Freaks in the City (26 page)

“The pleasure is all mine, m’dear. I’ll let
you know when I’m done with it.”

She finished her rounds, and at two minutes
to four, said her goodbyes and left the studio to meet Tyler.

She spotted him sitting at a table by the
front window, sipping a cola and flicking through a magazine. The
plate on his table was scattered with crumbs. The coffee cup sat
empty and slightly skewed on its saucer. He’d been there a
while.

He glanced up when she approached. He held
her gaze for one long moment, long enough for her to note the heat
in his eyes. And the questions. And then he glanced down at his
cola and sucked in a deep breath.

She paused beside his chair and bent to kiss
his cheek. Before she straightened she murmured, “See anything you
liked while you were waiting?”

The rush of heat to his face made her smile
as she took a seat opposite and popped the tab on the other
unopened soda he’d bought.

“You know,” he said.

“Of course.” She tapped her temple with her
forefinger. “Super-cyborg senses, remember?”

“So much for me being covert.”

“Yes. Why, Tyler?”

He rearranged the sugar sachets in the
ceramic condiments container. “Which one of those guys was
Allen?”

“He’s the tutor.”

“The guy with the OTT hair and beard.”

“Correct.” She extracted all her memories of
the days since meeting Allen, and any mention she’d made of him,
and reviewed them while analyzing Tyler’s reactions.

Ah. Hindsight, as humans were fond of
saying, was a wonderful thing. Tyler had obviously concluded Allen
was a potential rival, and she could understand how he had come to
that erroneous conclusion. Her decision to withhold the fact she
had not only applied for a job but that her application had been
successful, could only have exacerbated the matter.

“I’m sorry for keeping information from
you,” she said, at the same time he raised his gaze to hers and
said, “I’m sorry for being a jealous asshole.”

“There is nothing to apologize for,” she
told him. “If I’d told you about my job, and that Allen was my
employer, you would not have felt the need to take such steps.”

Tyler drained his can and set it aside. “You
mean acting like a total douche and following you, instead of
straight up asking you what was up with this guy Allen? Yeah.
Really reasonable steps, huh?”

She allowed the hint of a smile to curve her
lips. “Perhaps they were a little excessive. But they show me you
care. If you didn’t care so much you wouldn’t have been
jealous.”

“I guess not.” He frowned at her. “Quit
trying to make me feel better. I was an ass-hat and there’s no
excuse for me.”

“Agreed.”

He gave her a slow blink as he processed
that. And then he laughed. “Remind me not to ever come to you if I
need my ego boosted. So, what’s with the whole job thing, anyway?
It’s not like you need the money.”

She pursed her lips, as she’d seen McPhee so
recently do. It seemed an appropriate gesture while she formulated
her response. “I wanted to be normal. Normal people get jobs, isn’t
that what you told me?”

He worried his thumbnail with his teeth.
“Okay, I get that. But why keep it a secret.”

This time she didn’t have to consciously
choose the most appropriate expression or gesture. The frown was a
purely unconscious response. “I did not want to tell you about my
job, only to discover I could not perform the task Allen had set me
to either his satisfaction, or mine. If I could not do this job, I
didn’t want to have to admit to you I’d failed.”

“Gotcha. And if a fear of failing isn’t
normal, then I sure as heck don’t know what is. But Jay, part of
being human is failing and admitting you’ve failed and getting past
it. I would’ve understood. I need for you to know that.”

“I know.”

He leaned back in his chair, staring at her,
a strange expression on his face. “But life-modeling?
Nude
life-modeling? I mean, seriously. Way to make your boyfriend
jealous.”

“Are you jealous of the men in the
class?”

“Nope. Other guys might be, but I know you.
You’re not embarrassed by your body. It’s just a body, right?”

“That’s exactly what I told Allen,” she
admitted. “I told him everyone has one.”

“And I know it doesn’t affect you to have
those guys look at you. To you, they’re fascinating because they’re
artists. You don’t get off on them looking at you.”

“Correct. Their looking at me doesn’t make
me feel anything at all.”

