Quirks & Kinks (4 page)

Adrenaline only fed my temper, making me shake and mutter to myself nonsensically until it abated.

The smoke had just settled fully into my lungs, warming me on the inside and smothering the bright lights of my anxiety, when the front door of the restaurant squealed open.

Curious and cautious, I looked up, drew in another hit of nicotine, kicked one foot against the rough brick of the building, and turned my head to greet my newfound company.

Unwelcome green eyes struck me as physically as a healthy slap to the face almost instantly. They were like the underside of a leaf in both color and omen, pointing to an upcoming storm that was sure to do nothing but rage.

“Oh come onnnn,” I grumbled, straightening from the building and blowing all of my recycled smoke right into his stupid, meddling face.

I had to give him credit. He just barely cringed at the smoggy intrusion, throwing up his hands and promising, “I come in peace. I swear. No more undeserved lectures from some guy you don’t know.”

“Yeah?” I asked skeptically, letting myself take another drag but making sure to aim my blown smoke elsewhere.

“Yeah.”

“Then what the hell are you doing out here?”

“Apologizing,” he admitted sheepishly as he leaned back against the building next to me. “At least, I’m trying to.”

Thoroughly washed, my thoughts chattered and splattered against the walls of my mind in an all out mental rinse cycle. I didn’t understand anything that had happened tonight. Why my smoking meant so much to him in the first place and why he felt the need to apologize.

He didn’t know me. And I sure as fuck couldn’t get a handle on him.

“Why?”

Surprised at my unwillingness to blindly accept, his head turned toward me in question.

“After tonight, you’ll probably never see me again. There’s what?” I raised my eyes to the sky and thought back on the latest statistics I’d seen. “Something like four million people in Los Angeles alone. If I don’t come back here, to this restaurant . . . don’t seek you out intentionally . . . our paths will probably never cross.”

He shrugged. “Seems to me you answered your own question.”

Confused, my face scrunched slightly and my cigarette-holding hand dropped to my side.

“If I don’t apologize now, I’ll never get another chance,” he explained. “I’ve got enough sins to live with already. I try not to add to the list.”

Sins?
What the hell was this guy talking about?

At a loss for what to say, I offered what I thought was a simple question. “You’re religious?”

His laugh cut harshly through my ears.

“My sins have
nothing
to do with God and
everything
to do with regret.”

The intensity of his words left me speechless—gave me time to study
him
—and in the silence that resulted, Anderson shoved off of the building and stepped back to the door.

“It was nice to meet you, Easie,” he said with a smirk, pulling the door open and stepping back into the chaos that waited inside.

“It was nice to meet you too,” I said to the space where he used to be, throwing my half-smoked cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with my toe. “You fucking lunatic.”

A chill swept down my arms, raising the hairs and bringing my hands up to rub the goosebumps away. The previously busy street seemed quiet, and the light from the door beckoned like a lighthouse. I hated to follow him inside so quickly, but now that my rage had dulled, being out here alone was giving me the creeps. And the whole rape/murder combination completely lacked appeal.

A wave of noise hit me as I pulled the door open and jumped back inside. I worked hard to reorient myself, pausing to let the hostess gather menus and take a waiting couple to their table. Laughter rang out and people mingling throughout the bar jostled and moved, waving at lesser known acquaintances across the room and signaling the bartender to help them sink into the night just a little bit more.

When the crowd parted, a lone Ashley sat perched on her chair typing away at the screen of her phone with a crease of concentration between her eyes. There was no sign of Anderson anywhere, and believe me, I looked.

Feeling the coast was as clear as it was ever going to get, I power-weaved my way back to the table, anxious and uneasy about the fact that we had
yet
to even eat. There was no way Ashley was going to leave without eating her tacos. At least not without the help of chloroform or Rohypnol.

“Hey,” she greeted, the sound of my chair legs scraping the floor bringing her attention up and away from the screen of her phone. “You made it back alive.”

“Yeah,” I confirmed, trying to dig up some sort of witty response but coming up painfully empty.

“Are you okay?” she asked and narrowed her eyes to assess me more closely.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied, feeling completely twilight-zone-level out of my skin. All I needed was to get my fucking focus back.

Using the first thing I saw as a contextual crutch, I asked, “Who are you talking to with so much concentration? I could see your frown lines from all the way across the restaurant.”

“Larry,” she muttered easily, throwing me for my forty-second loop of the night.

“Larry? What the fuck are you talking to him about?”

Her face was incredulous yet faintly pink. “Um, your call sheet for tomorrow. What else would I be talking to him about?”

“Tomorrow? What do you mean tomorrow?”

“You start shooting tomorrow,” she said, but the combination of words sounded strangely like
what the fuck is wrong with you?

“WHAT?” I shrieked. Unknown wide eyes blinded me from several directions.

“Are you on drugs?”

“No, I’m not on drugs! But I am probably going to end up in prison!”

“For what?”

“For killing that prick, Larry!”

“He didn’t tell you we start tomorrow?”

“No!” I screamed. “Obviously fucking not!”

“Okay, relax. Jesus,” she placated. “He told me, and now I’m telling you. No harm done.”

“No harm done? NO HARM DONE?”

“Shhhh!” she commanded, grabbing the first waitress that walked by at the elbow. “I’m sorry, can you
please
bring us our tacos to go?”

Huh. Look at that. Apparently, an inappropriate outburst will get my sister to leave just as effectively as kidnapping drugs. Good to know.

The poor, random server was surprised, but the imploring look on my sister’s face went a long way to ease the awkwardness. With a nod and a fake smile, she scurried off to get our tacos. Or, presumably, to disappear until we did.

