These Things About Us (7 page)

“I don't want your pity candy.”

“Oh, no, this is me bribing you into keeping your mouth shut about this. I don't need my father up my ass because I made you cry.”

“You didn't.” Just to be sure, I swiped my fingers along my lashes. Some mascara came off but not a single tear.

“Sour or sweet?”

“Green.”

“Figures.”

I let him buy me the candy. He bought a Red Bull for himself and handed me the white plastic bag. I opened it to find a pack of tissues to go along with my comfort food. Had he really expected me to cry?

By the time we were back on the street, the rain had turned back into the faint drizzle I’d come to know. Part of me felt lighter without the reminder of her, the other part regretted spending precious rain time in the shop.

“You have to get yourself cleaned up before Wes or Dad see you like this. They'd think I locked you out.”

“Okay,” I mumbled and pushed a piece of chocolate through my lips. 

I didn't have to try very hard not to run into his family. I easily slipped into my room unnoticed and took fresh clothes and my towel to the bathroom without so much as hearing a beep from anyone. The mirror explained Trace's whole crying nonsense. The rain had washed my eyeliner and mascara all over my cheeks. I could've passed for a zebra. Not to mention that my blue eyes looked glossy and distant.

I knew it had been a reasonable resolution to avoid him. I should have told him to leave me alone. I didn't want to be a mess anymore.

Dancing with Wesley was fun and easy, although he was a terrible dancer. That boy had not a rhythmic muscle in his body, but he kept twirling me around and around while he shouted some terribly wrong lyrics along to every Spanish song that came on.

Other than the fact that we were always a foot apart instead of grinding our bodies against each other, there was not much difference to clubbing. The lights were low, the music loud, the drinks overpriced, and the girls wore skimpy dresses and deep frowns.

“I need something to drink,” Wes yelled close to my ear.

I nodded and signaled to Sierra and Marcus, her very handsome and very in-his-forties husband, that we were heading for the bar. Wes wrapped my arm around his and towed me through the tight crowd towards the bar that was decorated with all sorts of exotic flowers. I tugged on a waxy leave to see if they were real. It came off.
Crap
. I hoped nobody had seen that. I shoved the plastic leave into my skirt's pocket and tried to look as innocent as possible.

“Here you go.” Wes turned around, grinning widely over two blue cocktails.

I eyed the Blue Hawaii extended to me. “I don't drink.”

“Oh, right, you have to wait until you're 21 in America, right? You can try it, though. It's not that strong.”

“No, I mean, yes, technically you have to wait, but I don't generally drink alcohol.” He seemed irritated, at loss with an extra drink in his hands. I smiled apologetically and shrugged. “I'm sorry. I should have told you.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Maybe Sierra wants this one.”

“Or you could try to pick up a girl with it. I’m pretty sure most girls like having cocktails bought for them.”

Wesley’s eyes immediately darted to the other end of the bar. I didn’t have to turn around to know he was staring at some chick with a short skirt and high heels.

“Are you sure?” He asked, still focused on his target.

“Yes. Go. You’re a handsome, nice guy who deserves someone special.”

“Thanks, Tony.” He didn’t leave without the kiss on my hair that I was slowly getting used to. But once that was done, he maneuvered off.

I sat down on a stool and tried to keep track of his head of side-swept hair. It was fairly easy since the men in his family were all tall enough to stand out in a crowd. I ordered a coke and watched as Wes steered towards a small group of girls. They all wore tiaras, like they were on a bachelorette party. And then Wes talked to the only guy of their group. A skinny guy with blond streaked hair, who gladly accepted the drink. Wes bent down to talk into the skinny guy’s ear and the skinny guy turned his head to respond into Wesley’s ear.

An “Oh” escaped my throat.

I’d been pretty sure that Wes had flirted with me a number of times since I’d gotten here. I couldn’t have been imagining that, right? I reflected on the winking and the grinning. Yeah, he had definitely flirted with me, but had he done that when we were alone? Or was it all for show?

