Soft Shock (8 page)

Chapter Ten

Saturday night,
Owen went out on his second Post-Kristin Date. This girl was pretty nice. Her
name was Jennifer, and she was very girl-next-door. She had a smattering of
freckles across her nose and ginger hair. She was very petite—couldn’t
have been much over four feet. They almost looked comical together because he
was so much taller, but she was adorable. And this date was going much better
than his date with Camille had.

Jennifer wasn’t
a student. She was a vet tech at a nearby veterinarian’s office. He’d met her online.
Since Dante setting him up with people wasn’t working out, Owen had decided to
try online dating. He’d set up a profile, Jennifer’s photo had caught his eye,
and he’d set up a date. She was the first person he’d emailed. This was all
going pretty well. Maybe he should’ve tried online dating first. It seemed to
be a better system than running people over with bicycles anyway.

“So, this was
fun,” Jennifer said, looking up at him, her bright blue eyes shining, as they
left the student activity center where the improv show they’d gone to see had
been held.

“Yeah,” Owen
said. He’d told her about the show, which he’d heard about during one of his
shifts at Java Time, and she’d seemed excited about it. Come to think of it,
Jennifer seemed excited about everything.

“Do you want to
go back to my place?” Jennifer asked.

“Uhm, sure,”
Owen said, caught off-guard by the question.

“Let’s go.” She
hooked her arm through his, and they walked back to her car. Owen left his jeep
parked by the student center and rode with Jennifer to her apartment in
downtown Richmond. She promised to bring him back to get his car later. She
chattered on the whole drive over, but he was distracted. He’d been pretty sure
Jennifer wasn’t the take-you-home-after-the-first-date-type. And of all crazy
things, he started thinking of Marci. For what unknown reason in the universe
did he feel like he was cheating on her by going home with Jennifer?

When they got
to Jennifer’s apartment building, she let them into the lobby, and they went up
to the second floor. She had an apartment in a nice building that used to be a
warehouse that had been converted to lofts a little while ago.

Right before
she opened the door, she turned to him and said, “There’s someone I want you to
meet.” Then she held her head to the side and considered this for a moment.
“Well, more than one someone.”

Owen wasn’t
quite sure what to say to that. Did she have a kid? Kids? Oh boy. He definitely
wasn’t prepared to meet her family yet if so. He’d only known her for a few
hours.

Jennifer
unlocked the door and turned the knob. She flicked on the light, and they
entered the apartment. What he was confronted with wasn’t at all what he’d
expected. And
way more terrifying than kids
. Way more.

“You have a lot
of…cats. That’s nice,”
Owen
said as two of the felines
began to wind themselves around Jennifer’s legs. Two more popped up on the
couch seemingly from nowhere.

“I can’t seem
to stop adopting them. People bring unwanted kittens in to Dr. Moore’s office
all the time, and I can’t bear to see ‘em put down, you know? How could you say
no to this face?” Jennifer picked up one of the cats, a black one with white
paws, and cuddled it to her chest.

Very easily.
Owen scratched the back of his neck as he
wrestled with the question of whether to stay or to go.

“Aw, I know
Mister Mittens. I missed you, too.” She crooned to the cat. “How about the rest
of you guys? Did you miss me?” She got a few meows in response. “Let’s get you
guys some dinner.” She walked toward the kitchen. Oh no. She wasn’t leaving him
alone with them. He followed.

“So how many do
you have?” he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone.

“Ten,” she
replied easily. “You’ve met Mister Mittens. The tabby is Groucho. The cute
little Persian is Fluffy. That crazy little guy up there is Nemo. He is always
jumping on top of the fridge. But he knows better, don’t you, Nemo?” She
grabbed the cat from the top of the fridge, and it gave her a wary look.
“You’re not allergic or anything, are you?”

“No…
Not
allergic.” He was going to be cool about this. It wasn’t
manly to be afraid of cats.

“Anyway, this
is Luger—like Lex Luger? Because this little guy is crazy about WWF
wrestling, aren’t you? And he’s Nemo’s twin.”

