I’d walked away from Iggy. He hadn’t kicked me out—he’d given me a key and told me I could come back whenever.
I owed him an apology. More than an apology.
I owed him proof that I meant it this time, that I wasn’t leaving again.
Thankfully, he’d already told me exactly what I needed to do.
“No,” I repeated. “I need to do this in person. He deserves that.”
“Jesus, you reallyarein love,” Reggie said. “I’m gonna miss you, Harv. You’ve been a friend.”
“Lemme take you for waffles, Reg,” I said, standing.
I breathed in another lungful of greasy, smoky, deep-fried-rat air, and it was just a tiny bit sweeter now.
I was going home.
“I wanna talk to you about a guy I know. Hardworking. Desperate to get out of a small town he’s too big for. Built like a linebacker. Knows a little about computers, wants to know more. Comes with my sincere recommendation.”
Reggie stood as well, dusting coat off and shoving his hands in his pockets. “If you think he’s good for the job, I think he’s good for the job. You got a name? Phone number?”
“He’s called Liam. I’ll text you his number. He’d probably suck your dick for the opportunity.”
Reggie raised an eyebrow. “Is he cute?”
“I thought you were straight?” I asked, heading for the fire escape.
“Straight I am, picky I am not.” Reggie shrugged, following me down.
“I wouldn’t call him cute. Maybe ruggedly handsome.”
I could admit that Liam was an attractive man. Now that I knew he wasn’t interested in Iggy anymore.
“Not a pretty boy like you, then,” Reggie said.
“Not everyone I know is catalogue-model beautiful like me.”
“You’re what now?”
“Just something someone said while I was back home,” I said. “Uh. In Otter Bay.”
“Never heard you call a place home before,” Reggie said. “Think maybe that means somethin’.”
It meant something, all right. Something I was just coming around to understanding myself. Otter Bay was home. Maybe it always had been, maybe it’d just been waiting for me to figure that out.
I’d gotten there eventually.
“Hey, Reg,” I asked as we climbed through the window into the hall of the floor we both had apartments on. “You got any idea where I could get a ukulele this time of night?”
“It’s LA,” Reggie said with a shrug. “You could probably mug a busker.”
28
Iggy
The last thingI’d wanted today was to see Liam walking into the shop, but the past few days had proved to me that the thing I wanted least was, in general, exactly what I got.
By now, everyone must’ve known Harvey was gone. Liam would’ve heard.
