“I don’t know that I’ve gotten there yet.” I shrug with a bit of an exaggerated grimace.
“Yeah? How have things been? What have you been up to?”
“Just a lot of resting. Been watching reruns most of this week,” I say, before I realize she’ll know that means I was avoiding answering her. Hoping to distract from that fact, I quickly add, “We’ll see how long it takes for Vin to start saying it’s my turn to take out the trash.”
Her impossibly large eyes pin me to my chair. “I thought you’d text me back.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Yeah, uh. I meant to. I tried, but I just kept drafting my thoughts and deleting them.” I sigh. It’s as honest a response as I can give her. I’d thought meeting up with her would make my feelings clearer to me, to know what to say to her.
She nods, and for the first time since she got here, she drops her eyes to her hands in her lap, her long eyelashes fluttering against her cheek.
The moment stretches out between us. I’d give anything to know what she’s thinking.
“So, uh, I hear you had a fight with Clayton,” I say, just to move the topic onto literally anything. Might as well invite the elephant into the room.
I don’t know if she’s kept in contact with Clayton, if he’s spun some other tale for her and she’s all too ready to believe it. The thought lives in the back of my mind, cloying, a self-righteous anger burning on the pain of our breakup. Maybe I can’t call it a breakup. I’m not really sure if we were even an actual thing.
Lacey flushes and looks a little self-conscious, glancing over her shoulder. “Yeah, um, I guess it made the news. I haven’t been paying attention to how the tabloids are covering it.”
“So, does that make you the new protector of the city?” I tease, perhaps a little too meanly. I don’t think she’s the sort to take on a spotlight of valor, but maybe I just don’t know her as well as I’d like to think I do.
She shrugs, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know about that. I don’t think there’s going to be anyone my particular skillset can handle showing up.”
“Not even me?”
“I mean, I guess I could handle you.” She rolls her eyes with a little smile. For a brief, shining second, her eyes meet mine and it all feels just so incredibly easy to be with her, to talk to her. Then she stiffens, her cheeks turning red. “Not like that. I just, I mean, we aren’t like, enemies, right?”
Her teeth worry into her glossy lower lip, and I bite back on saying something as idiotic as, “We can be enemies if you want to handle me,” because I do actually, really, truly want more than that. I don’t want this thing between us to just be some passing interlude.
My hesitation to answer her draws out too long, even though it only lasts a couple seconds.
“I get that you’re mad at me right now—and you have every right to be,” Lacey says, her brows drawing together apologetically.
“I’m not mad, really, I promise. I just...I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
She nods, chewing her lower lip, waiting for me to tell her any of it. I don’t know where to start. The gap between us is barely more than a couple feet, but it’s a chasm of differences. All the reasons our paths should have never crossed feel overwhelmingly present.
I glance around the scattered curbside seating for any sign of Steel Heel. As much as I’m champing at the bit to ask her when he’s showing up, I don’t want the thought of him to keep coming between us. I think about all the times I pushed her tosee him the way I did, how my impatience doubled at every tiny step forward she made. Instead of celebrating her progress, all I could focus on was how far we had left to go.
Could I be patient enough for her that it wouldn’t ruin things? Would it eat away at me, to keep sharing space in her heart with him, always wanting more? Some naive, hopeful part of me wanted to believe that it would be worth it, but after everything that’s happened, I think I knew all along this was only going to end one way.
There was no reality where it was just us, tucked away in some cozy eternal Saturday afternoon, undisturbed by evil ex-boyfriends.
“I’m sorry we got in a fight,” I manage to get out, the one piece I can separate from all the other tangled feelings. “I, uh, swung by your place the other night, but you weren’t home.”
As my words are trailing off I realize maybe that was a bit creepy. I don’t know, it wasn’t that weird for us before.
Lacey just shrugs. “Oh. Um, yeah, I moved.”
“Moved?”
“Yeah, I don’t live there anymore,” she clarifies, like that’s the part I’m confused about. “Everyone kept saying I should take some time off work after that night, and so I did, and I just kept getting all these calls and emails from everyone who wanted to know what happened, where Clayton went, and...I just couldn’t be there anymore, y’know?”
This is news. I clear my throat, and venture cautiously forward. “Too many memories?”
She grimaces, shakes her head a little. “I didn’t think I could keep staying in the Steel Penthouse after what I did. I figured I’d just go, before the building manager evicted me or whatever.”