“Cats can have
twins?”

“Oh yes. Can’t
you see the resemblance?” She held up Luger or Nemo or somebody for Owen’s
inspection. He stepped away in what he hoped was at least a somewhat subtle
move and nodded quickly. Jennifer barely seemed to notice and went on naming
the cats.

Owen jumped
what felt like ten feet in the air and barely suppressed a yell as something
streaked by his feet. “Whoa! What was that?” He forced a laugh even though he’d
nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked across the room to see one of
them—a gray one he hadn’t caught the name of because he’d been so busy
trying to hide his fear—peering at him. Wait, was it glaring? “Those
things really move like lightning, don’t they?”

“Aw, my babies
love their mommy, don’t they?” Jennifer stroked one of the cats behind the ear
and didn’t seem to have heard him.

“They’re kind
of freaky, aren’t they?”

Jennifer looked
up at him, confusion temporarily darkening her cornflower blue eyes. “What do
you mean?”

“Nothing, I
mean, I guess, they’re kind of like ninjas.
Silent and fast.
It’s freaky,” he said. When he caught her frown, he hastily added, “In a good
way, I mean.” He tried to force another laugh, but he choked on it. Keeping a
wary eye on the cats, he tried to hold up a conversation with Jennifer. He
wasn’t letting cats scare him away from the first girl who actually seemed like
a viable option since Kristin—the first one who liked him back anyway.
Well, probably not. There was a chance the cats might win, though.

“Aw, why are
you so tense?” Jennifer asked.

“Not tense.”

“You’re making
them nervous. Relax.”

“
I’m
making
them
nervous?”

“C’mon. Show
‘em you’re a friend. Here, take Nemo for a minute while I change the litter
boxes. I’ll only be a minute.”

“Where are you
going? I’ll go with you,” Owen said.

“Here. Just
hold out your hands.”

Owen backed up.
“I can’t do that.”

Jennifer
advanced with Nemo. “It’s okay. They don’t bite.”

“Are you sure
about that?”

“Owen, what’s
wrong?”

“I’m more of a
dog person.” Owen backed up again. Much farther, and he’d be out of the door.
Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

“Aw, I think
Nemo likes you. Look. He’s reaching for you. He wants to play.”

All Owen saw
was a paw, a paw with very sharp claws attached reaching out toward his
jugular.
Like a mini jaguar going for his carotid.
“Okay,
that’s it. I really
gotta
go. See you around, Jennifer.”
He bolted before she could say another word. He cleared her apartment building
and started walking down an adjacent street before he was completely clear of
the willies. Pulling his cell out of his pocket, he called Dante.

Dante answered
on the third ring. “If this is not extremely important, and/or you are not
partially dead, I will hang up this phone right now.”

“I’m stranded,”
Owen said.

“How’d this
happen?”

“Long story. I
need you to come get me, man. I’ll owe you.”

“A lot,” Dante
said with a sigh. Lowering his voice, he added, “You know Mary was going to
give it up tonight, right?” That was something Dante had been trying to get for
a very long time.

“I really doubt
it. You always say that.”

“Have a nice
walk home.”

“No wait, man!
I’m sorry. Please. I’ll do anything. I have no other way to get home. I don’t
have money for a cab, and I’m about twenty miles away from campus, which is
where my car is.”

“Okay,” Dante
said with a long sigh. “Tell me where you’re at.”

When Dante
picked Owen up in his Mazda 3, he had a huge grin on his face.

“Thanks for
picking me up, man,” Owen said.

“No problem.”
Dante tapped out the beat to the song playing on the radio against the steering
wheel after pulling the car away from the curb and onto the road.

“You’re in a much
better mood than when I called you.”

Dante nodded,
and all Owen saw was the hood of his black coat bobbing as he had the hood
pulled over his head. “Turns out Mary thinks I’m a great friend for doing this.
She’s waiting at our place for me right now. So, turns out, you actually did me
a favor. But you still owe me one.”

