I’d worked at looking pretty the night Johnny had invited me to the motel room, and look where that’d gotten me. Lip gloss, mascara, and shaved legs equal face over toilet, eternal shame, and a dead body. I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. I loped on over to Stella’s straight from my library shift, not even bothering to brush my hair.
“You look beautiful.”
“Huhn?” I swiveled in the narrow entryway. I hadn’t seen Johnny approach.
“How are you feeling?” He looked concerned, handsome, emotionally vulnerable.
I cleared my throat. “Better.” I told myself not to meet his eyes, not to look up into those hypnotizing blue seapools, but I couldn’t help it. We locked gazes and the charge was electric. “Actually, I feel like the biggest loser in town. I can’t believe you saw me throw up.”
He smiled and grabbed my hand. I wanted to pull away, but didn’t. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Some of it came out my nose.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. He didn’t disagree.
“I’ve decided we’re a doomed relationship and sworn off men forever. Well, at least non-fiberglass ones.”
He squeezed my hand and scanned the restaurant for Mrs. Berns. “Give me a chance.”
“I did.”
“Give me another one.”
I was saved from a response by the sound of Mrs. Berns’ yell. “Over here, lovebirds!”
The whole restaurant turned. I tried to slide my hand out of Johnny’s, but he wouldn’t let me. He walked confidently to the table, dragging me behind like toilet paper on his shoe.
“How’re you feeling, Mrs. Berns?”
“Not as fine as you look, Johnny Leeson.” She was right. The man wore blue jeans like a spoon wore honey, and I could see the cut of his sculpted shoulders through his shirt. “Have you met my fiancé, Mr. Bernard Mink?”
Johnny held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
Bernard shook it but didn’t acknowledge me. I wondered if Mrs. Berns had told him I wanted to talk. Actually, studying them side by side, I realized they weren’t a bad-looking couple. With their mouths closed, you might be tricked into believing they were your average retired pair setting off into the sunset in their RV. That is, if you could overlook the nasty bruises turning green on their faces and the cast on Mrs. Berns’ leg. Bernard was considerably younger than his date, but no spring chicken. He wore a nice polo shirt over a pair of khakis. Mrs. Berns had slipped on elastic-waisted pants and a pink and lime green blouse accented by plastic old-lady jewelry. The only good thing about a wedding between her and Bernard is that afterward, she could go back to dressing with the pizzazz she was known for. But I wasn’t going to let it get that far.
Johnny pulled out my chair and asked if I’d like something to drink.
“Water’s fine,” I said. The restaurant had a simple and welcoming cabin-and-fresh-flowers décor, and a faint jazz tune encouraged conversation without overwhelming it.
“As I was saying,” Bernard said to Mrs. Berns, resuming their conversation, “for all intensive purposes, the sooner the wedding, the better.”
“For all intents and purposes,” I said.
“Exactly,” he said.
It was too much. “You two are trying to get married sooner than Halloween? That’s not even two weeks away.” I gave Mrs. Berns warning eyes. Forget avoiding stressing her, or even me wanting to get her back in her sassy clothes. I’d rather have her dress like a granny into infinity than bind herself to this loser any sooner than necessary. I’d have to hurry my plan, but my hands were tied until I could get Bernard alone.
“You can hurry love,” Bernard said. “I want to make her my woman for all modernity.”
I considered asking him to retarditerate his point, but I couldn’t stand to hear him butcher the language any more. I changed the subject. “How’s your online class going, Mrs. Berns?”
Not my smartest move. She filled us in with such hyper-specific detail that we were all too embarrassed to look at each other by the time our food came. We ate with our heads down, shoveling the food in quickly to get the night over with. Mrs. Berns won the clean plate award, clearing her filet mignon and baked potato before it got cold.
“Damn that’s better than hospital food.” She pushed her plate away, a wide smile on her plate. “Bernard, I believe it’s time for a kiss.”
“But I’m not done with my steak yet,” he groused.
She flicked him on the forehead like a bad dog and then pulled him in close. If you’ve ever watched old people kiss, you’ve noticed that they appear to have to pop through a small, invisible barrier to touch lips, like two opposite pole magnets shoved together. Mrs. Berns did not kiss like that. Her magnet was always turned the right way, and her public passion made me even more uncomfortable than her tales of studying human sexuality. Johnny tapped my leg, and I realized I’d been staring.
“I’m full. Want to move over to the bar so we can give these two some privacy?”
I looked longingly at my half-eaten brick oven margherita pizza. It was delicious.
“I’ll have them box it up for you,” Mrs. Berns said out of the corner of her mouth. I was unsurprised to learn that she had 360-degree vision while kissing. She was a modern miracle when it came to the art of love.
“Thanks,” I said, but made no move to stand.
“And Bernard will talk to you before you leave.”
That’s what I needed to hear. “We’ll be at the bar.” I crammed my hands into my pockets so Johnny couldn’t grab one of them again and followed him into the other room. It was packed, even on a Wednesday, but he found a quiet corner. We nursed our water, standing in uncomfortable silence.
“Mira?” He asked. “Do you like me?”
Ohmygodyes. Liked him so much that I didn’t want to jinx him, that I’d rather move to India than ruin his life with my bad luck, that I wanted to throw him to the ground right now and ride him like a merry-go-round. “Yeah.”
“Then why does it always feel like you’re running away?” He took my hand again. I squelched the urge to not yank it back.
“I’m a little damaged,” I said, embarrassed that I’d blushed when I said it. “I’m not… your type.”
He pulled me in close. I was about to make some crack about us taking notes from Mrs. Berns and Bernard when his warm lips brushed against mine, soft, and then harder, his tongue gently exploring the edges of my mouth. I sighed and fell against his hard body, loving the feel of his hand in my hair. He pulled back slightly and moved his mouth to my ear, landing soft butterfly kisses on the edge. “That’s for me to decide,” he whispered huskily.
“Yes,” I said, not sure what I was agreeing to.
“Will you go to Mrs. Berns’ wedding with me?”
At that moment, I would have gone to the landfill to pick out furniture with him. “Uh-hunh.” I pushed back against his mouth. His tongue was magic. I heard a soft chuckle, a vibration against my ear, before his mouth moved to the base of my neck. I swear the only reason I didn’t mount him like a farm animal right there in the bar was that a siren blared past the front of Stella’s, an ambulance followed by two police cars. My heart clutched. They were racing toward the north side of the town, and there were lots of people I cared about on the north side of town.
I stepped back, tamping down my libido with fear. “I have to see what’s happening.”
His eyes were stormy with passion but cleared quickly. “I’ll drive.”
We raced outside and realized it would be quicker to walk than drive. Stella’s was on a rise on Lake Street, and we could see that the emergency vehicles had screamed past us and pulled into the Big Chief Motor Lodge a half mile directly north. It was their second time there in under a week. We dashed north, covering the distance in less than five minutes, arriving out of breath and in time to witness the ambulance crew hurrying up to the lakeside second story with a stretcher between them.
It was such an odd juxtaposition of the scene after Webber was found that I felt unbalanced in the cool October air and reached out to Johnny. He grabbed my arm to steady me and we kept moving forward, on the scene in time to see the ambulance crew hurry down the stairs and toward us with an unconscious Arnold Swydecker on a gurney, skin gray, yellow foam bubbling out the corner of his mouth.