He tossed the phone down to the tabletop. “Who cares, as long as she doesn’t get in her car and haul all the way to Georgia Redeemer to make sure I change my underwear?”
“Did you?”
“Why? You wanna see for yourself?” He smiled at her, Rid’s favorite smile. The one that said: Third Degree Burns, Babe. That’s how hot you are. After last night, she hoped that was what it still meant. Instead of: I’m feeling guilty because I crushed on some rocker girl.
Either way, she smiled back, Link’s favorite smile. The one that said: I know, Hot Rod. I’m the one holding the match.
Come play with fire.
My fire.
The moment she reached for his hand, Link pushed his coffee cup away from him. “I’ve been thinkin’.”
Uh-oh.
She pulled back her hand. He kept going. “The thing is, Rid, you’re right. You were right all along. I thought about it last night while I was working on some new lyrics in the practice room.”
“So I heard. Seems you’re getting along with the girls in the band. At least half of them.” Ridley forced a smile.
“Whatever,” Link said. He wasn’t falling for that one.
Ridley made a mental note to change the stripe in her hair from pink to some other color. Any other color, so long as it doesn’t remind me of Pink Floyd.
Link jiggled his leg beneath the table. “Why was I so mad at you yesterday? I came to New York to play my music, and you gave me that opportunity, right here and now.”
“I did? I did.” She tried not to sound surprised. Right? You did. See? You’re not such a terrible person.
“You just did it in your own messed-up way.”
“Messed up?” She tried to look confused.
Link ignored her. “Which used to be all right. But now we need to set a few ground rules,” he said.
Um. O-kay. “You know I don’t do well with rules.”
“I do. That’s why we’re goin’ to get it all out in the open.” Link looked unusually serious. “This is the way it’s going to work with us. This is the only way I can handle it. If we can’t do it the right way, I don’t want to do it. Not anymore.”
Not anymore? He’d better do it. Just like I promised he would.
In all their many breakups, Ridley couldn’t remember Link ever being so reasonable. It was almost horrifying.
This wasn’t how they talked. They threw things at each other. Insults, jokes, sometimes even remotes. They made war and made peace and made up and made out. They didn’t do things like set ground rules. They didn’t do feelings talk. They didn’t get it out in the open.
Ridley looked down at the red, bowling-ball-speckled diner table. “It all sounds so grown-up when you say it like that.”
A sad expression crossed Link’s face. “So maybe we gotta grow up, Rid.”
“But ground rules?”
“Yep.” Link tapped on the tabletop. “First, no magic. No Siren stuff.”
She looked liked he’d slapped her. “What are you talking about?” No one had ever dared say anything like that to her before. No Siren stuff? Why didn’t he just say no Ridley stuff?
They were one and the same.
Ridley drew a deep breath.
“Wait,” Link said, grabbing her hand before she could launch her attack. “It’s just that I don’t want you charmin’ anyone or gettin’ out your little Blow Pops to make sure everyone loves me. That’s not everyone lovin’ me, or my music. That’s everyone lovin’ you.”
“I don’t see the difference,” Ridley lied, her voice still cold. It was one of those chicken-and-egg, tree-falling-in-the-forest problems. Siren School 101: If a Siren charmed a Mortal to shoot someone, who was the real shooter? Just because Ridley didn’t want to debate the Power of Persuasion in a coffee shop with a Caster wearing gauges and a soul patch didn’t mean she didn’t get it.
Link wasn’t finished. “Second, no more lies. Just tell me the truth. You want me to meet up with a band, just say it. You want to come with me to New York, same thing. There’s nothin’ you can’t tell me, Rid. Nothin’.”
Ridley raised an eyebrow.
She had been working as a Siren long enough to know that those words were the single biggest fantasy in any relationship. It wasn’t even up for debate.
There was always, always something you couldn’t tell the other person.
Look at Link, who could have kept three little words to himself and saved them both a breakup. Hadn’t he learned anything?