Oh. It made a lot more sense now, that he’d have his brother think we were sleeping together. Trace probably didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to tell him that Wesley was flirting with a boy merely a few feet away from me. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched, but it was nice to see them both at ease, smiling and leaning in again and again to have hushed conversations.

“Darling, how did you do
that
?”

I spun around to Sierra.
Her jaw was close to the floor as she stared at Wes and his…guy.

“What?” I shuffled in front of her, trying to hide the boys behind my back. If Wesley didn’t want people to know, I could make that happen somehow.

She shifted her weight to look past me. “I’ve been trying for months to make him take action.”

“You have?” I mumbled, drawing my eyebrows together. So maybe only Trace and Alex didn’t know. I’d have to make Wes give me the exact details, so I’d know what to say to whom.

 “Yes, yes, but he kept finding random girls to make out with and afterwards complain to me about because it didn’t feel good or something like that.”

Marcus moved up behind her and handed her a bottled drink while snaking his arm around her mid. Sierra needed no more invitation than that, she immediately pulled him into one very, very affectionate PDA. Suddenly everybody I knew was tangled up in intimacies and I stood in the middle of a Latin dance bar by myself. Oh my God, was Sierra seriously touching him down there? Her hand most definitely snuck into his pants’ pocket.
Oh God,
I shouldn’t even be watching this. I shouldn’t be here in the first place.

I’d come to London to find my mom, not to make friends and help some guy hook up with some other guy. I hadn’t come here to go dancing and watch a waitress give her way-too-old husband an almost hand job in public. I tore myself away from the scene and bolted right out the door and into the next cab. I’d had enough for one night.

Only when I put a safe distance between
that
and myself, I texted Wesley that I was heading home, and to ease his guilt, I added that I had a terrible headache when, in reality, all I needed was to open the stupid box from under my bed.

I didn’t spare Trace and his new bedfriend with giant boobs a second glance when I ran past them on the stairs; I just headed for my room and threw the door shut behind me.

It was time to face the truth.

I fell to my knees and crawled over to feel for the box without looking at whatever might surprise me from under a strange bed. Once the hard edges pressed into my palms, I yanked it out, up on the bed and fell onto the mattress next to it. I had avoided it long enough, waited for the phone book’s last Theresa Lawrence to call me back long enough. This was it.

I inhaled deeply and flipped off the lid.

My breath caught in my throat.

The burning in my eyes was hard to fight down, but I didn’t want tears blurring my vision. Ignoring the warning stutter of my heart, I carefully lifted the contents out of the box and laid them out on my bed. They were fragile, and I hoped it all still worked. My fingers trembled so hard, I barely managed to push the tiny switch to
on
. The small screen flickered briefly, but nothing more happened. The batteries were probably too low. There were three cased SD-cards and a 180mm lens, plus the 80mm one already attached to the camera. Nothing to charge the batteries.

I set down the DSLR and stared at the equipment.

The pressure in my chest pushed up, until the air coming from my chest was nothing but a wimpy rattling. Mom and I were the same beyond the blue eyes and the birthmark. I used to have a camera so similar to this. I didn’t remember her ever taking a picture, but the evidence lay before me. She liked photography.

“Kitty?”

“Oh, God!” I jumped off the bed, my heart leaping out of my chest. Trace stood in my doorway, pushing his hands deep into his pockets. “Why didn’t you knock?”

“I did.”

He did? I shrugged it off. “Get out. I’m still trying to avoid you.”

Trace ignored my order, his eyes dropping to the camera on my bed. “Where’s Wes?”

“Still at the club,” I answered and put the camera back into the box, out of his sights. This was mine and my mother’s. He didn’t get to be interested in it. “I left early because I have a headache.”

“Oh, that’s why you whimpered like a drowning cat?”

“I did not – what?”

