CHAPTER 9
JOE
I’d finally fallen asleep on the recliner in the living room, Kitty beside me on the couch, when suddenly I woke to the sound of the door to my room opening and slamming upstairs. We had a two-bedroom, smaller than my parents’ pool house, split-level house. And it felt like the entire place shook as I heard Lana’s heels on the stairs as she marched down them, not even attempting any sort of silence.
I sat up, resting my sleepy head in my hands, waiting for the inevitable ass-reaming I had coming my way.
Until suddenly, there she was. She looked . . . different. Less put together. More natural. And I kind of liked it.
“What the hell, Joe?” Despite her words, her voice was surprisingly calm and even.
I stood up, squinting through one eye at her as I padded past her for the kitchen. Her hair looked as crazy as I felt.
Coffee—I needed coffee.
“Good morning to you too, Lana,” Lana replied to herself when I didn’t respond immediately. “How’d you sleep? Oh, I slept well considering it was in someone else’s bed!”
With my back to her, I grabbed a mug for my coffeemaker and hit the button to start the machine. It was too early to do this.
“I need an explanation,” she demanded. “Give me something.”
I rubbed my hand across my eyes and then over the thick stubble that now coated my face and neck. I turned around to face her. “Good morning, Lana.” I showed her my teeth, faking a smile just for her, since that was what she wanted, right? My individual coffee was starting to brew, so I opened the fridge for my creamer.
Motherfucker! Kitty had used the last of it.
I cursed out loud. Not a lot sets me off in this world, but deprive me of my coffee and you’ll see my worst side.
Lana laughed as I shook the empty container, tossing it into the recycling bin. Kitty could have at least thrown the damn thing away.
“Joe,” Lana urged again, “an explanation. Please.”
“I was trying to get some coffee in me first.”
“I thought you liked tea.”
I had said that to Nancy, her administrative assistant. I remembered now. “That was a lie,” I confessed. I’d lied because I hadn’t enjoyed fake flirting with her. “I’m a barista with the last name Coffee, also a former addict of like, five different vices . . . of course, I like coffee. You could put an IV into my vein and I’d be happy.” Grabbing my fresh mug from the coffee maker, I took a sip to prove my point. But I immediately grimaced at the bitterness. “I also like sugar,” I added.
“Give it to me then.” She wanted my coffee.
Hesitantly, I handed it over.
She accepted it without reservation, taking a slow sip, savoring it like I couldn’t in its current bitter state. “This is pretty good. What is it?”
“It’s Weird and Wired’s k-pod.”
She laughed, shaking her head, taking another sip.
Then the strangest thing happened, this sensation rocked through me. The kind of feeling that takes your breath away and threatens to knock you to your knees. Watching her drink that coffee, her lips on the same mug my lips had just been on seconds ago, I suddenly wanted to kiss her. I wanted to remove the mug from Lana’s fingers, pick her up, sit her on my kitchen counter, and maybe even do more than kiss her.
I turned away, inhaling. I had lots of random impulses. ‘Impulse’ was practically my middle name. But this particular one lingered as I turned back around, trying to fight it off. I figured I needed to explain last night before she had a chance to misinterpret my intentions—if she hadn’t already.
“Last night you were sound asleep when we got here. I mean, drooling on the window. I didn’t want to wake you. Mostly, though, I didn’t want to leave you alone for the last portion of your drive with that creepy driver.”
“What? The driver yesterday seemed normal enough to me.”
“Well, something about him freaked me the hell out all day long. And, like I said, I didn’t want to wake you, so I carried you inside. You still didn’t wake up. You must have been so exhausted. I didn’t know what else to do, so I put you in my room. Sorry. I wrote you the Post-it note hoping you wouldn’t feel too terrified when you woke up.”
I shrugged, not knowing what else to say. All of that was the truth—right? Ten minutes ago, my motives for keeping her here with me in this house seemed justified. Suddenly I wasn’t as sure.
She bit down hesitantly on her bottom lip, working it between her teeth, and I could tell she was trying to decide if my reasoning was acceptable.
“Okay,” she finally decided. “But next time, wake me up and ask me.”
“I couldn’t ask you in front of him.” I knew I was being weird, paranoid. For all I knew that guy yesterday hadn’t worked for Doug or been some evil rapist. And even if he had, why was I trying to protect her?
She stared at me hard. “I need to go. But before I do, what do you think about what Abe said? About shadowing him? It can’t hurt, I suppose. You’d have to be willing to spend the next two months in Tacoma, though. You’ll have to be there for the hiring, training, and opening phases that follow anyway. Usually, the whole process takes four to six months. We talked some about this before, I know, but I never asked how you felt about it all.”
“I don’t have a car. How’s that going to work?”
“We can get you a company car. Hell, I’ve got an unused food truck—I used to use as a ‘barista to-go truck’—back in the day. It’s just sitting in the parking garage of my apartment building.”
