I’ll do whatever the hell I want.” I grab a can of chew out of my back pocket and flip it between my fingers. The rhythm sets a mood I think we both find some comfort in.
“Peck was helping me last night,” she says over the sound of my thumb hitting the can. “Cross and Kallie were all kinds of loud, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I figured I’d be in and out before you even knew it.”
“He still should’ve called me. What would’ve happened if I’d come in here guns blazing? Then whose fault is it?”
“Mine. It would’ve started with my bad choice.” She gulps. “I’ve had to endure consequences of bad decisions before.”
As we stand across from each other, close enough to touch if we tried but far enough away to remember all the reasons why we can’t, I just want to hit something. Hard. Destroy something worse than I’ve destroyed her. Feel the pain on my knuckles, the shots of fire that radiate up my arms when I nail something as hard as I can. Anything to distract me from the hurt bubbling up inside me.
I hate that I can’t reach for her. I despise that it will always be this way between us. Our wounds are like the black eye that never quite heals, leaving traces of purple in the corner that you can see if you look at it in just the right light.
She coughs, bringing me back to the little room above the bar. “I’ll be out of here in a few minutes.”
“Is there anything else I need to know?” I ask, not quite ready to part from her.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. You’re a drinker now. You perform breaking-and-enterings. Did you join a biker gang or something?”
She laughs, shaking her head. “No.” Light streams in farther into the room, washing Hadley and me in the bright morning rays. She squints as she looks at me. The wheels are turning, and that makes me a little more nervous than it should. “Cross was telling me Nora put in her notice.”
“Yeah. Sucks because everyone loves her. But she has to do what she has to do.”
“I know you trust her a lot.”
“She’s better off finishing her degree. We’ll make do.” I stretch my arms overhead, the adrenaline from thinking I was going to war earlier making them ache. “I’ll be a little short-staffed for a while because no one can do all the things and work all the shifts Nora did.”
“Hey! I could help you.” Her eyes light up like a Christmas tree. “I mean, I don’t know how to be a bartender, but I have some time to kill.”
“You must be out of your mind.”
Even as I say the words, the idea of having her beside me every night appeals to me. I could keep an eye on her, make her smile. Feel her brush against me and hear her laugh.
“I could do it,” she says. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.” I chuckle. “You hate the bar. You hate me, for fuck’s sake. What in the world is going on here?”
The fight in her eyes soften. Instead of answering me, she turns slowly toward the futon and starts making the bed.
“Uh, that wasn’t rhetorical,” I say.
“Maybe,” she says, jerking the blankets in place, “I’m trying to evolve.”
“Into what? Bonnie and Clyde?”
She glares at me, and it’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. “Maybe that was the wrong choice of words.” She goes back to making the bed. “Maybe I’m trying to move on.”
That causes a chill to rip up my spine. It cascades down my legs, rolling down my arms, covering my half-sleeve of tattoos with goose bumps.