Tattoo Kiss x, page 8
Jack sets down his guitar with Joe and the others and then promptly comes back to me. I hear Joe laughing in the other room as Colin and Kevin join in. Joe’s trying hard for him. And here I am dressed like this after he announces cheese gives me mad gas. Nice wing woman touch, Letti.
If he wasn’t my best friend, I’d be furious. But he knows I’ll forgive him for it.
For real though, why is Jack headed over to me and why is he coming around the island? I make like I’m doing the electric slide and take two giant steps to the left before sliding back into the sink.
To my relief, Jack only grabs a can of soda and eyes me curiously.
“I don’t bite, Eddie.” Jack chuckles in a low voice that sets my soul singing out a tune I’d forgotten I had performed a long time ago, in a different life.
“This drink doesn’t count, ye ken?” He nods down to the can in his hands. “Ye still owe me that rain date.”
“I never agreed to any date!” I sputter.
“Well,” Jack’s eyes flash at me and turn even brighter, “ye said no date, not no to standing in the rain with me.”
I open my mouth and close it again. I’m pretty good at arguing thanks to law school and he is right. I did not say no to that. My closing argument the other day was weak, and he knows it.
Thanks for putting me off my game, Mom.
“I honestly don’t owe you anything,” I mumble.
“Ye’re right.” Jack turns and steps closer to me. “Ye don’t owe me anything. But aren’t ye at least a little bit curious if ye did…get to know me?”
His face is closer now as his breath touches my ear. I have goose bumps down my spine.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment and neither do I.
Me. Words. Speak. Mouth-feel, lips forming shapes. Ugh.
When I’m finally able to get something out that resembles words, I lie.
“Not really.”
It’s not my imagination that he reaches out a finger to trace the wild cascade of hair tumbling over my shoulder, eyeing it as if it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.
“I promise if ye get to know me, I won’t make ye scream again. Not unless ye want to.”
He bites the inside of his cheek at that, and I look at him, my eyes wide in shock. Jack is unfazed and nonplussed, a smile twitching on his moderately full lips as he blinks slowly and watches my reaction, fully pleased with himself and not at all embarrassed.
Oh God, he means it.
Exclamation points can be seen in my eyes as I widen them and gape a little at his forwardness.
Not sure how to react to that, I open my mouth and sputter-laugh. “Cool. Neato. That work on your other women?”
His peach lips twitch into a smile as he lingers with me while the others are fully engrossed in laughter.
“Not really interested in women, save the one in front of me.”
Sure, Jan.
Tell me no lies. Haste ye away, numbskull. Not interested.
“Well, it won’t work. I don’t do casual, buddy. Not sure if Joe’s told you anything about me, but I am so not into dating right now. Much less hooking up.”
A flash of indignant anger runs through me, and I wish Joe would notice his friend was all over me. Not touching me, not ogling me this time, but just looking at me. As simply and openly as if he were staring out the window at a garden and noticing the details on the flowers in the beds.
I’m not a flower though. Not even close.
I’m a cactus and this prick is going to get pricked.
“Good man” act, my ass. Dude’s a nymphomaniac and about as subtle as wasabi.
Jack doesn’t answer at first, studying me the same way he was in the alleyway and I’m having a hard time looking away as his eyes draw me into their limitless depths of ocean tones.
“Christ, ye’re beautiful,” he whispers, his voice in a lower, guttural range that makes my insides melt away altogether. “Ye have the most stunning eyes I’ve ever seen, Eddie.”
I have no words yet again with this guy and I hate how he makes me speechless in the best and worst of ways all at once.
I find my words somewhere at my feet as I look at them and shuffle my mismatched socks.
“They’re just plain brown.” I shrug.
“Nah.” Jack smiles softly. “They’re smooth as Tennessee whiskey with bits of green in ’em. I don’t ken what shade they are, but I ken they’re my favorite color.”
“Jack!” Joe calls out. “Are we gonna play or not?”
“I’ll be right there,” Jack calls back, his eyes never leaving my face. Nor my mouth. The tip of his tongue peeks out just a centimeter as he licks his lips, watching mine. His Adam’s apple bobs down his throat as he swallows hard.
“I wanna know,” Jack says slowly, his eyes twinkling. “Have ye ever seen the rain?”
I’m so entranced by his eyes that I barely notice it’s the title of one of my favorite songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
“I’m sorry, what?” I say quickly, stammering.
“That’s what we’re playing, right?” he shouts out to Joe.
“Sure, we can start with that one. Get your ass in here. Letti, you gonna stay or what? Bring me a Diet Coke, will ya?”
Jack smiles and turns to go and I watch the spring in his step as he goes to join the others.
“Okay,” I say meekly.
I grab a can of soda and don’t even notice what kind it is.
Joe will have to get what he gets.
One hour later and I haven’t moved.
I’m sitting perched on the armrest of the recliner in Joe’s living room by the fireplace.
I breathe through the anxiety I feel being around anyone new and try to focus on what I know.
I’m at Joe’s house. I am safe. I am me. Nothing bad happens here—mostly. When it does, it’s usually the fault of our own shenanigans, like the time I set his range on fire with our first and only attempt at a flambé.
