Page 7 of Rooke
“Of course they do.”
Jacob shakes his head, collecting a shirt from the living room floor (also his) and sniffing at it dubiously. “My folks are coming by in a couple of days. How long do you think it’ll take to make the apartment fit for parental consumption?”
The house is normally immaculate. The only clutter in the living room right now is Jake’s, and I plan on burning whatever the fuck he doesn’t tidy up soon. “For anyone else’s parents, I’d say we were good. But for yours…I’m gonna say it’d take longer than either of us have left on this earth.”
“Gee. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I do my best.”
Jacob shrugs his way out of the ball tee he’s wearing and slips on the black button-down shirt he just collected from the floor. As he does up the buttons, he squints at me like he’s trying to read my mind. “What’s wrong with your face?” he asks.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that weird, guilty twitch you’ve got going on.”
“I don’t have a weird, guilty twitch.”
“Oh, but you do. Give me the book.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
He holds out his hand. “Don’t make me fight you for it.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “You think you can take it from me, come on over here and try.” No way he’ll be able to. All through high school Jake tried working out, dietary supplements, protein powders, basically anything he could get his hands on that might help him bulk out a little. Suffice it to say, nothing worked. He’s still as rail-thin as he’s always been. He was adamant he would weigh a hundred and ninety pounds by the time he was twenty-one, and yet here we are, both of us creeping up on our twenty-fourth birthdays, and he can’t weigh more than a buck forty soaking wet.
Jake rolls his eyes. “Fine. If you wanna be all secretive and weird, then so be it. But know this. If that piece of literature in your hands has anything to do with those psychos in waiters’ outfits handing out free personality tests in the city, then you and I are no longer friends.”
“I’m not joining a cult, dude. It’s just some book this woman dropped. It’s nothing.”
“Some woman? What woman?” He narrows his eyes again.
“I don’t know. Some chick that works at the museum. She was kinda hot.”
“Oooh. Librarian type. I like it. Is she interning or something?”
Jake seems to have entirely skipped over the part where I called Sasha awomanand not agirl. I choose not to bring it up again, though. “I don’t know. Maybe. We only spoke for a few seconds.”
“And you stole her book?”
“Like I said. She dropped it.”
He waggles his eyebrows in a comical way. His face is made of elastic. Has to be, the way he can contort and manipulate the way he does. If he wanted to, he could easily be the next Jim Carrey. Jake’s more interested in becoming the next Damien Rice, though. “I get it. You’re reading the thing from cover to cover so you can take it back to her and impress her with your knowledge of its contents, right?” he says.
“No. I’m not going to see her again. My grandfather doesn’t want me back there any time soon. And besides…she’s not exactly…suitable.”
Gathering his bar blade and apron from the dining table, Jacob makes a derisive sound. “What the fuck does suitable have to do with anything, man? She’s a chick, right? You think she’s hot. Do what comes naturally. Take her out for some drinks. Charm her with that ridiculous fucking face of yours. Bring her home and fuck her. The end.”
I could take the time to explain that Sasha’s not the bring-her-home-and-fuck-her type, but Jake wouldn’t understand. Not until I also explained that she must be in her early to mid-thirties, that she looks like she has her shit together, and that screwing around with a guy like me is undoubtedly very low on her list of things to do. Instead I give my friend the dirty, rakish grin he’s expecting from me and I shrug my shoulders. “Yeah, you’re right,” I tell him. “I do have a ridiculous fucking face, don’t I?”
“I’m gonna be late for work. I have a crazy early shift. If you wanna bring this mystery hottie by the hotel later, I’m sure I can slide you guys a couple of free martinis.”
Jake works at The Beekman in Lower Manhattan; it’s classy and stylish—the kind of place I probably would take a woman like Sasha, if I was planning on taking her on a date. Since Jake is there every night, making an obscene amount in tips and flirting outrageously with anyone who sits at the bar irrespective of their gender or sexual orientation, I won’t be doing that any time soon, though.
“Yeah, dude,” I tell him, lying through my teeth. “Maybe.”
Jake leaves. I return to the book in my hand, smoothing back the pages, flexing the spine, trying not to laugh at the blatantly sexual cover before me.
“Don’t you dare hurt me,” Isobel snapped fiercely. She had every right to warn me from bruising her heart. I’d hardly shown myself to be anything close to reliable since we’d met, and yet her words still stung a little. How could she not see what she meant to me? How could she not know that I would crawl over broken glass for her? Defend her always. Even die for her if I had to?
