Page 47
I don’t need to see whatever he’s doing to know it’s a fucking mistake. And sure enough, I jog down just in time to catch him lean against the kitchenette island with a calculated snicker. Looking at them. Zuzu, and her.
Tink.
They’re flush-faced, flopped down in place, casual, each with a beer they must have just cracked open. Back from the bar, I suppose, and now hanging out for a nightcap. Clearly, they were not expecting the interruption…and yet they don’t seem too fazed.
“And who do we have here?” Zuzu nods at him, pointing with the bottle in her hand. “Oh, it’s Don Julio himself!”
She and Tink exchange a look and burst into laughter—peals of laughter. Female laughter. Not girly little giggles for show, not from either of them, obviously, but still. Laughter that’s…unguarded. Genuine.
Personal.
The way Tink probably always laughs, I think. When she laughs. When she isn’t on guard, and something makes her happy, this is what she sounds like.
And the thought stops me in my tracks.
I don’t get obsessed. Not with people, not with women. I’ve trained myself out of whatever instinct would lead to that. Too dangerous, too inconvenient. But she is so…
Behind my closed eyes I still see the wall of profile pictures. Some newly unlocked kink, I figured, maybe. A fetish, even. A switch tripped in my brain the moment I touched her skin that’s now stubbornly stuck in the ON position. Hence the search: to find another iteration. Test it. If it’s just short hair or tomboys or girls with endless long legs that does it for me, then I should be able to scratch the itch with any of them. Set the filters, scroll the options, and pick out one to do her thing as I stroke myself into post-nut clarity.
But it didn’t take. It didn’t work. I didn’t want any of it, any of them.
And the only reason I can figure is because they’re not her.
“Ha ha ha,” Pan says, rolling his eyes. “You and the Mermaids. Hilarious sense of humor. Very sophisticated. You gonna throw that one at me, too?”
“Maybe.” Tink. She shrugs and sips her beer. Squints one eye shut. “I’ve got good aim.”
“Same here,” Zuzu says, pretending to cock hers back. “I…how do you say it? Throw like a girl.”
Suddenly, I feel superfluous to the moment. We both are, really. But Pan has no instinct to sense it.
“Let’s go, man,” I say in a low voice. “Leave them alone.”
“What?” Pan turns on me, incredulous. “Why? I’m just socializing with my friends.” He all but sneers. “You think men and women can’t be friends, Blue? Is that it? You’re some kind of sexist? Because some of us see women as people.”
Tink gives a soft snort.
“Should I kick him again?” Zuzu offers. “Maybe in the head this time?”
“Is that what this slumber party’s all about?” Pan says. “You giving personal instruction, now?”
“If you must know, Zuzu’s actually helping me investigate a lead,” Tink says. “I’m actually quite close to finding out who killed them.”
“Huh?” Pan frowns. “Killed who?”
Tink’s eyes flash wide. I wait a beat, two, for her to say something. But she doesn’t. Just takes a long pull from her beer, then sets it on the table. Gets up from the couch, and saunters over so that she’s practically eye-to-eye with him.
“Michael and John Darling,” she says. “Wendy’s brothers. Remember her?”
I don’t usually tune in to awkwardness, tension, between other people. Can’t be bothered. But this—this is unmistakable. It’s like an electric crackle in the air, the way she’s staring at him. The flicker of something—fear? recognition?—in his eyes that I haven’t seen there in…
…in maybe ever.
“Funny thing is,” Tink goes on, “when you bother to put in a little work on someone else’s behalf, you can actually do something about a problem.” She tips her head, smirking. “But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Her tone is light, playful almost, and yet the deathly seriousness of her words is unmistakable, cutting through the room like a knife’s edge. She’s at point-blank range, too, barely a few inches from his face now, so much so that she’s got him visibly leaning back.
And he looks totally flummoxed.