Owen laughed.
“Okay.”

“So tell me
what happened.” Dante merged onto the interstate, slammed the gas pedal, and made
short work of getting into the far left lane.

“It started out
okay. Jennifer invited me back to her place.”

“Don’t tell me
you freaked out about Kristin, or no. You called Jennifer Kristin right when it
was getting hot, and she kicked you out?” Dante started laughing. “That would
be too much, but I could see it happening.”

“No,” Owen
said.

“So what
happened?” Dante pressed.

“It just…didn’t
work out.” Owen suddenly found the view from the interstate of the giant clock
on top of the old train station downtown very interesting.

Dante pulled
off his hood and cranked up the heat. “You brought me all the way to Shockoe
Bottom because it ‘didn’t work out?’ You made her so mad she wouldn’t even take
you back to your car, and all you got for me is it didn’t work out?”

“I don’t know
how mad I made her, or if I even made her mad, because I kind of…fled,” Owen
said.

“What
happened?” Dante shot a glance at him, eyebrows raised above his black-framed
glasses, before turning his gaze back to the road. “Did she try to take
advantage of you?”

“Ha ha,” Owen
said dryly. “You are so hilarious, traveling salesman. Do you have your own
show yet? Maybe that should be your next business venture—taking your
show on the road.”

“I’ll think
about it. In the meantime, what happened? You might as well tell me, or else
I’m going to assume she tried to compromise your virtue—”

“Did you just
say compromise my virtue?”

“Yes, and I’m
not going to let it go for a very long time. I’m warning you. It might just
come up at one of our pickup basketball or soccer games or while we’re hanging
out down at The Hops. Who knows?”

“That’s a
threat.”

“And this is
me, outside of my bed in the middle of the freezing cold night while a very hot
girl is in it.”

“She had…cats.”

“What? Huh?”

“I don’t like
cats.”

“What don’t you
like about them?”

“They freak me
out, okay?”

Dante burst out
laughing.

“You’re a good
friend, you know that?”

“I’m sorry man,
I’m sorry.” Dante tried to compose himself and then started laughing so hard
again he could barely keep driving. “Go on. Really. I’m listening.”

“I just don’t
trust them. They have shifty eyes. And they’re so sneaky. They stalk around all
soundless, jumping from behind corners, like the deadly, silent predators they
are. How can you trust a creature that makes no sound at all like that just
sneaking up on you all the time? A dog would never do that.” Owen shuddered.
“Mini panthers. Or lions. They’re predators. You trust a lot of predators?”

“Guess not,”
Dante said.

“Okay, go
ahead, just get it out of your system,” Owen said, suppressing his own grin.
Now, in the safety of Dante’s car, far away from Jennifer’s apartment, it did
seem a little funny. Just a little bit.

“Thank you,
man.” Dante grabbed his side over the fabric of his coat after letting out a
round of pent up laughter. “Oh, my stomach! You’re a good friend. Your debt is
paid.” Dante erupted into a round of hyena cackles, and Owen sat back in his
seat and closed his eyes.

By the time
Dante dropped Owen off at his car, Owen felt a lot better. So the date hadn’t
gone so well. There would be others.

A small,
nagging part of him wondered,
were
the bad dates the
universe’s way of pushing him in Marci’s direction? They kept crossing paths
after all. Well, maybe the universe had better have a little talk with Marci
about that. He wasn’t the one who was resistant to the whole idea. And he was
done chasing girls. Especially rich girls who thought they had something to
prove to their parents. That’s what he’d done with Kristin, and look how that’d
turned out for him. Four years of putting up with her tantrums. Ugly fights.
And the worst had been begging her to come back whenever she decided she’d had
“enough”—and he wasn’t ever sure what he’d done to be “enough”—and
broke up with him. They’d broken up and gotten back together more times than he
could count. That’s why he hadn’t believed the last time was really the last
time.
Until he found out about Justin.

