These Things About Us (11 page)

“To be honest, if you sang it or played it, it could be music but right now these,” I tapped the paper, “are just words on paper. And they’re so messy I can’t even read them.”

“Probably better this way.” He smacked the notebook shut and slid it out of reach to the end of the bar. “We wouldn’t want you thinking I’m a misunderstood, depressed asshole writing silly love songs about girls I used to know.”

“Don’t worry, I figured you’re not a serenading Romeo kind of guy,” I replied while I fixed myself a glass of cold water.

“Tell me, then.” Trace leaned over the counter and I got a whiff of that dark scent surrounding him that I’d noticed before. He shouldn’t be allowed to smell this nice. Scratching the back of my nose, I tried to find traces of my perfume left on the sleeve of my dress. It was all kinds of screwed up to think of how good Trace smelled. Maybe that was his secret to getting that many girls to sleep with him. “What kind of guy am I?” His hand folded around my glass of water and a moment later he’d emptied it.

“That was mine. Apparently you’re a thief.”

“No, that’s you.” He sank back into his seat and let the glass clink against the counter. “We were talking about what
you
think of
me
.”

“Okay.
You asked for it. I think you’re weird, infuriating, possibly a sex-addict, aggressive and violent.”
I snatched the glass from him and filled it again, this time not putting it down but drinking up right away.

“I’m not a sex-addict.”

“Seriously, that’s what you’re going to deny? I’ve lost count of how many times your girlfriends woke me up.”

“I told you before that I can’t sleep. When I don’t have any sleeping pills left, or I don’t want to be completely out for hours, sex is the easiest way to get exhausted. Most of the time, it’s just a means to an end. I’m not addicted to it.”

“You’re using women as sleeping pills, wow, add misogynist to the list.” I was losing hold of my ‘be nice to Trace’ rope, but he was just pushing too many buttons to not let myself get worked up.

“I like women, Kitty. They know that all they’re getting from me is sex. They get what they want, I get what I want. Quid pro quo.”

“That’s-” My answer was interrupted by the office door smashing into its frame and Alex charging past the bar and out of the pub. That didn’t look good. Just as I was about to ask Trace for answers, he shrugged as if having read my mind.

Deciding that it was best to drop our conversation before something stupid happened, I busied myself with cleaning glasses that were already sparkling and ordering the stack of CDs alphabetically. After the couple left and Jean headed back upstairs to his room, Trace decided it would be okay to close up early.

“So, do you plan on taking your pills tonight?”

“Kitty, no part of my body thinks you’re hot in case that’s your way to beg for a fuck.”

 I rolled my eyes and started upstairs. “That was my way of asking if I’m going need earplugs tonight.”

Trace sighed right behind me. Even my way of taking steps probably displeased him. Only when we’d arrived on our floor he said, “No earplugs.”

“Okay. Thanks,” I said and went for my room. I still caught Trace’s confused look, but I left it at that. I had no desire to get into another discussion.

With the camera now fully charged, I spent the next few days running around London taking pictures of the most touristy things I could think of. I went to the palace and watched the change of guards and tried to spot anything behind one of the dozens of windows. On the London Bridge, I asked strangers to take pictures of me. Tuesday night I went to see the London eye all sparkling with blue lights and Big Ben just across the Thames from it in all its beauty. I’d expected it to be taller, but this way it was easier to fit into just one photograph without losing any detail. However, with my new hobby taking up all my time – and thankfully all my thoughts - I kind of totally forgot that I should do my laundry someday and by Sunday I was out of proper clean clothes.

You could only wear a shirt so many times until it started to feel icky. Holding up my only two options, a black tank I hadn’t worn yet or a yellow blouse I hardly ever wore, I mentally weighed their pros and contras against each other. In the end it came down to a very simple comparison: The black shirt exposed my shoulders, the yellow blouse would hitch up all through the night and expose my belly on various accounts. I’d go with the black shirt.

Including my ripped jeans, the outfit made me look more badass than I felt comfortable with. As long as I could have my hair down as an extra cover for my shoulders, I’d survive the night.

“Hi, Darling!” Sierra greeted me with a peck on the cheek while she was already wrapping her apron around her waist. “Aren’t you a sexy little kitten? Are you trying to impress someone?”

