Page 38 of Rage
She meets my eyes in the reflection. “So do you.”
I am wearing my black skinny jeans and a long-sleeve pink crop top. My strawberry-blond hair is down. Red lipstick.
She looks at the five inches of thigh the dress reveals above the boot.
“You have the legs for it,” I say before she can talk herself out of it.
I insist on the Uber. She tries to object, but I don’t let her. I still have a bit of cash I took from Roman before I left. It’s not much, but it was enough to get me here and have some left for little things.
The house on Fletcher Street announces itself before we reach the door, bass through the walls, voices, the vibration of a space full of people who have decided not to be careful tonight.
Two guys hold the door with wide smiles when they see us coming up the pathway.
I take Rose’s hand. I pause at the threshold the way I always pause when it’s an unfamiliar place, the quiet inventory of exits and who is watching whom before I allow myself forward.
Rose doesn’t; she walks in ahead of me with the ease of someone who has been in enough rooms that she has stopped hoping the next one will be different and has simply decided to be in it anyway.
I follow her inside as she takes the lead. We find the edge of the room; we grab a couple of empty cups as we scan the space.
Neither of us is watching the party so much as reading it, which is a different thing entirely.
“This is a skill,” I say.
“Which one?”
“Not looking like you’re looking.”
She smiles. “I learned it young.”
“Me too,” I say.
I pour us a drink straight from the bottle. The rum is sweet and not unpleasant.
Two guys come over from the kitchen—football build, tall, large hands, the type who have never had to worry whether walking toward someone was safe.
One with green eyes. The other the color of chocolate. The one with green eyes watches Rose with interest.
I talk to Brown Eyes about nothing in particular. He is harmless and does not expect anything, which is its own kind of relief. I am aware of Rose beside me the whole time, scanning the room with the same peripheral attention I use.
An hour in, the air changes.
Saint is near the far wall. Dark hoodie. Bandanna. Not drinking. Watching the room with the expression of someone who arrived for a reason and is working toward it.
His eyes find me in approximately three seconds.
He doesn’t move toward me. He simply looks, and I look back, and the space between us does nothing to change the quality of it. It’s charged.
Rose follows my gaze not recognizing him, “Who is that?” she asks.
“Complicated,” I say.
She looks at him for a moment. Then back at me. “The way he looks at you,” she says quietly, “is not complicated. That is the simplest thing in this room. Wait…isn’t he the guy from the library?”
I look away.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t let the complicated part talk you out of the simple part,” Rose says. She is looking at the room as she continues, “I think that is what they count on. That we do their work for them.”