Trace rolled his eyes, and as his lips opened again instead of words he made sounds that were somewhere between breathing and gurgling and sounded like a puppy was screaming for his life. His Adam’s apple bobbed one last time and then he looked at me as if he’d proved some point.

“If I did make those sounds, that’s still better than whatever your ladyfriend has in store for later. You should go back to her now. She probably misses you.”

“Oh, you haven’t heard this one yet. You might actually like her, Kitty.” A small grin unfolded on his lips.

“Stop calling me that. I’m not a drowning cat.”

“No, but you flinch every time someone calls you by your name.”

“I don’t.” Did I?

“Good night, Kitty.”

“Don’t come in here again!” I yelled at the closing door.

 With the camera moved to the nightstand – I couldn’t look at the memory cards without batteries or a laptop – I changed into my PJs and sat on the bed for another hour just looking at the small black machine that belonged to my mother. As much as I loved that it told me more about her, it didn’t tell me where to find her. It also didn’t tell me why she would leave it behind in the first place. I would never give up on such a beauty.

I eventually climbed under the covers and hugged my pillow tight to my chest. Strangely enough, I did like this bedfriend of Trace’s. She was a quiet one. Not a single noise trickled through the wall that night.

I had to get breakfast on my own the next day and didn’t cross paths with Wesley once during the following hours. I was growing impatient by the time I tied the apron around my waist. Not only because I kind of wanted to squeeze the details of his flirt out of him, but because I needed to use his computer. The camera had been waiting next to my bed for way too many hours. I had to get my hands on a laptop and check those memory cards. The pub was already opening up and he just seemed to have disappeared. I’d checked his room so often I’d lost count.

My foot was jumping up and down as I stood by the CDs, choosing one for tonight to play. I was slowly getting a hang of who was who and picked a sampler with lots of steady, slow songs for the early evening crowd.

“Marcus and I love this song for slow sex,” Sierra mused and took the case from me, nodding her head in tune with the music. “You hear those drums? Yeah, that rhythm’s great.”

Unfortunately with every thump of the drums I now had the very vivid picture of Marcus and Sierra grinding their bodies against each other stuck in my head. “I didn’t want to know that.” I squeezed my eyes shut, but the song grew louder and the sex scene in my mind got more detailed. “Why did you say that?”

“Darling, are you imagining our hot sex? You have one dirty mind.”

“It’s not dirty. You made me think of that. God, just tell me something else, please.”

“Wait,” Sierra held up a finger, “the rhythm picks up here.” She turned the volume up. The hits sped up and my ears stung from the decibels climbing. Worst of all: Imaginary Marcus was pounding away at imaginary Sierra.

Trace frowned at the volume, too, and swiftly lowered it with a flick of his hand. “You can continue your headporn in your break, Kitty.”

“No, thanks. I don’t like porn that makes me want to puke.” I stabbed the stereo with my index finger and the next song came on. Before Sierra could say a word, I held my hand up. “Don’t. Don’t tell me what you do during this song.”

“Oh, please.” She swapped my hand away and pursed her lips. “I was about to ask you what kind of porn you like if you don’t like the hot-and-sweaty sort?”

Someone had to rip my tongue out. It was betraying me. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to look as indifferent as ever.
Discussing porn with my co-worker while on duty? No problem at all. This was a totally normal conversation without any need to grow uncomfortable. “I don’t like porn period.”

“No, no, you don’t get out of this. You said you don’t like porn that makes you throw up, so you have to spill the beans, Darling.”

I was even stupid enough to look at Trace for help, but he leaned back against the counter and read the backside of a CD, not even sparing us one glance. Bastard. I swallowed and ran my tongue over my teeth to buy me one more moment to think of some innocent answer. “Kill me,” I mumbled and succumbed to the truth. “Alright, okay, I used to watch those intimate videos, okay? The soft ones where you think the couple is actually in love. I like imagining sex can be like that.”

“Aw, you’re so sweet, Tony. You’re like the inexperienced baby sister I never had.” Sierra looped her arms around my waist. If only she knew.