When it came to relationships, the truth never set anyone free. The truth only set things on fire.
If you thought otherwise, you were deluding yourself, or you were seriously stupid. Ridley was neither, and as much as she wanted to believe those words, it was all she could do to nod, because she knew Link believed them.
Even the nod was a lie.
“Truce?” He held out his hand with a smile. “No Siren stuff? No more secrets and no more lies? Just you and me, and maybe or maybe not Lucille Ball? Trying to make it in the big city like a couple a regular people.”
Regular people? Us? Did he really just say that?
She looked at him with a smile of her own. “Right. A couple of regular people. That’s us.”
What does he think? I’ll just join the DAR and learn to make biscuits? He’ll get a job pumping gas at the BP?
He has no idea.
“Rid? You shootin’ straight with me? Tell me the truth.” Link didn’t seem convinced.
She squirmed on her vinyl seat cushion. “Honest.”
For the thousandth time, Ridley wondered how the two of them had ever gotten together. But she couldn’t ignore what he was saying. Link wanted something more out of their relationship—and somehow more translated to real and regular.
Like he was looking for a Lena, not a Ridley. Someone honest and kind, not deceptive and selfish. A girl who wrote poetry on her bedroom walls. Not a Siren sitting alone on the curb.
I hate my life, Ridley thought. I hate myself. I just wish I hated him.
It would make everything so much easier.
Ridley grabbed the menu off the table, suddenly desperate for a sweet fix. “Now it’s time for some sugar, Sugar. And I’m not talking about Marilyn’s Megga Monty Christo.”
“That’s my girl.” Link grinned.
As Ridley started to order, she wondered if Link noticed that she never shook his hand.
Regular people? That’s what he wants us to be?
Breakfast had come and gone, and Ridley still couldn’t let the idea drop. Now she had retreated to the curb in front of the diner.
Here I am again.
Link had gone upstairs to practice, and she needed to figure a few things out for herself.
I should give up now.
When Wesley Lincoln was the guy giving you relationship advice, it was a low point. The odds of that happening were about the same as Mrs. Lincoln telling Ridley to show a little skin. By Siren standards, Ridley was hitting rock bottom.
Regular people.
Regular people aren’t Sirens.
Regular people don’t use magic.
She had to face it. Her relationship was doomed.
She hadn’t known hearing the words come out of Link’s mouth would bother her the way it did. How could she? Not many intelligent words came out of his mouth in general.
Ridley traced the cracked edge of the curb with her finger. It reminded her of the cracked stone walkway that led up to her own front door—the one that her mamma had slammed in her face the morning after her Claiming.
She remembered stumbling up the stone steps, pounding on the chipping paint of the old wooden door. She could still feel the way her clothes constricted her, damp with sweat and fear, as she stood panting on the veranda.
You need to go, Ridley. You can’t come back here. Not anymore.
She closed her eyes as she remembered the screaming and the wailing, the way her voice seemed to belong to someone else. Someone s
mall and fragile and alone.
Someone who still needed a mother and a family, no matter what the moon had told them.
You’ve been Claimed, child. The Dark is your family now.
Ridley pinched her red glitter nails into the soft flesh of her hand. The pain brought her back.
Wake up. That’s not you. That’s not now.
You’re not that girl. Not only that girl.
Ridley looked out at the street in front of her. She could already see a pile of parking tickets on the Beater’s windshield, a metal boot snapped around the tire.
This wasn’t Gatlin. Things changed here.
Things could change.
Ridley couldn’t promise she wouldn’t use any magic. After all, she wasn’t a miracle worker. You couldn’t just go cold turkey.
The rest of it, she could at least try.
For Link.
It was the kind of thing a Lena would do for an Ethan, and if a Lena was what Link was looking for, Ridley could give it a shot.
Like a regular girlfriend would.
But there was a lot she didn’t know, like what regular people did all day.
Work? It seemed like the obvious answer. Did he expect her to find a job? Earn Mortal money?