Looks like for the moment, my incantations are working wonders. Knock on wood.
I’m trying super hard for Joe and he notices. At one point, he comes up to me and gives my shoulder a squeeze.
It’s hard to be at this impromptu practice party, at least it feels like a mini party.
Especially with a man who makes me so goddamn uncomfortable.
Not in a creepy way, but in an I-can’t-get-enough and why-can’t-I-stop-staring-at-him kinda way.
This is our third time being in the same place together and he’s already under my skin, causing my stomach to swirl around as surely as he swirls the dark wine in the flute in his large hand—and never takes a sip.
His inaction to drink causes my mouth to feel suddenly thirsty and curious as to the feel of his own.
Five seconds pass before I can tear my eyes away from his fingers clasped around the stem.
Then ten.
Joe is a great host, and to be honest, the other musicians are exceptional. Colin seems cool as shit and Kevin has some amazing one-liners. Jack, however, is quietly drinking them all in with his eyes that seem to absorb every detail. Every now and then, his laugh rings out at something one of them says, and it tumbles in the air like a somersault.
My stomach is in knots because it’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.
I catch his eyes on me more than once and he doesn’t drop his gaze even when I glance down at my hands as I ball and unball them in my lap.
Is this magic?
I know I’m supposed to be the witch with my potions and lotions and magic incantations (aka positive mantras Alicia gives me, I call them incantations because it sounds better).
Being in the same room with him is an out-of-body experience.
It’s like my brain blew a fuse and the rest of my body tries to keep up with him unsuccessfully.
I’ve never had a problem keeping up with anyone else before.
I feel his eyes on my face and it throws me into a red flush.
It’s horrible.
But I can’t deny I’m addicted to the emotional high after being dead in my heart for so long. I’m feeling something and something is better than the overwhelming inky blackness that swallows me whole.
I keep telling my little bastard of a heart that no, this is the last thing that’s good for me. But it keeps skipping fucking beats when he’s around. Like he’s a damn virus, I can’t get out of my system.
Maybe I can sweat it out with a fever or give myself some kind of emotional penicillin to get rid of him.
Am I not loving myself enough that I’m flustered whenever a guy comes along and says I have nice eyes?
Shit.
I fell for the oldest line in the book.
Duh. Nice eyes.
Bullshit.
They’re not nice. I’ve always been incredibly self-conscious about how plain brown they are.
I think everyone with brown eyes feels the same.
All girls like me feel this way. All the brown girls who ended up playing the maid or the evil stepsister because society hadn’t gotten around to representation yet.
Brown eyes are common.
But my brown is his favorite color.
Wait…
Am I crying?
What are these tears in my eyes?
Jesus Christ.
I’ve got to get out of here.
The man who calls me “Eddie” made me cry at this, our third meeting.
Oh, this relationship is fucked before it even starts.
I’m way too emotionally unstable to be messed with right now.
I stand up from the couch to go, to slip out unnoticed as they set up their set list for next time at the pub.
With a cue from Joe, the group plays music.
Really wonderful music.
Joe and Colin harmonize and play around on his grand piano while Jack sits on the cream-colored couch and strums his black guitar with a sunburst pattern on the body. I watch his fingers press down on the strings and caress the neck of the instrument as my mouth falls open a little.
I’m jealous of a fucking piece of wood and steel.
The sight anchors me hopelessly to the spot, and I forget all about leaving.
Jack plays with such ease and alacrity that it practically sings for him in its rich, ringing tones that echo his laugh.
His voice with those damn words that wrap around my brain like fingers of silk, stroking my anticipation and memories into oblivion until I’m not sure who I am anymore, or how one person can move me so much.
I close my eyes and let the music carry me away to the only place in my heart where it doesn’t hurt.
Music does that to me.
If art is how other people decorate their walls, music is how I decorate my time.
I often spend whole days trying not to cry. I have no outlets, no way of getting out the feelings.
But music. Music is freedom.
My chest tightens and my stomach clenches, trying to hold in the emotions banging at the locked-up chambers of my broken soul.
I love feeling this way.
It makes me feel beautiful, not in a vain, primping-in-front-of-mirror way, but in a way that makes my soul feel redeemed.
Like something within me is still alive. Still kicking. Still able to reach out and touch the world around me.
Shit.
I’m actually crying.
The tears are hot and wet on my face.
I turn my face to wipe my cheeks and give a false yawn, hoping to play it off as exhaustion instead of a week’s worth of emotions bottled up and demanding to be let out.
I’m so afraid of feeling the terror, the trauma, the hurt that I don’t let myself feel anything positive either.
Emotionally constipated.
Enter mental instability and my tendency to lash out at people and you have yourself the perfect recipe for disaster.
I’m always on edge when groups of people get together. It causes the flashbacks to happen of secret meetings at the firm. The one where everything changed.
I’m still bleeding from it.
In a crowd, I’m still pressing my fingers to my chest to stop the blood sputtering out of my heart.
I can’t pretend I’m okay when everyone around me might betray me like that.
