SHANE

 

May 1st

Palmetto Warehouse

Los Angeles, CA

 

 

Colt Avery is a handsome son of a bitch. I’m good looking, but Colt is great looking. It’s disgusting. I’d hate him if I didn’t love him.

“Where are you taking her?” I ask him curiously.

Colt stretches his arms to expertly tug his shirt’s white cuff out of the dark wool sleeve of his jacket. He’s wearing a muted blue tie and shining black shoes I’ve never seen before. His dark hair is combed to one side and held in place by a thick coat of gel that makes him look like an extra on Mad Men.

Dude is dapper as hell.

“Caprice,” Colt answers. “It’s new. I think Tom Hanks owns it.”

“What kind of food is it?”

“Big.”

“Funny.”

Colt smiles like a model on a runway. “I’m hilarious, man. You want me to bring you a doggy bag?”

“Nah, I’m good. I’ve got leftover pizza in the fridge.”

“You need any beer, help yourself to my stash upstairs.”

“I already have.”

“I’ll add the cost to your rent.”

I chuckle because I know he’s lying. Colt never drinks the beer that companies are constantly sending him. He’s also not a miser. He’s letting me live in the loft below his, the one he normally rents out to tourists, for next to nothing. I had a place of my own but a couple of months ago when we found out the team was sold and the new owners had plans to move us to Las Vegas, I put my condo on the market. The team isn’t leaving L.A. until after this coming season, but I figured it’d take a while to sell the place. I was dead wrong. It sold in the first week, putting me out on my ass until Colt picked me up. Now all my shit is in storage and I’m living in a totally neutral apartment with too many pictures of the ocean on the wall. The only thing that’s actually mine is the wobbly ceramic fruit bowl on the island that my mom made for me when she was going through her pottery phase. Everything else you could probably find at any department store in town.

Colt nods to the black pen drive in the middle of the coffee table. “How many episodes did they send you?”

“The letter from the network said it’s all of last season and some highlights from the three seasons before.”

“Ah. Sutton’s run.”

“Is that how long she’s been on there?”

“Four seasons,” Colt replies knowledgably. Lilly, his fiancé, is a huge DNA fan, meaning Colt has had to become at least okay with it. “This is her fifth. I bet you anything the ‘highlights’ are all of her.”

I snort into my beer. One of the many I’ve stolen from him. “Double or nothing she put it together herself.”

“Is she full of herself?”

I glance over at Colt where he’s checking himself out in the mirror by the door. He’s adjusting his hair, fitting it perfectly into place with the kind of care most people would reserve for brain surgery. “Not as much as some people.”

“Fuck you,” he deadpans, not looking away from himself. “I’m pretty but I’m not dumb. I get what you’re saying.”

“A chimp could understand what I’m saying.”

“But does a chimp look this good in a suit?”

“You know they call it a ‘monkey suit’, right?”

“A chimp and a monkey are not the same thing, dumbass.”

“What the hell is the difference?”

He turns to me, giving me his full, undivided attention. “An ape doesn’t have a tail. A monkey does.”

“I thought we were talking about chimps.”

“Chimpanzees are apes.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “That can’t be right.”

“Look it up. We’re apes too.”

“That I believe.”

Colt shakes out his hand to check his watch. “Gotta go. Lilly will be off work soon and I want to surprise her before she leaves the bakery. Enjoy your show. It sucks.”

“Can’t you just tell me what happens so I don’t have to watch?”

“It’s not that kind of show,” he laughs, grabbing a garment bag off the arm of the couch. “And if Lilly made me suffer through it, you have to suffer through it too. Those are the rules.”

I gesture to the TV with disdain. “If she loves this show so much, why aren’t you doing it? I know they asked you.”

“Of course they asked me.”

“And?”

“You know Lil. She hates celebrity shit. The paparazzi will be all over your junk when you’re on this show, and she wouldn’t want anything to do with that. And I’m not looking to stay away from her for ten weeks to keep them off her back. We’ve got a wedding to plan. We don’t have time for that shit.”

“When is that going down?”

He shakes his head helplessly. “I don’t know, man. Every time I talk to her about it she freaks out. I think it’s overwhelming for her so I’m just trying to give her time. She knows I’m not going anywhere. I’ll marry her tonight or ten years from now.”

“You think she’s freaking because of her dad?” I ask carefully.

“Yeah,” he admits. “A lot of it is because of him.”

“That’s a tough situation. I’m sorry, man.”

“It is what it is, you know? We’ll get through it.”

I nod in understanding but it’s not without sympathy. Lilly’s family has it rough. Her dad has been sick for years. Going to the store can be stressful for them, so planning a wedding is turning into a nightmare when it should be fun and exciting. Colt has suggested more than once that they elope in Vegas, but Lilly wants a church wedding. She wants both of their family and friends there, but that brings her back to her dad, and that’s where everything falls apart for them. There’s no good solution. You can’t fix her dad and you can’t exclude him, so what do you do?

You enter into a holding pattern, apparently.

Five minutes later, Colt is gone and I’m alone with my desire to procrastinate. I look at the coffee table where my phone and the pen drive sit side by side. I’m tempted as hell to call someone, anyone, to get out of doing this. I’ve got a roster. I could call a girl and get laid, but I’m not in that kind of headspace. I’m not hard up, I’m just not interested in doing homework. I could call Sam and see what he’s doing. Maybe he’s out at the clubs or chillin’ in a bar. I could join him for a few drinks before coming back home to pass out with a good buzz and a better story than sitting here all night watching people get judged on their two-step.

The more I look at that drive, the less likely it seems like I’m doing this. And why should I? I’ll give it everything I’ve got once I’m in the studio learning from Sutton first hand, but what good is watching a bunch of videos going to do me? Sutton is obviously a Type-A personality. She’ll want to be in control of my education. I’m muddying the waters by watching anyone else. Ditching is doing her a favor. It’s not selfish. It’s altruistic.

It’s decided. I’m ditching. For Sutton’s sake.

My phone rings against my ear as I hurry down the steps away from the loft and my homework. The night is young. It’s barely seven o’clock. Sam shouldn’t be in for the night yet, and if he is, I’m dragging him out. We’re too young and way too sexy to be kept locked up inside tonight.

“I was just about to call you,” Sam laughs over the line. “How the hell do you do that?”

“It’s a superpower. What are you doing?”

“Nothing. You?”

“Nothing. What do you think? The club or the bar?”

“Dinner first. Beer second. I’m starving.”

“I can always eat.”

“Meet me at Beast Burger on Pacific?”

“See you in ten.”

I hang up as I unlock my bright red Jeep with a quick click of my keys. It’s lifted with fat tires meant to climb a mountainside or tear up a beach, because that’s what I do when I’m feeling frustrated. When the cement of this massive city is too dull to deal with and I miss Washington so much I can smell the rain. I can feel wet moss under my fingers and rich, dark earth under my toes. That’s when my Jeep and I make it to the closest piece of nowhere we can find and I lose hours with her.

I could do that tonight. There’s time. But Sam isn’t big on mudding and I’m not in the mood to be alone. I’m blowing off my responsibilities; I know that. I’m not dumb. I see it. I feel it. But it doesn’t stop me. It never has. Clint was at least partially right about me; I like to take the easy way. My path is the one of least resistance. I have a lot of experience taking shortcuts and it’s always worked out for me. I have no reason to think this is going to end up any different.