And for what?
So she could go off and get engaged to Justin
on his daddy’s big, fancy boat?
Enough of that.

Nope, time to
get back on the horse. As soon as he got home, he was going online to the
dating site and finding someone to set up date number three with.

If he could
have seen the future, and could have known what a disaster date number three
would be, maybe he would have conceded and let the universe have its way.

Chapter Eleven

Marci knew from
the moment she walked through the door and saw him lying prostrate on the couch
that this was going to be bad.

“Hey, Tyler,”
she said, entering the apartment like she was literally walking on eggshells
the way she was figuratively. Closing the door softly behind her, she
approached the couch. Tyler didn’t move the arm he had draped over his face.
She knelt next to the couch. He still didn’t move. Wouldn’t say anything.
“Tyler, honey, what is it? Are you okay?”

Still nothing.

“Sweetheart.
What can I get you? What can I do?” she rested her chin on the arm of the sofa
and looked down at him. He was breathing too rapidly to be asleep, but just
barely. “I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nobody can fix
it,” Tyler finally mumbled, his voice muffled by his arm. “It’s unfixable.”

“Ah, now I bet
that’s not true.”

Tyler flung his
arm aside and glared up at her. The whites of his eyes were striated red around
brown irises, and his long lashes were wet and clumped together as a result of
the tears he’d obviously cried. “They were tears of
anger
, okay? I’m pissed, okay? They didn’t hurt me, they pissed me
off.” Tyler snapped. “Don’t look at me like that!” He pulled a pillow over his
face.

Marci wasn’t
aware that she’d been looking at him in any sort of particular way. Except for
maybe with concern.

“Like you’re
judging me.
Or ashamed.
Or embarrassed for me.” Tyler
answered her unasked question three times over.

“Tyler, you
know I’m not doing any of those things.”

Tyler didn’t
answer.

“Where’s
Ronnie?” Marci asked, switching tactics. Maybe a change of subject would take
some of the sting off whatever had happened or at least distract him a bit.

“Law library,” Tyler’s petulant voice was muffled by the pillow
that remained over his face
. “She said she needs peace and quiet to
study for some big midterm or something, and that’s the only place she can get
it.”

“
Fall
break is Monday and Tuesday,” Marci said.

“That’s what I
said. She said she has a lot of studying to do. I think she just doesn’t want
to put up with me.”

“No, that’s not
it.” Marci said, and it wasn’t just to placate. Ronnie had been disappearing a
lot on both of them lately. “She loves you. I do, too.”

Tyler slid the
pillow down to his narrow chest and gave her a doleful look. After a silence
that seemed to stretch on twice the length of the earlier part of her day,
Tyler said, “I didn’t get the part.”

“Oh, honey.”
She reached out, and he readily went into her arms for a hug.

“I was so sure
they liked me. The director was saying he hoped I’d be back in New York soon so
we could all go to this club his friend owns. We were talking like I already
had the part. We got detail about the rehearsal schedule and the likelihood the
show would get a contract for five more seasons. And how they saw this
character growing to play a major part on the show. Then, some
assistant
—the director didn’t even
have the decency to call me. We had
dinner
together, and he couldn’t tell me himself. This nameless, faceless
assistant
thanked me for my time and
said I’m shit.”

“She didn’t say
that.” Marci was slightly horrified but mostly sure he was exaggerating.
Exaggerating was
second-nature
to Tyler after all.

“He. He said I
wasn’t quite what they were looking
for,
they decided
to go with someone else, blah-dee blah, bullshit bullshit. To tell you the truth,
I stopped listening after he thanked me for my time. That’s when you know it’s
all over. Done. Dead. When they thank you for your time or for coming out to
audition or for some other bullshit variation of the above.”

“I’m sorry. I
know you’re going to get a better part in a better show.
And
not television.
Broadway. Which is where you really want to be anyway.”

“No, you don’t
know that.” Tyler pulled himself to a sitting position on the couch and tucked
his long legs under him. “Maybe I should just give up.”

