STELLA
My famous lasagna looked like a pan full of asphalt roofing shingles. Meanwhile, Nick stood naked in the middle of the kitchen like he’d just caused a ten-car pileup. In one hand, he held the nine-volt battery he’d pried from the smoke alarm. The other hand was pressed to his forehead. “I’ll buy you a new pan.”
Using my oven mitts, I placed the smoking pan in the sink. The glass hissed against the droplets of water on the metal basin. “Don’t worry,” I reassured him, briefly considering the possibility of dousing the whole shebang in water, but reconsidering because God only knew what happened when a Pyrex pan cooled off too fast. Kaboom! Trying to reassure him, I said, “That oven is very confusing.” It actually wasn’t confusing at all. It had three buttons, one of which was a great big red “Off.” The only other button he could have hit to create what really did resemble a piece of tire on the side of the highway was the up arrow. Way up. “You were pretty distracted.”
“I’m just . . .” He stared at the smoking pan. “Are those ashes?”
Yeppers. No doubt about it. “It’s fine,” I said, pressing on his rock-solid arm with my oven-mitted hand. “It’s totally fine. And listen, I have plans to make you as much lasagna as your heart desires.”
He shifted his attention away from the hazmat situation in the sink and back to me. The hand that had been on his forehead slid down to cover his mouth. I took the battery from him and set it on the counter.
He eyed me over his hand and asked, “Really?” like he didn’t quite believe me.
Really. I nodded. “Lasagna. Manicotti. Maybe even . . .” I tapped his heart with my mitt. “Calzones.”
Of all the noises I’d heard him make—the primal growls, the savage roars, the naughty Yeah, fuck yeahs—this one might’ve been my favorite. It was an actual whimper. A whimper in the name of homemade Italian food.
He raised a finger to tell me to hang on, and reemerged from my bedroom wearing only his boxers and cradling his phone between his shoulder and his ear.
“No need to call the fire department. I’ve got this,” I said.
“No, I’ve got this.” He gave me that mischievous, sexy smile that I was starting to adore so much. “Mitts, please.” He made pinching moves with his hands, and I handed them over. They were much too tight for him, but he did look super cute. Lobster-claw mitts and navy-blue boxers was a delicious combo.
Picking up the blackened rectangle from the sink, he headed for the door, which I opened before he got there. Moving his chin away from the receiver, he told me, “Seriously. Definitely buying you a new pan,” and stepped outside. He made his way down the sidewalk to the fenced-in dumpsters. He pitched the whole pan into the one on the right, then headed back to my apartment.
When he came inside, he was saying into the receiver, “That’ll be delivery.” He looked me up and down, like he was measuring me for a dress. “Orange chicken, I’d say.”
He had me all figured out, from El Dorado to House of Chow. “And eggrolls,” I said. “Lots and lots of eggrolls.”
“I already ordered a dozen. But I can definitely order more,” he said, and gave my tush a lobster-mitted pinch.
“A dozen should do it!” I said, giggling as he tickled my side.
“Make it fourteen,” he said into his phone, smiling at me all the time.
Once the lady had read the order back to him and he ended the call, he put his phone on the counter and gave me this look, this possessive, needy stare and said, “It’s gonna be an hour. Gives us plenty of time.”
I leaned against the still-warm oven and braced for impact. He was coming for me. And I was ready.
But when he got to me, he didn’t kiss me. He caged me in and looked me in the eye, and said, “Can I ask you something, now that we’ve got some stuff out in the open?”
I looped my arms around him and ran my fingers through the short hair at the back of his neck. It was a little bit scary, standing on this precipice between the two halves of my life. But scary in a good way. It did make me a little shy, though, and I lowered my eyes. There, on the inside of his forearm, I noticed a tattoo that hadn’t caught my eye before. It was small. It was black.
It was a spade.
The thing was, I didn’t really know how to be with an accountant or a dentist, or, God forbid, a lawyer. I never knew what made them tick, and I’d never been able to be myself around them long enough to find out, either. The tattoo reminded me that we weren’t two people burning up for one another; we were lovers who could also could understand each other in a way that few people could. “Lemme guess. It’s time for Twenty Questions?”
He nodded, and he pressed his forehead against mine and nuzzled my cheek. “Question one. What the hell is in the bottom of your purse?”
While we waited for the Chinese food, we sat on the sofa together. He was in his boxers, and I was in a sweatshirt and panties. I had my feet in his lap, and there was a bag of M&Ms between us. In my hands, I held the puzzle box. I tapped on the top right corner and then the middle of the underside, feeling for the almost imperceptible flexing of the brass. “My grandpa gave it to me,” I said as I touched the fifth spot. “And normally, I don’t keep it with me. But someone”—I nudged his abs with my toe—“has had me awfully distracted. You ready?”
He raised his hands, palms up, and flicked his fingers. “I was born ready.”
