Downtown Devil: Book 2 in series (Sins in the City) (25 page)

“And I’m not working at all,” she joked, more self-effacing than glib.

“That sucks. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Don’t be. I have enough money saved to get by for a couple months. I’m even thinking of letting myself spend the next four weeks working only on my show. Like pretend I’m a professional photographer for a month.”

“You should. If you can swing it, you totally should.”

“It’s the plan. Sounds like heaven, actually, provided I don’t get
hit by a bus and lament my lack of health insurance before I find a new job.”

“If you do get hit by a bus, call me. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Oh, of course. What a handy friend to have. So, you down? Readjourn to my little two-bedroom palace?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

Hopefully far better than okay, in fact, though in exactly what way she meant that, Clare couldn’t truly say.

“O
h shit.” It had been drizzling when they’d entered the drugstore; now it was straight-up pouring. “I’ll get us a cab,” Vaughn said, pulling out his phone, but Clare surprised him, pressing his hand down. He met her eyes. They were bright in the streetlight, bright with mischief and maybe residual wine.

“It’s only four blocks,” she said.

“It’s pouring.”

“We can run. May as well, if you’re skipping your workout.”

And what exactly was waiting for them, at her place? His blood pumped quicker at the question, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t a fool. He liked her. A lot. Probably more than he’d liked a girl in five years or more, and in all honesty he didn’t want to find himself in Clare’s shoes if anything happened, feeling like a lovesick chump. So he asked her, point-blank, “What’s at your place, anyhow?”

“Netflix. Board games.”

He smirked. “Which board games?”

“Clue, Scrabble. Plus, we’ve got Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity, and maybe an Uno deck.”

“Most of those are pretty lame with just two.”

“We’ll make them fun. You don’t need three people to have a good time, you know,” she said, and elbowed him conspiringly.

“Yeah, yeah. And fine. We’ll figure something out.”

“Ready to make a run for it?”

“Let’s do it.”

“You sure? Because I ran track in high school. I’d hate to lose you, leave you to drown out here.”

His turn to look at her shoes—not high heels, but her short little boots were wedges, he thought that style was called. “And I’d hate for you to break an ankle. I’m off-duty tonight, so how about we make this a jog, and not require any first aid?”

She smirked. “Fine.”

With a pair of deep breaths, they went for it. He let Clare set the pace, impressed by how agile the girl was on a two-inch platform. Every block left them a little closer to soaked, but the jog was brisk and Clare slowed to a trot as they reached her front steps and fished her keys from her purse.

“We made it,” she announced, leading him into the front landing.

Vaughn looked down, finding his sweats drenched from the knee to the thigh, a little less so in the back and up his shins. His hair and shoulders were dripping, the rest of him merely wet. Clare looked about the same.

“Provided neither of us wrecked our phones,” he said, following her up to the second floor, “I’d say we made a successful escape.” He’d be stuck sitting in wet pants all night, but his mood was bright and it felt more like a lark than an inconvenience.

“Wait till you see my hair about an hour from now.” She unlocked the door to her apartment. “It’s curly enough when I make an effort. After this I’ll be able to stand a beach umbrella up in it.”

He laughed and tailed her inside, and admired her place anew as
she flipped on the light. The door opened into a small kitchen adjoining a living area. The walls were painted a deep reddish pink, and you could tell an artist lived here. A plain black IKEA couch was fancied up with colorful printed pillows and a funky knitted blanket, and the old coffee table looked magazine-worthy, dressed up by a vintage-looking lamp and a vase of willow branches. Lots of simple, neutral things set off by bright, artsy accents.

“I didn’t say before, but great place.”

“Nothing fancy, but thanks. You want a hair dryer, for your clothes?” she asked, drying her glasses with a paper towel.

He shed his dripping jacket and found his shirt just a bit damp. “I think I’ll live.”

“Change your mind about the wine?”

“Nah, Gatorade’s fine. You go ahead, though.”

She smiled, drawing a bottle from a cupboard. “After the day I’ve had, believe me, I will.”

Vaughn strolled around the living room. “I mean it, though—you’ve made this place look really nice. Inviting, or whatever. I think it’s the colors.”

“I can’t take all the credit—my roommate’s got good taste.”