“God, you’re ridiculous tonight. What’s got you acting so dramatic?”

Anderson.

“This. Larry. Stupid. Surprised,” I evaded nonsensically.

“Riiiight.”

“Sorry. I’m calm. I swear.” She eyed me skeptically. “Really,” I promised. “Meditation’s got nothing on me.”

Fearing that anything I said could or would be used against me in the Ashley court of law, I sat silently, staring down at my fiddling thumbs instead of looking around. I blocked out time, letting it pass without inspection.

Warm fingers brushed my arm as Anderson reached between us to set our bag of to-go tacos and the bill on the table.

“Ahhhhh!” I screamed in surprise, my promise becoming nothing more than a broken memory in record time.

Perhaps sensing my instability, Anderson didn’t say a word, instead opting for a simple nod and masculine salute before taking off again.

Ashley didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she knew it wasn’t good. Fishing around in her purse for enough money to cover the bill, she threw it on the table and grabbed me by the arm to lead me out of there before I could start a brawl or wave my vibrator around. That’s the kind of gesture it would take to make even bigger fools out of us.

“Let’s go,” she instructed, moving me through the restaurant and out the door with precision.

Electing to drive herself rather than chance me under these circumstances, she settled me into passenger side and rounded the hood on her own.

As soon as the ignition fired, my tired brain outlined the next twenty-four hours of my life aloud and prayed it would go better.

“Tacos. Sleep. Start over. Quirky Kinkery.”

“Needlessly concise, but accurate.” She shrugged, ready to put this night behind us too. “Sounds like a plan, E.”

“DIDN’T LARRY EXPLAIN THIS
to you?” Ashley asked after the third time I required detailed instruction about where to go, what to do, and generally any-fucking-thing about my new job since we’d arrived this morning.

The set wasn’t big, and the accommodations weren’t exactly five-star, but I had my own dressing room with a light, mirror, and locking door. Considering my expectations, I was declaring it a win.

“Does it look like he explained any of this to me?” I asked, standing in the middle of the room for the millionth time and looking around aimlessly.

“Well, no, but—”

“You’re surprised? I didn’t even know that we were shooting today! Of course that asshole didn’t tell me anything.”

“I’m not sure why the two of you rub each other the wrong way so much,” she said, digging around in her big bag full of answers. She was the woman with the information while I was nothing but a puppet strung up helplessly on its strings.

I shot her a surprised glance which she read immediately upon looking up from her rummaging.

A delicate laugh puffed the air around her and moved one stray blond hair away from her mouth. “Oh, no. I know why
you
rub
him
the wrong way, but I don’t know why he buys into it. I have no trouble talking to him.”

“Yeah, I get it. You’re nice and I’m not. Can we cut to the chase about what I’m supposed to be doing with myself?”

A knock on the door interrupted my bitching, and Ashley turned to open it.

“Oh, great!” she said into the small opening, accepting something I couldn’t make out and shutting the door.

“Well, here’s the script,” she declared, handing it to me with a small flourish. “Abby and Mike are real people, and they’re here on the set.” She made sure I held her eyes as she explained, “Your main goal is to be as respectful of them as possible. They’re volunteering their story for our use on the show with absolutely no reimbursement, so the last thing we want is for them to feel uncomfortable.”

“Larry didn’t even think I should have the fucking script before now? Does he actually
want
me to fail?”

“You’re reading too much into it and, frankly, giving him too much credit. He’s just human, and the success of this show is all on him. If he didn’t get you the script before now, it wasn’t on purpose. It actually says something really positive that he was willing to take the risk on you.”

“That he positively hates me.”

“Easie, there’s a very good possibility that if this thing goes under, Larry loses his job. He loses all the years he’s put into this industry, this company, and he has enough faith in you to believe you’re not going to let that happen. Honestly, you guys fight like brother and sister.” She heaved a deep breath.

“Besides, the show’s going to be shot in short, choppy segments, so memorizing a piece at a time shouldn’t be any trouble at all.”

As she spoke, I cracked open the script to get an idea of what I was in for. Before I knew it, my eyes were making a valiant attempt to bug all the way out of my head.

“Clown sex?! These people are into clown sex?! Jesus.”

Ashley’s eyes widened comically as she pursed her lips, but her normally quippy mouth stayed closed. Reading further, I let my mouth run, venting about the ridiculousness of this show now so that I wouldn’t do it later in front of Mike and Abby. Heaven forbid I run off the people with a fucking
clown
fetish.

“Red noses?! The last time something that red and shiny tried to come close my vagina, I ran the other direction and wound up going straight to my doctor’s stirrups for an STD test.”

“Larry thought that this show would be more successful getting us off the ground if we linked it with Red Nose Day and tied it back into charity. When he asked my opinion, I agreed.”

“Since when is Larry asking your opinion on this stuff?” I asked skeptically. She was awfully close with a guy I didn’t like.

“Believe it or not, Larry and I share a common goal. We both want you to succeed. We talk.”

“Pffttt!” The thought of her having a serious consultation with Larry about
my
success was enough to make me scoff. But I had other stuff on my mind at the moment. I didn’t have time to waste hashing out stupid stuff about Larry. “Whatever. If you can stand him, good for you.”

Focusing back on the script, the next line jumped out at me like a bag of bricks in mid-swing approach to my face.

“I”m pregnant?!”

“WHAT?” Ashley screamed, dropping the papers in her hands and sending them flying all over my dressing room.

“Not ‘I’m pregnant’ period!” I yelled. “‘I’m pregnant’ question mark.” When her saucer like eyes didn’t narrow, I shook the papers in my hand. “In the script!”

“Oh, thank God!” she swore, clutching her now empty hand over her heart.