Page 85 of The Baby Bargain
"You're still selling this story about you loving wine?"
"Jealousy doesn't look good on you."
"Uh-huh."
"It's sickening."
"Your concern is heartwarming," I deadpan.
He plays his role. "You know how hard it is being the only one who cares about your happiness?"
I shoot him aget reallook.
He shrugsI am real.
I move into my suite. Drop my sketchbook on the chair.
Wes leans against the half-wall. Drops his pained persona. Taps his toe against the tile floor, the picture of casual. "I always wonder: is Chase secretly like me, only he's picturing tortured chicks with too much eyeliner?"
"Who says it's too much?"
His laugh gets bigger. "I get it. You hit puberty when the emo look was big. Now, you're helpless against a chick with flat-ironed hair and eyeliner."
"You know me so well."
"Same thing happened to me with Quinn. The glasses. She was the first girl I wanted to fuck—"
"And now you fuck her every day?"
"Well, yeah, but—"
"Somehow you always manage to work that in." My voice lifts to something teasing. This can be easy. That's possible.
"Look at her."
"You won't hit me?" I ask.
"If you look with your eyes." He offers his drink again. "I know she's not your type."
"Do you?" I take the drink, sip, offer it back.
He motionskeep it. "Not enough eyeliner."
"I thought I was into the babe—"
"Ariel? Is that why you're in a mood?"
"I'm not in a mood."
"Don't think this counts against your thing for emo and goth chicks. She was dressed entirely in black," Wes says.
I open my sketchbook to the page I doodled at the coffee shop. The mended heart.
I always thought I was the thread in this metaphor, but maybe I'm not.
Maybe I'm the broken heart.
It's not inaccurate.
