Page 66 of Rooster's Remorse
"Hey." Lashes is watching me. "You went somewhere. Come back."
"I'm here." My throat pulls tight, and I push the words through it. "I haven't done this. Gotten ready. For anybody. In?—"
I stop.
"Yeah." Lashes reaches over and squeezes my ankle where it's tucked under me. "I know."
Nova sets the iron down and turns my face by the chin, side to side, checking her work, her eyes soft even while her mouth stays all business.
"Okay," she says. "Now the dress."
* * *
He's waiting by the bikes, and there's not a speck of grease on him.
That's the first thing I notice, coming across the courtyard with Nova's borrowed heels hooked on two fingers because I'm not crossing gravel in them.
Dark shirt, sleeves shoved up his forearms, clean jeans, beard trimmed down close, and he's turning something over in his hands.
When he looks up and sees me, his hands go still.
Not the way a man goes still when he's caught looking.
The way a deer goes still in a road with the light already on it.
His mouth opens and nothing comes out.
His eyes go all the way down the dress and back up to my face, slowly, and he swallows, and he still hasn't said one word.
I stand in a cold courtyard in a green dress and let him look, because for the first time in a decade being looked at doesn't make me want to climb out of my own skin.
He's not taking anything. He's looking.
"Say something, Finn."
"Can't." His voice comes out like gravel. "Give me a second here."
"You clean up all right yourself."
"I look like a man who scrubbed under his nails for two hours so he'd be allowed to stand next to you." He steps in and holds his arm out, slow, careful, like it might spook me. I don't take it. He doesn't push, just lowers it and tips his head at the truck instead of the bike. "It's cold. I'll drive us in. I got you a real dinner, not a burrito off the back of a bike."
"I happen to like a burrito off the back of a bike."
The corner of his mouth goes. "Later. On the way back. If you want."
I do, but I don't tell him I want it.
The restaurant's downtown and it's nicer than anything I braced for out of a man who's been a prospect for nine years—white cloths on the tables, low gold light, and a whole wall ofdoors thrown open onto the street because the night's gone mild for once.
"Finn." I look around the room. "You cannot afford this."
"I do all right." He pulls my chair out and I let him have that one. "I might be a prospect for a long time, but I work. I fix things. Half that city pays me under the table to fix things for them, and I've got nobody to spend it on, so." He sits across from me. "Tonight I'm spending it on you. Sit down before you fight me about it."
I look at the menu and don't understand half the words.
He watches me not understand it and doesn't make it a thing to laugh at.
Just leans over and murmurs what's good, and orders for us both when I ask him to, because I've forgotten how to want food in a whole room full of it.