He approached a photo on the wall—an eight-by-ten black-and-white portrait of a pretty, middle-aged black woman in a striped blouse, smiling, sitting by an open window—framed by a generous mat. “Did you take this?”

Clare looked over her shoulder as she uncorked the wine. “I did, yeah. Ages ago, when I was still at the Dietrich. My art school days. That’s my mom.”

He looked back to the photo, scrutinizing. “Okay, yeah, I see it.” She had her mom’s jawline and nose and brows. He wanted to see a picture of her dad now, to figure out where he factored, apart from her complexion. He wanted to see all sorts of photos—of Clare as a kid,
her senior portrait, candids from college. He wanted to know her better, he realized, to
get
her. All the things he wanted when he was first falling for a woman. No surprise, but also pretty hopeless. As hopeless as her feelings for Mica were, really.

“So what do you think?” she asked. “Movie?”

“Nah. We’ll just end up spending forty minutes trying to agree on something and get scrolling fatigue.”

“The curse of Netflix,” she agreed, nodding. “The more choices you have, the more impossible it is to pick.”

“The paralyzing abundance of variety—the curse of the entire hookup generation.”

“That leaves board games, then.” She skirted the coffee table to stand by a bookcase, wine in one hand, a matching glass filled with yellow Gatorade in the other.

He laughed. “Classy.”

She set both drinks down and switched on the lamp, then perused the stack of board games on the shelf. “Clue, Sorry!, Parcheesi, Apples to Apples—I think that’s for more than two, though—and a bunch of card games. Oh, and there’s a chess set someplace, though I’m so bad at chess it wouldn’t be much fun for either of us.”

“Clue’s not much fun with two, either, I don’t think. Too bad. You said you had Uno?”

A sound turned Clare’s head, footsteps from down a hall. “Hello,” she called. “You just get in?”

“Maybe twenty minutes ago,” said a woman’s voice.

“I thought you must be out with What’s His Name.”

Clare’s roommate appeared, a short white girl with her red hair twisted up in a sloppy bun, wearing a black bathrobe and plaid pajama bottoms. “What’s His Name is out of town at the moment, so me and my hairy legs are staying in. I just worked late. I saw your
text—sorry, honey.” She came over and gave Clare a long hug on tiptoes, rubbing her back. “That blows about your job.”

“Thanks. You turning in? Should we keep it down?”

“No, I was just about to do a
quick
e-mail check before bed that would inevitably lead to three hours lost in a YouTube vortex. But then my spidey senses detected the clink of a wineglass.” She looked to Vaughn and offered a little wave. “Hey. I won’t crash your party. I just wondered if you wanted some company, drowning your sorrows. But it looks like you already have some.” She smiled as she edged past the couch and Vaughn met her halfway, shaking her hand.

“I’m Vaughn.”

“Bree. Nice to meet you.” He searched her eyes for some sly, knowing glint, anything that told him she knew what her roommate had been up to, all those nights when she’d not come home.
Two men, I hear, and are you one of them?
he imagined a smirk asking. But if she knew, the girl had a killer poker face.

“You want to play Clue?” he asked her. The goner in him might want Clare all to himself, but the realist knew his romantic chances with her sans Mica would be slim. Plus, the point of the evening was to cheer her up, and her friend might be of some help there.

Bree made a face, considering, then looked to Clare.

“It’s no fun with two,” Clare said. “And if we don’t finish off this bottle tonight it’s going to go sour, and Vaughn’s no help.”

“Can’t fault that logic.” Bree headed for the kitchen. “I call Miss Scarlet.”

Clare slid the box off the shelf and opened it on the coffee table. “Vaughn, which of these many white folks would
you
like to be?”

He laughed again. She was good at making him do that. There was an old wooden chair with a faded red velvet cushion nearby and he slid it over, sitting opposite her. “You pick for me.”

“Colonel Mustard, then,” she announced, setting the yellow token on the wood, then the red one. “I’d be Mr. Green, but I think we’re missing that piece. Bree, do we still have that random box of Jujubes?”

“Someplace . . .” The sounds of drawers being rooted through concluded with a triumphant “Aha!”

“Bring me a green one. We’ll use that for when somebody accuses Mr. Green, but I guess I’ll go with Mrs. Peacock.” She set the aqua piece on the table and unfolded the board.