I didn’t feel sexy. I felt naked. “Nope. It’s laundry day. I’m wearing my last clean clothes,” I said and brushed my fingers through my hair but without mirror it was indefinitely harder to keep it in place.

“You should do laundry day more often. Who knew you had tits?”

“I knew. Actually, I see them every day, and there’s no one else who has to know about them,” I answered, glad that Wesley was standing next to me, not Trace. He’d said he didn’t think I was hot, but I had yet to encounter the straight man whose eyes didn’t travel south at the mention of breasts.

“You have a tattoo.” Oh, God. Speak of the devil. He stood right behind me and I knew with certainty that he was not interested in my boobs. He was staring at the ink crawling out beneath my top. I tried not to stiffen, not to move my shoulders under his observation, because it would draw even more attention to the tattoo. Sierra moved back to check it out, too, whistling her approval.

“Yes,” I said as firmly as I could manage, “You didn’t think you were the only person who could get one, did you?”

“What is it?” he asked instead of answering me.

“It’s none of your business.” There was so much about the tattoo that I hated. I hated the original intention behind the picture, I hated the year it reminded me of and I hated who I was when I had it made. Still, I had never made plans to get it removed. It was my constant reminder to be better than the girl who walked into the tattoo parlor with a fake ID.

“Is it the only one?”

“Trace,” I warned, glancing back over my shoulder. His eyes were trained on my back, as if the tattoo would shine through the black fabric if he stared long enough. Sierra had already moved on to picking a CD.

“Answer one question. Only one.”

“Fine, will you shut up about it then?”

“Yes. How big is it?”

I sighed and arched my back until I could reach a hand around and feel for the knobbly vertebra beneath my neck. With the other hand, I located the two dimples above my tailbone.

“That’s your whole bloody back.”

“I know.”

“Are those feathers?”

I spun around, turning my back towards Wesley who undoubtedly was staring at the ink just the same. He was just much more polite about it than his brother.
“One question. That’s it. Enough.”

He held up his hands. “Okay, you don’t like talking about the tattoo.” Too early, a breath of relief escaped my lungs. “Then let me see it.”

I should have just gone for the yellow blouse. If I had tied the apron tight enough, it surely would have stayed in place and I wouldn’t have to deal with Trace poking his finger into barely healed scars. “I am not going to take off my shirt just because you have a thing for tattoos.”

“Okay, fine. Wesley, you saw her naked. What is it?”

“Can’t you just let it go?” I shrieked way too loud and stalked straight for the stairs. I was going to change clothes. I didn’t care if I was going to smell like two-week-old sweat as long as every bit of skin was going to be covered up. I brushed past one of the guests on the stairs and ran straight for my suitcase as soon as I reached the top floor.

I needed a shirt or at least a cardigan. God, why did I have so very few long-sleeved clothes? I knew the blue hoodie that swallowed me whole was somewhere in my suitcase. I rummaged through my stuff, letting out a frustrated sigh when I couldn’t find it.

“I’m sorry.”

I whirled around, clutching wrinkled, sweaty shirts in both hands. Trace had followed me. “Just leave me alone.”

“I just apologized.”

“That’s not helping. I don’t want you to apologize. I don’t want anyone to see the tattoo, or ask about the tattoo or talk about the tattoo. I just want my big blue sweater but I can’t find it. So, just leave me alone!” I turned away from him, before he could see that my eyes were starting to glaze over with tears.

His distancing steps were sign enough for me to keep tossing clothes around on my bed until I reached the bottom of the suitcase. I started throwing everything back in, double-checking every piece I picked up, when a neatly folded grey shirt was placed on top of my pile.

“It should be big on you, but I couldn’t find a blue one,” Trace said, then quickly grabbed the rest of my strayed clothes and dumped them in the bag. 

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to right a wrong. Just trying to…” He trailed off.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. Can’t you just take the bloody shirt and shut up?” Trace threw his hands up and stormed off, leaving me with the choice between looking for my dirty shirt and accepting his clean one. The sooner the tattoo would be covered up, the better.