With one final press of the box, the top popped open. Inside, all my little beauties glimmered by the twinkling Christmas lights above the television. My rubies and my sapphires, my pearl necklace. My emeralds. All courtesy of the craft store, patience, and a whole lot of resin. “Ta-da,” I said, and turned the box around in my lap.
Nick’s mouth dropped open. “Holy shit,” he said, leaning in, laughing the way people did when they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. “Can I?”
I extended the box to him. “Be my guest.”
When he plunged his hand into the gems, my pearl necklace spilled out. It reminded me of one of those aquarium treasure chests. He took the pearls and did what everybody did with them—the bite test. They would pass with flying colors.
He checked each gem on either side. “Are these real?”
I shook my head, feeling so proud that it gave me goose bumps. “Resin and Roxie’s microbead face scrub.”
His eyes flashed. “No way.” He picked up a ruby and held it up to the light. “These are all plastic?”
“Yep,” I said, holding up a sapphire to the light too. “I’m very crafty.”
“How the hell did you learn to do any of this?” he asked. “I mean you just look so . . . girl-next-door. When I saw you steal that ring, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” I said, and took my puzzle box back from him. “I learned the gems from YouTube. I learned about stealing from experience and my grandpa. But that’s two questions. My turn.”
He set his beer down and gave me a flick of his chin. “Go for it.”
I reached into the bag of M&Ms and took out a small handful, separating out the greens and the yellows, and thought back to his rap sheet. “You got caught.”
Nick made a throaty growl. “I did.”
“How?” I asked.
He blew out a long breath and cringed a little. I thought maybe he would pass, and I certainly wouldn’t have blamed him. But he didn’t. “I was down in Truth or Consequences. It was gonna be a straightforward exchange. Loose gems for unmarked bills. So I’m there, I’m set. I’m on my own. And I show up for the meet. Everything’s going fine. But then I make the exchange and all hell breaks loose.” Nick scratched his eyelid with his thumbnail. “Fucking undercover cop with a four-inch tattoo of an eagle on his neck.”
“Noooo!” I said, clutching my M&Ms so hard they started to feel a little bit melty.
“Yep. Fuck,” he said, shaking his head. “And that was that. Seven months later, I’m out. Trying to get straight, watching you steal an engagement ring and up to my eyeballs in gambling debt.” He winced. “Sorry. Not exactly the most eligible bachelor in the 505.”
What he didn’t know was that with every detail, he was getting more and more eligible in my eyes. Because though I’d never been caught, I understood the struggle. I understood the grind. The gambling somehow fit him, and yet I couldn’t see him hanging around the casinos playing blackjack all day. “Let me guess. Horses?”
He nodded slowly. “You guessed it.”
Albuquerque wasn’t a very big town, and if a person wanted to gamble on horses, there was really only one place in town to do it. “The Texan?”
Again he nodded.
“God, I hate that man.” I crunched down on my M&Ms angrily. “So much.”
“Fuck. You do?” He reached into the bag and pulled out a handful. “I’d like to crush up his fucking cheese curls into powder and mace him with it on my way out the door.” He ran his hands up and down my calves. “OK, my turn again. Fill in the blank. There’s a shit-ton of reasons to steal, but you are mostly motivated by . . .”
It was so unexpected, such a sweet mix of straightforward and devious, that I burst out laughing. “I don’t know,” I said, looking up at the ceiling. “I mean, really? One thing?”
He nodded. “Short and sweet.”
Need. Revenge. Putting what was wrong back to right. Helping others. Sticking it to the man. “Justice?”
He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Yeah. I get that.”
“What are you about? One word, fill in the blank.” I tossed an M&M up into the air, and it totally missed my mouth.
He took a second to think it over. “God. I don’t know. Habit, really. I grew up doing it—I never knew much else. So I did what I knew. And kept on doing it.”
“Are you still in the business, or have you given it up?”
That question seemed much more difficult for him to answer. It looked as though he wanted to tell me but didn’t quite know how.
“I guess I want to be done with it all. So fucking badly,” he said, shaking his head. “But like I said, I got debts to pay. If I can pay them honestly, then I’ll do that. But if not . . .” He ran his hand through his hair. “Then I’ll have to figure something else out. What about you? From what Roxie said today, it seems like you guys have something lined up. Or did.”
“It was going to be our last one,” I said. “Part of me still wants to go ahead with it. By myself.”
His expression went from flirtatious to serious in an instant. He turned his head slightly, looking somewhere between skeptical and protective. “Alone? What was the job?”
For the first time, I kind of froze. If I were to do it on my own, I didn’t even have a plan. It wasn’t even for sure. And anyway, if he was trying to get straight, that was the last thing he needed to know.
Wasn’t it?
Before I had to give him an answer, his phone began vibrating on the coffee table.
I’d been saved by the eggrolls. For the moment.