When I walked outside, I thought my mind was playing a trick on me.
But nope. It was actually happening.
Shia King was walking toward me, live and in the flesh, his eyes already on me. I couldn’t run or hide. Well, I could, but he would for sure catch me if I did. And I didn’t feel like running. This street was big enough for the both of us. But he was the worst possible person for me to bump into at that moment. The literal worst.
Even though I knew there was no way in hell he was going to let me walk by without at least a snarky remark, just to make a game out of it I turned the other way and took a bite of my praline. Before my teeth finished sinking into the caramel, his hand wrapped around my arm. I gently pulled away from his touch, but turned to him.
“Do I know you?” I asked with my mouth full. Shia made me lose my manners like no one else. His mother would be horrified by my classless chewing with caramel stuck to my teeth.
He started laughing, but there was no noise. His body shook lightly and he shook his head, his white smile so big and his teeth sinking into his bottom lip. I always lost my breath when he did that.
“Really?” He tucked his chin down a little and raised a brow at me.
I held my breath now, though, because he was engaged to Bell Gardiner. Bell Gardiner out of all people.
“Hmph. Not sure.” I took another bite and started to walk away. I knew he would follow me. “You look like my friend’s fiancé.”
He popped up next to my shoulder. “Is that chocolate?”
I jerked away the praline before his fingers could grab it. “Maybe. What can I help you with, Shia?”
“So you do know my name after all?”
“Like I said, I believe you’re engaged to my friend.”
People were all around us. A couple pushing a set of twins in a stroller. The twins were wearing matching boat hats on their little potato heads; one of them made eye contact with me and smiled, and I smiled back at him.
His smile made me a little sad, but he was so charming.
“Hmm, don’t think I am,” Shia said.
The baby I thought I was having a moment with started crying hysterically. I continued walking.
Shia laughed next to me, then said, “Anyway, this is a coincidence. What are you doing in the Quarter?”
He was walking next to me, but backward. The sun was so bright that I had to squint a little when I looked at him. He was wearing an earthy-green T-shirt, and Jo’s poetry book came to my mind again. The one that says a little more human than the rest of us. Shia’s facial hair had grown out a little more than I was used to, and it made him look older than he was. I had never seen him in person with the beginnings of a beard—only on Facebook. When he was home, he always kept it shaved.
“Minding my business. You?”
He laughed without noise again. “I can’t say the same.”
I tried not to laugh. “What do you want, Shia? Where’s Bell Gardiner?”
His smile didn’t falter, not even a smidge. “Working. Where’s John Brooke?”
Touché, asshole.
I didn’t look at Shia. “Sleeping. Say, I didn’t know bars were open so early on a Sunday. Or maybe you have a connection?”
I hoped my words annoyed him as much as I wanted them to. He was lucky I was even speaking to him. At least, that’s what I was trying to convince myself.
“Ha-ha, Meg. Don’t be jealous. It’s not a good look on you.”
I almost bumped into a man carrying an ice-cream cone, and he cursed at me under his breath when he had to basically jump out of my way. How was it that Shia was walking backward and he didn’t run into anyone? He was too casual. Even the staple look he wore, and wore well: a T-shirt that said MANILA on the front with a colorful bus under the word, black gym shorts with a Nike check, of course. He must have had those shorts in every color. Shia was being so . . . Shia.
“I’m not jealous,” I denied. I focused my eyes on a passing taxi van full of rowdy men, and they shouted something gross to a group of women all dressed in the same shirts. Only one was different: it said BRIDE on white instead of BRIDE’S BITCHES on black. The women shouted back and I looked at Shia.
“Gross,” he remarked. His eyes followed the taxi until it disappeared and we couldn’t hear the men shouting anymore.
“Very.” I hoped those women were going to be careful in a city full of taxi vans full of men full of frozen liquor slushies. I hated that part of the Quarter. I loved the rich culture and the food and the music. New Orleans held so much beauty outside of Bourbon Street. I dreamed of living in a town house in the heart of the Quarter. I would have to wait until my husband and I retired, as I figured I would spend most of my life on a military base.
“Wait, why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be gone by now?” I asked Shia.
We reached the corner of Canal and Decatur and had to stop at the crosswalk to wait for the light to turn. At least half a dozen people were on the sidewalk with us, but it didn’t feel that way. They were all minding their own business.
“I’m staying home a little bit longer.”
I looked at his face, into his eyes. “Why? Is Bell knocked up or something?”
His smile faded. “Really, Meg? You’re going to be that immature?”
I was determined not to say anything—
“I’m not being immature,” I snapped, a little loudly.
My eyes bounced from the ground to
the people around us, to the traffic on Canal Street.
He cracked a smile.
“Go away,” I said, not really meaning it.
“Nope,” he responded, knowing I didn’t. “I thought you and Bell were friends? Plus you kept saying I looked like your friend’s fiancé.”
I gaped at him. “Friends? You’re joking, right?”
Bell and I were never friends. She was awful in that way where she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Little passive-aggressive insults like “Meg, I know the best dermatologist if you need one” when I ran into her at the PX with one tiny little pimple on my chin. The only times she had been “nice” were questionable. She slid me a drink here and there at her work, but even that stopped once my aunt Hannah got a job behind the bar with her. Reeder, Breyer, John, and I went out in the Quarter each time John came back from New York for leave, but it went from my favorite to least favorite place overnight.
Shia smiled. “Okay, so maybe not friends exactly.”
We had resumed walking, I forward and he backward even on the busy cross street. We were in the center of the Quarter and there was no shortage of people bustling through the warm Sunday morning.
“But you don’t have any reason not to like her. I like John just fine.”
My hotel was coming up. It was almost a perfect square of a walk back from Aunt Sally’s to the Ritz. What was I supposed to do about Shia walking with me?
“You and John were friends. That’s not the same thing.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked for something from John. Nothing.
“We weren’t that great of friends, and why do you care who I’m engaged to anyway?” Shia shrugged. The green of his T-shirt went so well with his dark skin. He always looked so effortlessly put together, but he was more than his pretty face. As was I.
Shia had told me that exact same thing about John once before, that they weren’t that great of friends. When I had asked Shia why, he’d only said, “Why do you think?” and opened the door to the black town car that would drive him to the airport that September.