Cards were sorted and dealt, the murderer, weapon, and room secreted away beneath the board. Vaughn required a refresher, but it came back to him quick enough. The leftover pizza wound up getting eaten, along with the ancient Jujubes, and Bree won the game before Vaughn had figured out more than the killer.

“I knew it was you,” he told Clare—Mrs. Peacock had done it, with the wrench, in the library. “I always suspected you were capable of bludgeoning.”

She offered a sinister “Bwah ha
haaaa
” as they stowed the pieces and cards, then refreshed her glass from the dwindling bottle. She held it up to show Bree. “Top you off?”

The girl yawned widely and waved a dismissive hand. “No, I’m wiped. I’m going to bed to read whatever dirty texts may be awaiting me.”

“Good plan. Night.”

“Night. Nice meeting you, Vaughn.”

“You, too.” He grabbed the game’s lid and pressed it in place, then sought Clare’s eyes. “This was fun, thanks. Nothing like how I’d imagined my night would look, but a damn good time.”

“No, thank you. I’m sure at least half of all this is down to you feeling bad for me, so really—thanks.”

He shook his head. “I don’t feel bad for you. I mean, I don’t
pity
you, that is. Half of this may be down to wanting you to have a good
time tonight, but the other half is down to me wanting the same for myself. Trust me, this was for both of us.”

She smiled at that, and he smiled back. She was contagious that way.

“Whatever the case, I appreciate it,” she said. “Clue wasn’t quite the level of debauchery I’d been hoping for earlier, but at least when I wake up tomorrow the game’ll still be here, right?”

His smile soured to a smirk, and he lifted his empty glass in a glib toast. “And at least you’ve got the memories, right? Even if you and he never hook up again.”

“True enough. It stings now, but it’s not like I was in love. In a few weeks or months or a year from now, yeah, I’ll have the souvenirs.” She tapped her temple to mean every fantasy she’d be carrying with her into whatever came next.

“I better head out,” Vaughn said, eyeing his phone’s clock. It was half past ten.

“You can crash, if you want. It’s still pouring out.”

He turned to check the window and she was right—the pane was streaked with rain, a thousand dancing drops lit orange by the streetlights. Then he eyed their couch—an old silk-upholstered mahogany relic, not nearly big enough for him to get comfortable on.

“No, I meant in my bed,” she said, catching his skeptical glance. “After everything that’s gone on, that’s not that salacious, right? Us
literally
sleeping in the same bed? It’s not like we haven’t done way more crazy crap together. It’d be the least of our scandals.”

“I guess that’s true . . .” But she also didn’t know he liked her—liked her as she liked Mica. But he supposed that made accepting the invitation creepy only if he was secretly getting horny over it. He’d have some measure of lust simmering in his body, no doubt, but also a deep and lucid knowledge that it was pretty doomed. It did seem harmless enough . . .

“Come on,” she said. “We chat, we sleep, we wake up, I make us coffee. I owe you a morning-after coffee or three. Don’t deny it.”

It would save him either a drencher of a walk or cab fare, he supposed. “Only if you’re sure.”

She shrugged. “Why the fuck not, right?”

He smiled at that. “Yeah. Why the fuck not?”

“Come on and I’ll show you where the bathroom is. We don’t have any spare toothbrushes, but I’m not afraid of your cooties, if you’d like to use mine.”

They took turns getting ready, then Clare led him to her room at the end of the hall.

“This works better when the drenched party is a woman, doesn’t it?” she asked, flipping on the light. “I mean, if this was reversed, I could sleep in one of your shirts and some boxers. Whereas I can’t picture you in a camisole and bikini briefs.”

“You wouldn’t want to, I’m sure.” He looked around her private space, confirming his suspicion that the good taste evident in the living room was likely down to Clare. Her room was feminine: lots of patterns and colors and textures. Her bed was a queen, made up in a turquoise and rust patterned bedspread, clashing artfully with the knitted crimson throw tossed across it. Her pillowcases gleamed in the light when she switched on a bedside lamp.

“Satin sheets?” he noted. “Classy as fuck.”

She laughed. “They’re actually kind of shitty for sex—ask me how I know—but, man, do they feel awesome when you’re just sleeping on them.”

“Can’t wait to find out. Wait—why are they shitty for sex?”