After shrugging into his sweater, I couldn’t just take a step back to escape Trace’s scent anymore. The source of the smell clung to my shoulders. The whole night, no matter how much spilled beer I wiped up or how strong the whiskey on my tray reeked, the shirt kept tingling my nose with that unfairly nice smell. I wished I didn’t notice it because, frankly, if a nice guy smelled that good, I wouldn’t hesitate to make the first step and ask him out first chance I got. But I did notice and I wanted to slap myself for it.

Once the pub closed, I stood outside with Sierra, who was on her third cigarette in 15 minutes, and waited for Marcus to pick her up. They were going to some late night party and it had taken me half of our shift to convince her I would be staying home.

“So, is it safe to ask why you went bonkers about the tattoo thing or are you going to rip my head off?” Sierra asked and inhaled through her cigarette, the end lighting up like an oversized orange firefly.

“Probably the latter.” I wrapped my arms around my mid to keep the cold from seeping deeper into my body.

“Then just let me give you a piece of advice on a completely different topic, Darling. If Trace Baker shows interest in you, you turn him the fuck down. I’ve seen too many girls walking in here, thinking they can be the one to fix him.”

“God, Sierra, there’s no interest there. On neither side. He hates me and does everything in his power to keep me from crying to his dad about what an asshole he is.”

“Right. So you’re not sniffing his shirt for the ten thousandth time right now?”

I glanced down to find I had actually been holding the right sleeve up to my face, breathing him in once again.  “I just think he smells good. But if it makes you feel better, in my opinion he’s beyond repair, has mood swings bordering on psycho, and I would never let someone like that into my life again.”

A car rattled around the corner and we both stared at the moving headlights in silence until it stopped right in front of The Dirty Dungeon. That thing was more dents and rust than car. “Sounds like you’ve been burned before.” Sierra flicked the stump to the ground and opened the door to the passenger side. With the inside lights flickering on, I could see Marcus sitting behind the wheel. He waved his hello and so did I, choosing not to comment Sierra’s remark. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Yeah, right,” I breathed, remembering the many times I’d seen her ogling Trace’s behind. “See you tomorrow!”

Walking back inside, I wished Sierra was still standing next to me. As if to prove my point, Trace was leaning against the bar with a tall punk rock chick sporting a platinum pixie cut right beside him, her eyes never leaving his lips. Meanwhile my eyes hung on her barely-there hot pants. God, her legs poking out of them were so skinny I wanted to force feed the girl.

“Sleep tight, Trace,” I said and walked past them.

Someone that skinny couldn’t be sporty enough to have long, sweaty, exhausting sex, right? She’d probably collapse from dehydration first. Maybe what she couldn’t do stamina-wise, she made up for with flexibility. I wasn’t flexible at all. I could hardly close a bra behind my back. Which didn’t mean I was a total loser in bed. I was good with my… Whoa. What was I even doing, comparing myself to Trace’s sexfriend? Ugh, Sierra was messing with my head. 

I left my apron behind the bar, meaning to shoot only a short glance over my shoulder before heading upstairs but Trace was staring straight at me. Even his girlfriend had noticed and gave me the stink eye like I was to blame for the shift of his attention. Maybe I was. A big part of me started worrying that I’d done something to piss him off and he was trying to kill me by shooting invisible daggers from his eyes, but then there was this other part, much smaller and far less realistic than invisible daggers, that failed to ignore Sierra and tried to figure out if there was any possibility that Trace had gone from being disgusted by me to being interested in me. 

Who was I kidding? He turned back to the blonde and picked up the conversation again.

Third option: Maybe I had something stuck to my back and that was what he’d been staring at. 

I still had to wrap my head around the fact that I was practically living in Trace’s shirt. As long as my mind shut up about it, I could enjoy how big and cozy it was, how it fell to the middle of my thighs and how the sleeves were so long it took some serious digging to find my hands. As soon as my thoughts rose to life, however, it seemed like the worst idea to spend yet another minute snuggled into the soft fabric. Trace was confusing enough on his own, completely nuts the one second, sort of sweet the next, it didn’t help that I was contributing to this miserable confusion by allowing myself to become comfortable in his clothes and breathing his scent like I was stuck underwater and his smell was my oxygen.