Something in me snaps, and I suddenly get up and extricate myself from the scene.
“I’ve got to go, Joe. Uh. Early morning. Nice meeting you all,” I say hastily, rushing over to Joe and giving him a quick pat on the shoulder.
“Nice shark coochie board.” I wink at his confused face, and he cracks a grin.
How I am a thirty-one-year-old woman, I’ll never know.
“Sure you won’t stay?” Joe starts to say, then he catches my firm look and sees the wet cheeks.
“Call me later, okay? Let me know when you get home.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Don’t call me that,” Joe chides as I dash for the door to get my shoes.
“Sure as hell not calling you Daddy!” I call out. The others laugh, and I avoid any and all eye contact with Jack as I rush to get my things together.
I clench my abs tightly and try my best to slip on my shoes and head out the door.
I make it to my car in the dark and slip into the driver’s seat and lock the doors on instinct. The tears start spilling down my face and I bite my lip hard to keep from sobbing.
“Keep. It. Together,” I say out loud.
I breathe out hard like I’m pushing all the air out of my lungs and turn over the keys in the ignition. My headlights turn on to see the shape of a familiar figure running toward me.
Jack’s white T-shirt flashes in front of me before he’s at my car door, motioning for me to lower my window.
“Oh my God,” I groan, rolling it down an inch.
The words I say next will haunt me for the rest of my days as I slap on a fake smile and blink my tears away furiously.
“Welcome to Good Burger, home of the good burger. Can I take your order?”
The fuck, Letti?
It catches Jack off guard. He turns his head a little and smiles slyly in a way that makes his mouth adorably crooked and his flushed lips shine even in the semi-darkness.
Goddamn. His jawline is so sharp it could cut someone. I’d die for it to cut me…Wow!
Keepittogether.
“Look. I didn’t mean to be so forward earlier, Eddie, I—”
“Uh-huh, I think you did mean it.” My words come out harsher than I intend them to. “I think you knew exactly how forward you were and are just upset it didn’t go to plan.”
Jack steps back once and blinks. He looks…hurt. A flash of some emotion I can’t identify passes over his face and for a second, I feel bad.
Instant regret dings in my mental microwave that I use to process my words. The faster they’re done, the worse they usually come out sounding.
“I’m sorry, I just…I’m not used to guys hitting on me. When they do, I get weird.”
“Yeah.” Jack nods and his auburn waves fall a little into his blue eyes as he looks at me in the wind. “I can see that.”
I don’t know why I feel the need to explain anything to him, but I do. I take in a deep breath before I go on.
“I’m just not a challenge, okay? I’m serious. I’m probably the worst person for you to even be remotely interested in.”
The words spew out of me like emotional vomit. I can’t hold them in now.
Jack is Joe’s friend and as Joe’s friend, I’ve got to be honest with him.
“I’m broken and horribly fucked up. I hurt anyone I get close to because I don’t fucking feel anything positive at all right now. I’m like this human robot with random outbursts of screaming and crying and…And I don’t think you’d want to get to know me. Because if you do, you won’t like what you see.”
My fingers go to my throat, and I twist my necklace into a little knot. There are those damn eyes again. Staring.
And then.
His lips twitch into the same slanted smile again as he gets closer to my window until his straight, slightly freckled nose is almost up on the glass.
“I don’t ken about that. But I’d like ye to give me a chance, eh? Is that too much to ask, Eddie?”
Yes, yes, it is.
I swallow like I have a wad of bubblegum stuck in my throat.
He doesn’t move and neither do I. A quick burst of wind picks up around my car and some strands of his gorgeous hair fall into his eyes. He pushes it back effortlessly to keep staring at me intently.
For the first time, he looks vulnerable. Standing there, hands on my car door, throat bobbing as he swallows nervously and that damned tongue darts out to lick his lips, and I wonder what they taste like.
“Fine.”
The word explodes from my mouth before I can stop it.
Apparently, my vagina has control over my speech right now, like some kind of fucked-up ventriloquism in response to pure hormones unleashed over his pretty face.
Jack bursts into a smile and spins around shamelessly, fist pumping the air like I just told him he won the lottery. Then he holds up a finger and taps on my door.
“One thing,” he says and motions for me to lower my window further.
I hesitate, but then roll it down one inch more.
“Hold out yer hand.”
“What?”
He’s gonna spit gum into it or some shit. I know it.
“Just do it.”
I slowly put my hand up to the window. Jack drops something hard and light as a feather into it.
My palm closes around a tortoise shell guitar pick.
“Is this your calling card?” I ask dryly.
“Nah, ye’ve got one of those. With my number on it, I might add.” He nods emphatically, eyes twinkling full of a million bad decisions I’m most likely going to make in my near future.
Jack is trying hard to keep his smile contained, but he’s glowing like a candle flame and the heat of it warms my cold soul.
“Now this is very serious, ye ken.”
“What’s so serious about a guitar pick?”
Oh my God, is he going to make a pun about “picking me”?
Jack shrugs and moves his shoulders around, absolutely shaking with excitement.
