Page 30 of Misadventures in Blue
And I shouldn’t meet them because we aren’t a thing anyway. We aren’t going to be together for long, because these flings never last, and then when his family doesn’t see me again, they’ll know for sure that I was the predatory sex-harpy taking advantage of their handsome son.
All the euphoria, the heart-floating-in-my-chest, it just stops, like I really have mashed on the brakes with all my weight. And I suddenly very much want to cry.
I glance at his face, with its red of embarrassed hope burnishing his cheeks, and hate myself. “Jace, I’d love to go, but—”
“It’s okay,” he says, very fast. “It’s okay. I didn’t really think you’d want to go anyway, and I only thought it would be an easy way to get dinner and stuff, so—”
He’s killing m
e. My cubicle has become the scene of a homicide.
“Stop,” I say, grabbing his hand and hating myself even more for the white lie I’m about to tell. “It’s just that I’ve made plans with a friend for dinner already. But I will see you tonight at my place after? Just let yourself in through the garage if you get there before me.”
“Sure,” he says, and there’s so much in his voice, so much that isn’t normally there for this quiet, primal cop, and I think my heart is breaking. And that’s almost the scariest part of this.
I’ve gotten to the point where his unhappiness is more painful than my own.
Kenneth and I meet at one of the understatedly elegant restaurants that suits us both so well, and it’s as I’m walking in that my work phone rings.
“Day,” I answer after I fish it out of my purse.
“Hey,” comes the person on the other end. “This is Jessica in Dispatch. We just had a woman call in trying to speak to you. She says she works at one of the doctors’ offices that’s been robbed and needed to check something on the missing items report.”
I see Kenneth at a far table, already with a bottle of wine on the table, and I give him a small wave before I turn away. “Did she leave a number?”
“She did. I’ll email it, along with the call notes. She sounded pretty upset about something, but she only wanted to talk to you.”
That isn’t unusual. Speaking to the detective on a case is like speaking to the manager at a store—there’s an imagined aura of authority cloaking the interaction. And I certainly wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to talk to anyone directly. Our dispatchers are good, but there’s a limit to what they’ll be able to lift out of a conversation if they’re not familiar with a case. And at this point, I need every lead I can get.
After confirming that she’ll email the details, I hang up with Jessica and then make my way over to Kenneth, who stands to greet me.
“Cat,” he says warmly, taking my elbows and kissing me on the cheek. It’s shocking how unpleasant it feels, how very wrong to be kissed by someone who’s not Jace, and I’m quiet as I take my seat, trying to process the tumult of troubled feelings currently jostling around in my chest.
You’re a detective, Cat. You know how to read evidence.
Being irritated at Kenneth’s touch combined with how miserable I felt today turning down Jace’s invitation seems to point toward a very obvious conclusion. One I don’t want to think about because what it means is too maudlin. Too destabilizing.
Far too real.
“I’m so glad you could meet me,” Kenneth says as he pours me a glass of sauvignon blanc.
I take it gratefully, determined to fortify myself before the hard conversation starts. “Thank you for being patient while we were making plans. This case has been eating up lots of my evenings.” Well, the case and sex marathons with a man almost half your age.
Kenneth waves the hand holding his own wineglass, in a don’t even worry about it, I totally understand gesture, and I can’t help but fixate on that hand. On the difference between his manicured fingers under the pale wine and how Jace’s fingers looked wrapped around a beer bottle at that bar a few weeks ago. How casually masculine Jace was. How unselfconscious.
Kenneth pretends to be casual too, with his air of careless sophistication, but his mannerisms are too studied for that. The wine label faced outward so the rest of the diners can see that he spent eighty dollars on a single bottle. The angle of his shoulders so that his thin sweater over his button-down will pull just the right way over his arms and back to display his physique.
I think of that date three years ago and the terrible sex that followed—the kind of sex you’d expect from someone who focuses more on style than substance.
This is the person I thought made the most sense for me?
We make small talk for a while, mostly about work and his daughters, and then we hem and haw over whether we want to order the rabbit or the octopus, because that’s the kind of restaurant this is. I wait until after we eat and after Kenneth has his third glass of wine to turn the conversation to our non-future.
“Kenneth,” I start, searching for tact. “You’re a good friend, and—”
“Oh, Cat,” he says and reaches for my hand across the table. “I thought you’d never broach the subject. I don’t want to dance around this because I think we are both too old and too tired for that, don’t you?”
I hate the way my hand feels in his. How funny that Jace can bend me over a table and plug my ass with his thumb while I babble incoherent, orgasmic thank yous…and yet the peremptory way Kenneth takes my hand in a public building raises my hackles.