“I’ve noticed that with the life-models
who’ve posed for my classes. They’re completely blasé about their
bodies. So why would I be jealous when I have no reason to be?”

“Now you know where Allen fits in, you
mean.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re not letting me
off that easy, are you? Okay, you got me. Now I know where Allen
fits in and I’ve copped a look at him, I’m not jealous.”

Jay chugged the rest of her soda and waited
for the fizzy burn to sear her taste buds. Ahhh. There it was.
Bliss. “Tyler, what does jealousy feel like?”

He blew out a laugh. “You do ask the hard
questions, don’t ya?” He scrubbed a hand through the unruly lock of
hair that persisted in falling over his forehead. “Let’s see. It
makes you kinda crazy, you know? You keep rerunning conversations
over and over in your head, analyzing them for subtext that might
back your suspicions. You second-guess yourself—obsess over what
you might have done wrong, or where it might have all started to go
wrong. And it gnaws at you, coloring everything the person you love
says, or does. It’s like a slow-burning acid, gnawing away at your
innards.”

“Ah.”

He narrowed his gaze at her. “Sounds like
I’m describing something you’ve already experienced.”

“Partly. I experienced similar feelings when
Nessa first showed up on my doorstep. On more than one occasion I
felt a burning need to tear her hair out by the roots and strangle
her with it.”

Tyler’s lips curved into a wide grin and his
eyes sparked with something that she rather thought resembled
glee.

“You seem happy to learn about my murderous
instincts.”

“I am. If you didn’t feel deeply about me,
you wouldn’t have given a crap about Nessa. You’d have stood by and
watched her make a play for me. And if I’d taken her up on it, you
wouldn’t have cared either way. It makes me feel damn good to know
you’d fight for me.”

She processed this statement. “I thought I’d
made it very plain how I feel about you. One, by seeking you out
again once it was safe to do so. Two, by inviting you into my home.
And three, by inviting you to share my bed. And I do believe I
mentioned warning Nessa off you, too. Are these actions not
sufficient? Do you need me to come right out and say how I feel
about you?”

“Coming right out and saying is good.”

She shook her head in mock despair. “Humans
are very strange creatures. How will you know I’m not lying?”

“I won’t. I have to take it on trust.”

“Like you ‘trusted’ me so much you followed
me today?”

“Touché.” He reached across the table to
grasp her wrist and ran the pad of his thumb gently over the back
of her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking maybe I’d grown tired of
you and was seeing someone else.”

He grimaced and released her hand. “Yeah. I
wouldn’t have reacted that way except it’s already happened to me
once.”

“When Nessa threw you over for Matt.”

“Yep. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.”
He upended the contents of his can into his mouth, remembered it
was empty, and put it aside again. He fiddled with the coaster on
the table instead. “Besides, a chick like you, wanting to be with
someone like me? Chicks like you tend to make a guy second-guess
himself.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever truly understand
the workings of the human mind when it comes to relationships. And
you males are so very confusing.”

“Funny. We think exactly the same thing
about you females. And don’t change the subject. I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

He gave her a clear “you know exactly what
I’m waiting for so don’t give me that” look.

“Oh.
That
. I love you, Tyler.”

“I love you, too, Jay.”

Warmth curled in her belly, cradled her
heart with gentle, phantom hands. She felt dizzy with happiness.
How miraculous that three little words could have such a strong
physical and emotional effect on her?

Tyler’s smile suggested he knew exactly how
she was feeling. His next words warmed her even more. “Feels good,
doesn’t it?”

She smiled back. “Yes. It does.”