“You definitely
shouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t want
to talk about it anymore,” Tyler said peevishly. He hunched his shoulders and
stared down at the floor.

“You want to go
over to Sadie’s?”

“Sadie’s?”

“Yeah. She
asked what we were doing for dinner.” She’d texted Marci earlier and asked
that. Marci told Tyler this and added, “I told her I’d get back to her after I
talked to you and Ronnie.”

“Sadie’s. Where
the food is only slightly charred if you’re lucky, and the wine is always
flowing.” Tyler grinned. “Let’s go.”

Marci texted
Ronnie to tell her she didn’t know what she was up to, but she needed to get
her butt over to Sadie’s. Ronnie insisted she wasn’t done studying. Marci
texted back that she couldn’t study all night, and she had all of Saturday,
Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday still to work on it. And that Tyler needed her.
When Marci was finally forced to tell Ronnie over text what should’ve been told
to her in person, that Tyler didn’t get the part, Ronnie capitulated.

Sadie opened
the door to her condo with a glass of wine in hand. “I was wondering what was
taking you two so long.” She handed the glass to Tyler and waved them inside.
“There’s more where that came from. Get in here.” Tyler and Marci followed
Sadie into the living room. Sadie shared this place with her fiancé, Rafe, who
was in England studying at the London School of Economics at the moment. In his
absence, Sadie had definitely taken over from a decorating standpoint. The
place was filled with bold splashes of primary colors. Sadie was very much into
color, couldn’t stand for things to be drab. In addition to her jewelry making
business, she’d taken up furniture design on the side. One of her pieces, a
coffee table she’d sawed in half lengthwise, sanded, painted, upholstered with
a bright blue colored fabric, and otherwise transformed into a bench, resided
in the living room opposite the couch.

Ronnie was
already there. She was in the kitchen, her more-than-generous cleavage spilling
out of her low-cut top, glass of wine in hand. She was frowning over the
directions on the back of a box of something.

“Sadie, only
you could botch insta-pasta.” Ronnie, who typically made her own pasta from
scratch, smirked at the box.

Tyler sniffed
the air. “I don’t smell anything burning. Yet.”

“Quiet, you
two.” Sadie breezed into the kitchen and poured two more glasses of wine. She
brought one out to Marci and took a sip from the other.

“What are we
having?” Marci asked.

“Shrimp and fettuccine
alfredo,” Sadie said.

“À la Pasta-Roni,”
Ronnie added.

“That is
absolutely not true,” Sadie said with mock severity. “It’s the grocery store’s
generic brand thank you very much.”

All of them,
including Sadie, broke out into laughter.

“With a side of
steamed vegetables,” Sadie added.

“You better let
me take care of that,” Ronnie said. “We don’t need anymore burn victims in this
crowd.”

Everyone turned
to look at Marci, and she stuck her tongue out at
them
.
She laughed along with them but was disconcerted by the fact that even that
slight and vague reference to Owen made her stomach flutter.

While Tyler and
Sadie caught each other up on gossip and Sadie attended to her cooking with
less than half her attention and quite a few sips of wine, Marci pulled Ronnie
off to the side.

“Something’s
going on with you,” Marci accused.

“What? Huh? No,
it’s not.” Ronnie twisted a lock of her dark brown hair through her fingers,
concentrating on the movement rather than looking at Marci.

“You’re never
around anymore. You act strangely when you are. You’re hiding something.”

“Hiding
something?” Ronnie gave Marci a look that implied Marci was talking crazy talk.
“I’m working extra shifts, okay? I have to get in study time whenever I can.”

“Why do you
need the extra shifts?”

“What? Well, I
mean, my Halloween costume
ain’t
gonna be cheap. Then
the holidays are coming up.” Ronnie hemmed and hawed and included a few more
vague rumblings about expenses that Marci didn’t buy.

“You’ve never
needed to pick up extra shifts like this before.” They’d lived together for
going on three years now. Ronnie had been very careful with money during that
time and even chided Marci on occasion for wasting it. It seemed strange that
Ronnie would be scrambling financially all of a sudden.