An unexpected smile crept over my lips. “I could get into driving around a food truck.” If only my friends from high school could see me now.
“Good. That can be a temporary solution. I need to get going.”
Not only had the urge to kiss her just crossed my mind, but suddenly I didn’t want her to go. What the hell was wrong with me?
But I didn’t do anything to prolong her staying here with me. Just like last night, when I’d carried her upstairs to my room, I hadn’t done anything to suggest that I cared.
I’d left her shoes on when the nice thing would have been to take them off. I’d left her on top of the covers when I could have tucked her in. Even the Post-it note on her forehead—something I would have done to one of my college buddies as a joke—was my way of trying to show her this was completely platonic.
This was completely platonic, right?
Then why, as I stood on my front porch, giving her a small awkward wave, did I feel so off?
I couldn’t even place my finger on what this feeling was.
***
“No,” Kitty groaned, adjusting her sunglasses. “I will not go with you to one of the meetings.”
“But you drank yesterday. And the day before.” I was dressed and ready to walk out the door. It was Sunday, and my sponsor was sitting, waiting for me in her car out front. I needed Kitty to go with me. “I have so much shit on my plate right now with this Doug thing. I need to know you’re okay when I go to work each day.”
She splashed her feet into the kiddie pool she had set up on our back patio. After years of spending her summers lounging next to my parents’ pool, usually with a martini in hand and eight of her girl friends surrounding her, this had to be a poor substitute. At least she didn’t have a martini at the moment.
“I’m not going.”
I groaned in frustration.
“Maybe I’m not an alcoholic. Just because you are, and Mom and Dad have addiction issues, doesn’t mean I inherited the gene too.” She playfully kicked water in my direction.
I jumped back as the water hit my shoes. “Smile, Joe, you never smile anymore.”
Because this isn’t funny. “I smile all the time.”
“Not your Java Beans smile. I mean, your real smile.”
“They’re one in the same.”
“No, they aren’t.”
I rolled my eyes, shifting on my feet impatiently. “Are you coming or not?”
“Not.”
“Fine.” I reached for the door handle on our screen door.
“Hey, Joe,” Kitty called out to me, “you know what?”
I paused. “What?”
She smirked. “I saw your real smile on Friday. When you were eating lunch with Lana.”
I knew the exact moment she was referring to. “Shut up,” I muttered, yanking open the door with all my might before disappearing inside.
I couldn’t believe Kitty. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t taking this seriously. Did she not remember where she was a year ago? Severely underweight, letting whoever had a dick fuck her, living in some rat-infested apartment with people who didn’t care about her. Kitty was wrong—we’d inherited the same addiction gene.
I hurried through the house and out the front door. I walked toward Terry’s waiting Honda, ready to jump inside and depart my life for a couple of hours, but instead, I stopped in my tracks when I saw what was parked behind Terry.
A “barista to-go truck.”
The Java Bean’s logo was spray painted on the side, along with a menu, and sitting there in the driver’s seat was Lana. She gave me a small, hesitant wave. I put up one finger, meaning for her to wait one moment, so I could get rid of Terry first. I guess I was missing my meeting today. Probably not a good day to miss it, not when I felt so much frustration building inside me.
“Hey, Terry,” I said to my friend, hanging on her open window. “Something just came up with work.” I gestured to the barista truck behind us. “That’s my boss.”
“I see. On a Sunday? Well, shit, that’s annoying.”
Was it annoying?
Lana certainly had been inconveniencing my life lately, but none of that was really her fault. “I’ll see you next Sunday.”
“You call me if you need me, okay? Anytime. Day or night. I’m there. You call me before, not after. Remember that.”
“I’m good but okay.”
“I don’t know, Joe. You seem a little off to me.”
I inhaled slowly. “I’m fine.”
Terry gave me a small smile. She might be a little overbearing at times, but since I’d moved here, she really had always been there for me—anytime, day or night.
“I’ll give you a call mid-week and check in,” I said to reassure her I was fine.
“Thank you.”
She left after that, and I walked slowly toward Lana’s truck.
With a creek, she swung open her driver’s-side door, and hopped down from the height of her seat onto the pavement. With more force than I would have expected from a petite woman like Lana, she slammed shut the door to her truck.
After that, I don’t know what the fuck came over me. Maybe it was the drama with Kitty. Or my emotional state. Or maybe it was the fact that Lana looked rather good, rather normal, with her blond hair pulled up high in a ponytail, in jean shorts that showed off her sexy legs, and a plain white T-shirt that hugged the curves of her perfect breasts. But I wanted to fuck her. I wasn’t annoyed to see her. Only annoyed with myself. And I could feel something hot swelling up inside me. Something that had me feeling antsy as hell, standing on a cliff I wanted to jump off of, prickling in some sort of new anticipation.
This wasn’t going to end well.