They stared into each other’s eyes and she
lost track of time. She could have been content to sit here and
stare at him forever save for the intrusive thought that broke the
spell.

~~~

“Tyler, people in love go on dates, don’t
they?” Jay’s voice dragged him back to the reality of here-and-now.
The café. The other patrons sitting at their tables, going about
their business. Or maybe observing him gazing into his girlfriend’s
eyes and wondering how a guy like him could catch a girl like
her.

“Dates? Uh, yep, they sure do,” he said.
“Among other things.”

“Would you take me on a date? I’ve never
been asked on a date before.”

He opened his mouth to automatically refute
this, and then the truth smacked him upside the head. The first and
only time they’d gone on a “date” had been when she’d asked him to
her fake farewell party back in Snapperton.

That hadn’t turned out so good. Frankly,
it’d been the date from hell. He’d acted like a total asshole,
pushing her away when she’d kissed him because he’d been hurt and
angry she was leaving. They hadn’t exactly been going together
before that night, but they’d sure as hell “broken up” right then
and there. Shortly afterward, Nessa had shown up uninvited and
picked a fight first with Caro, and then with Jay. And then his dad
had walked in on Tyler having a moment with Jay, trying to patch
things up before she disappeared from his life forever, and things
had gone to hell real fast from there.

He hadn’t seen her for two years after that
night. Worse, he hadn’t known for sure whether she was alive or
dead. Oh, he’d hoped the disappearance of the thumb drive he’d
hidden had meant she was alive, out there somewhere, maybe missing
him and aching for him as much as he missed and ached for her. But
he hadn’t known for certain. It’d been one shitful way to end their
one and only foray into “dating”.

And it was way past time he made up for that
disastrous attempt.

“Sure,” he said. “What d’you want to do?
Dinner? Movie?”

“You decide. But I’ll only be your date if
you ask me properly.”

Right. He should have known there’d be a
catch. She was a girl, after all. Girls always came with catches.
“What do you mean, ‘properly’?”

“Like… like a boy asking a girl out on a
date. And you make all the arrangements, and I’m thrilled you’ve
asked me, so I’ll agree to whatever you want to do—within reason,
of course. Because there are bound to be some things that girls
don’t want to do on dates, and boys should know what those are and
not subject their dates to those sort of activities.”

Tyler smothered a grin. “Jay?”

She hesitated before answering, making him
work for it. “Yes?”

“Would you like to go out for dinner with me
sometime?”

Her answer came too quickly for someone who
was trying to play it cool—not that he’d ever tell her that. “I’d
love to go out for dinner with you, Tyler. Tonight?”

She was shifting about in her chair like she
couldn’t sit still and his heart melted. He had to make this
special for her—no easy task given the short notice. Looked like
his barely used credit card was gonna get a workout. It’d be
totally worth it, too. “How about you give me five minutes to
organize things? That okay with you?”

She opened her mouth, probably to tell him
she could get in to any exclusive restaurant in the city at a
moment’s notice, but all she said was. “Yes.”

She was truly going to let him take the
lead, and not offer her special brand of assistance? Well, frame
this moment and hang it on the wall. He fished his phone from his
back pocket and got up from his chair. When she made a move to
stand, he shook his head. “Just gotta make a private call. Five
minutes, okay?”

She nodded and settled back into her
chair.

A few months back, Tyler had worked a week’s
worth of shifts at a restaurant to cover for Toni, a fellow student
who’d been going through a bad breakup and, in her words, would’ve
“scared the patrons into therapy” if she’d had to wait tables. He’d
never have offered if he hadn’t had prior waiting experience, but
nothing had prepared him for the organized chaos of the place where
Toni worked.

She’d said she owed him a favor. He was
calling it in now.

He scrolled through his contacts list and
called her cell phone. No point phoning the restaurant. It was too
early and he’d go straight to the messaging service.

“Yo, Tyler.”

“Hey Toni. You working tonight?” Bel Cibo
wasn’t a fancy schmancy high-end restaurant, but it was hugely
popular because of its traditional Italian “bel cibo”—beautiful
food—courtesy of the Italian couple who owned the place. No way
would he normally get a table on a Saturday night.

“Unless I’m in a parallel universe, and this
stylish uniform I’m wearing means I’m a royal princess, so
everyone’s gonna be running ’round after me for a change, that
would be
yes
. Why?”

“Any chance you’ve got a spare table for
two?”

A breathy sigh down the line. “You’re
calling in that favor, aren’t you?”

“Yep. Please? Something’s just come up and I
want tonight to be special.” He’d bet everything he owned she was
rolling her eyes right now.