“You should wear gardening gloves,” Ace said. “Those scratches look deep, almost like fingernail scrapings.”
“Have you seen rose thorn groupings?” Sienna told him, pulling her hand free and dragging her sleeve down, but not before he glanced at the same marks on her other hand. “Roses can be brutal in rows, and I don’t like wearing gloves as I like the natural feel of the stems and the soil.”
“I can see you must like it,” Ace commented, hoping this was all being picked up. “Because you have them on both hands.”
“That’s why I keep both hands covered,” Sienna admitted. “I’m so embarrassed by the marks.” She showed him her fingernails.“My nails are so pretty and well-groomed, but my hands are all scarred and ugly.”
“I think your hands are still pretty,” Ace commented. “You shouldn’t try to hide them.”
“That’s sweet,” Sienna said and then turned to hear what her friend was saying.
Ace settled back in his seat as the band played on, then moved into a slower set, and the crowd shifted with it, the energy dropping to something more comfortable and sustained.
Sienna leaned against his arm.
Ace looked at the stage and thought about his grandmother in her retirement village in Miami, the weekly calls he made, and the way she always answered on the second ring, regardless of the time, as if she’d been waiting for it. He thought about what it would mean to lose her, the specific, irreplaceable weight of the last person in the world who had known him since the beginning.
“I’d give anything to still have my mother,” Ace admitted quietly to Sienna. He kept his voice even and let it sit there between them. “I last saw her when I was four and waved her and my father goodbye, not realizing it was the last time I’d see them.”
Sienna looked up at him. “I wouldn’t,” she replied, without hesitation and without apology. “Mine’s not worth finding.” She gave a short laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “Although she was finally useful for something, I suppose.” There was a sinister flash in her eyes. “Let’s just hope she stays gone for good.”
Ace looked at her. “What was that?” Then clarified. “What was your mother being useful for?”
“Disappearing.” Sienna smiled with a settled satisfaction showing she’d been waiting a long time for a specific outcome and was now living comfortably inside it. “She’s gone. Finally. No more eyes on me constantly. No more commentary on everything I do. No more of her standing in every room I walk into, making sure everyone is looking at her instead of me.” Her chin lifted slightly. “Now I can live exactly as I want. Do exactly as I please.” She looked around the venue with the expression of someone surveying something that now belonged entirely to them. “It’s remarkable how light the world feels when someone toxic finally removes themselves from it.”
Ace said nothing.
Sienna’s gaze moved across the crowd and found the small group twenty feet away with the unerring accuracy of someone who had been tracking their location all evening.
“Although I see some people never change their habits,” Sienna remarked pleasantly. Her eyes settled on Willa and Harvey. “Look at the two of them. Don’t they just suit each other perfectly?” She tilted her head slightly, lifting her chin rather snootily. “Harvey and Willa. Two people with absolutely nothing to prove to anyone because nobody important is watching anyway. Losers in their own circle.” Her voice dropped into something smooth and deliberate. “The cheap seats always find each other eventually, don’t they?”
Ace went very still. The stillness lasted approximately three seconds. Then he pulled away from Sienna, stood, and took a step back. Creating a distance between them that was small in physical terms and considerable in every other sense. Ace lookedat her with an expression that he was no longer managing for anyone’s benefit.
“Those are my friends you’re talking about,” he said. His voice was quiet and entirely level. “Willa Parker is one of the finest people I have ever known. She is brave and decent. Willa has more genuine worth in one conversation than you’ve demonstrated in this entire evening.” He held Sienna’s eyes without blinking. “Harvey has lost more than anyone I know, yet he keeps a smile on his face and a place in his heart for fair-weathered friends like you.” His eyes narrowed. “The cheap seats comment says considerably more about you than it does about either of them.”
Sienna stared at him, her bottom jaw dropping slightly at his words. Then her expression shifted into something he hadn’t seen on her before. It wasn’t hurt or embarrassment, but something harder than both. The face of a person whose carefully constructed surface had been pushed past the point where maintenance was worth the effort.
Ace reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. He put two folded bills on the partition beside her without looking at the amount.
“That should cover a cab home for you and your friends,” he told her. “From wherever in Gainesville you end up.” He held her gaze for a moment longer. “Enjoy the rest of the show, Sienna.”
He put his wallet away, turned, and walked into the crowd without looking back. Ace moved through the press of people with the focused, unhurried purpose of a man who had stopped doing the thing he’d been asked to do and had started doing the thing he should have done on a limestone island in the middle of a storm. Ace found Willa near the left side of the floor, standingwith Harvey, Margo, and Rad, her face tilted up toward the stage. Her green dress caught the venue light in the way it had been catching it all evening from thirty feet away.
Ace stopped beside her.
Willa turned and looked at him.
He looked back at her.
“I owe you an apology and an explanation,” Ace told her. “I don’t care if I’m breaking a promise right now, but I think I’ve got everything I need to get.”
“What do you mean?” Willa frowned.
“Can we go somewhere quieter?” he asked.
Willa looked at him for a moment with that steady, unhurried attention she gave to things that mattered. Then she handed her drink to Margo without a word and turned toward the exit.
Ace followed.
