For being shorter and smaller than me, his voice is gravelly deep, and him saying these two words sets off a roll of percussion that shakes down to the pit of my gut, a reverberation that could make a fortune doing ASMR.
I break through the hypnosis that causes and drop my shoulder against the alley wall. “Sorry. Which I should get used to saying, because I owe that word to a lot of people. Actually, if you wouldn’t mind getting in line, that’d be great.”
He blinks at me, still a bit alarmed. “I—”
“It’s not a very long line.” I press the heel of my hand to my temple. It doesn’t stop the alley from gyrating like the inside of a zoetrope. “That’s a lie. It is a long line. You’ll be squashed in behind my ever-disappointed father, my girl—ex-girlfriend, whose birthday party I ruined, and the people who—uh—”
I cut myself off.
He’s most likely a normal guy, and I can’t admit to him what I did. It was bad enough spewing it all out at Lily’s party in a way that just painted me as floundering and irresponsible—and Dad’s made it clear whatever story is being spun now, it’s more about saving face than owning up to what I did.
Which is fucked up. I should take the blame for it.
I will, though, by showing up at home and standing there as better people fix it.
God, that’s pathetic.
I shut my eyes, swaying a little, and disjointedly, I chuckle. “You ever have one of those moments”—my lips are numb—“where you think you’re doing a good thing, like you’re fucking certain you’re doing areally good thing,only it blows up so marvelously that you should offer your scorched-earth services to—to the um—fuck. The assholes. The people who follow wars around and siphon off money by selling weapons and shit.”
The guy doesn’t answer.
I look down. He should be fleeing back inside at the very least,reprimanding me for barging out the employee entrance at the most. But he stands there, cast into shadow. His stick-straight, glossy black hair is shorter on the sides but long enough on top that a few strands brush his forehead, and he’s staring up at me with raised brows and the roundest, most focused eyes I’ve ever seen. I suddenly feel like being the object of his attention is a stroke of luck.
It makes my slack muscles go tense. My spinning, drunken mind latches on, an anchor, and I frown at him for lack of being able to make any other facial expression at the moment.
“You’re drunk,” he notes with a cast of those eyes up and down my body.
“Astute.”
He meets my gaze again. “Please don’t sell yourself to arms dealers.”
“That’s it! Arms dealers. Ow—shit.” I snap my fingers. Or try to. My hand isn’t working well and I end up scraping my thumbnail along my finger.
Is that…
It is. There’s a hint of a smile on his lips. It drags—demands—wrenchesmy focus to those lips. And they are, suddenly,those lips,inthat way,and I think, in some corner of my mind, that I should not be looking at this errant bar employee like that, but I can’t remember why.
Oh. Because I just got dumped. Is there some kind of moratorium on flirting post-breakup? There shoulddefinitelybe a moratorium on flirting post-collapsing-an-entire-economy.
So I say “It’s not funny” to those lips, frowning harder, like it’s their fault.
His ghost of a smile doesn’t abate. “Of course not.”
“No—no, it isn’t. I know funny. Iamfunny. This? This wasn’t funny.”
One eyebrow lifts. Waiting. For me to keep talking?
Sure. Why the hell not. Because I suddenly need to talk about it, need to get it off my chest, and he’s here, and maybehe’sthe crazy one, because he could leave but isn’t.
Shit.Ishe Holiday press? No. He’s too hot to be paparazzi.
But here comes the whole sad damn story, like I’ve been shunted out of my body and I’m watching myself spill my guts to a perfect stranger.
This is officially the big red bulb ornament on the Charlie Brown Christmas tree that is my life.
“It would’ve been a doomed night from the start anyway, because Lily and I were going to break up after the party regardless—just had to hang on for one last night of press shots. Right? But last week, I’d—I’dtried,that was the dumbest thing. This was metrying.And I—my family has resources. Right?” Why do I keep asking him that? I think I’m pacing too. “And we never use them for anything that would actually help people. So I did. And it only made thingsexponentiallyworse, but of course it all came out during this party, so add a very public breakup on top of me realizing how badly I’d screwed up people’s lives, and no, nothing is funny. At all. Shit.”
I collapse against the alley wall and scrub my face, trying to get feeling back into my cheeks.