“What, you
watching my every move now? Taking notes on my life? Am I the star of some
documentary I’m not aware of?” Ronnie’s defensive tone made Marci all the more
sure that she was right about Ronnie hiding something.

“Are you
hooking up with Jeremy or something?”

“What?” Ronnie
stretched the word out to three times its normal length and put all of her
Jersey on it.

“You don’t want
us to know that you two are
?...
”

Ronnie narrowed
her brown eyes at Marci before doubling over with laughter. She almost spilled
her wine, rescued it at the last second, and took a sip. Then she burst out
laughing again. “No way. Jeremy is a sweet kid, but that would never happen
between
me and him
.
Him and me.
The two.
Of us.
He’s just not my type.” She looked
into her wine glass for a moment and then with a slight quirk of her ruby red lips,
she looked up at Marci. “And I’m probably not his.”

“I still don’t
think it’s as simple as extra shifts at work. What’s got you so stressed out
all the time?” Marci asked. “If you tell me, maybe I can help.”

Ronnie sniffed
the air. “You smell that?”

“You’re not
changing the subject—” Marci started, but then the acrid smell hit her
nose, too. And she heard Tyler and Sadie screaming. Marci ran into the kitchen
trailed by Ronnie. Tyler was filling up a pitcher with water while Sadie stood
hesitantly near the stove with a towel raised. “Tyler, don’t do—” Marci
started, but it was too late.

Tyler splashed
the water onto the flames, and they leaped up. He screamed, dropped the pitcher,
and ran across the room.

Marci went into
the kitchen despite her friends’ protests that it wasn’t safe. She rifled
through Sadie’s cabinets until she found what she was looking for in the one
beneath the sink: a fire extinguisher. She knew the apartment had to have one.
Hollering for Sadie to get back—Tyler was already gone—Marci pulled
the stopper out of the fire extinguisher, aimed the hose at the stove, and
squeezed the trigger. She sprayed the white foam all over the offending stove eye
until nothing was left but smoke, black smudges on the surface of the white
stove, and ashes.

“What
happened?” Marci looked across the kitchen at Sadie and Tyler.

“I think, what
had happened was…” Sadie scratched her chin. “Something got down in the eye.”

Marci laughed.
“How do these things always happen to you?” This wasn’t the first time Sadie
had nearly caught her kitchen on fire while trying to cook. At least this time,
they hadn’t had to call the fire department.

Sadie grinned.
“It takes a special person.” She grabbed her half-finished glass of wine from
the table.

“Doesn’t that
have soot in it or something?” Marci asked.

Sadie peered
into the glass and shrugged. “Probably not. It was way over here, across the
room from the stove.”

Marci laughed.
“If you say so.”

“Who’s ready for
wine and tapas?” Sadie asked.

“I say we try
Schaffer’s,” Ronnie said. “Jessee has the night off, so there’s no danger.” Jessee
was the manager Ronnie didn’t like. And the one who complained that Ronnie’s
friends were always “loafing around” the restaurant.

“No.” Sadie wrinkled
her nose. “There’s nothing there that’s not deep-fried besides wilted iceberg
lettuce. Tapas, people.”

“After what
just happened, I’m gonna need another glass of wine before we go anywhere.”
Tyler put his hand across his forehead and struck a pose of exaggerated relief.

They laughed
and headed to the living room where Sadie informed them the “unscathed” bottle
of wine was for those of her friends who weren’t as adventurous as her. While
Ronnie and Tyler helped themselves to fresh glasses of wine, Marci helped Sadie
open windows and turn on fans all around the living room, dining room, and
kitchen areas.

Later, as they
were leaving the condo for a tapas place on the West End of Richmond, Tyler
grabbed Marci’s hand and held her behind the rest of the group.

“Thanks for
dragging me out tonight.” He smiled. “I needed this.”

“Happy to.”
Marci gave his hand a squeeze.