NICK
I felt like a new man when we pulled up to Alvarado Auto the next morning, because I’d heard her say it.
The one.
When she’d said it, I’d been fucking stunned. Shocked and speechless, too flattened to say a word. But I hung on to it even in my dreams. She’d gone there, when I hadn’t been brave enough to tell her I was there too.
I walked into the shop feeling like life was as it should be, which was more than I ever expected to have.
To be safe, I put five quarts of radiator fluid on the counter. The old guy behind the register had eyes so wrinkled, it seemed like he had to struggle to keep them open. On his mechanic’s jumpsuit was a name badge that said MR. ALVARADO, carefully sewn on with irregular stitches.
Very slowly, he picked up one quart of fluid and typed the amount into his ancient cash register, the plastic brittle and yellow, the keypad cover smudged with engine oil.
Taped to the counter was a real estate agent’s write-up of the place. Commercial use only, 0.5 acres. Inventory included.
God damn, what I wouldn’t give. One day. One day.
One quart went into the bag. Then he went through the whole thing again, typing in the price as his mouth moved very slightly when he entered the numbers. He punched the enter button, and the bell inside the register made an old-fashioned ding!
I considered the three quarts that he had yet to ring up, and the clock on the wall, half an hour slow. I considered Mr. Alvarado, now trying to free the edges of a plastic bag from one another with dry and wrinkled fingers.
We were in the land of endless horizons and long days, where time didn’t matter like it did in the city. Where a quick stop by the mechanic’s might end up taking . . .
He clicked his tongue, and the numbers on the register disappeared, one by one, as he backtracked to the beginning.
. . . a hell of a long time.
But amazingly, it didn’t piss me off. The noise of Mr. Alvarado hunting and pecking on the number pad lulled me into a Zen peacefulness. Nothing could’ve made me mad that morning. I had Stella and the open road and a very real sense that things were changing for me, for the better. Because of her. Not one day, but now.
I turned to see her jogging across the street. She was back in her disguise, but today it was leggings with a short denim skirt. As sexy as she was all dark and naughty, I liked her even better like I’d seen her this morning. Hair in a tangle, no makeup. Just Stella, pure and simple.
She had a paper bag and two coffees in her hand from the café that had been closed yesterday afternoon. In the cab of the RV, Priscilla leaped from the passenger seat into the driver’s seat, planting her small paws on the horn just hard enough to make a sudden and very loud Beeeeeeep.
The noise of the horn started a chain reaction behind the register, startling Mr. Alvarado so badly that he hit the wrong button and overcorrected by accidentally opening the register, which flustered him so much that he tossed the quart of radiator fluid into the air. It cartwheeled away from him, ricocheted against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s tube-socked cardboard leg, and spun at my feet. I grabbed it from the ground and handed it over. He took it from me and very slowly recommenced entering all the prices. Starting from zero.
But with his finger hovering over the keypad, he paused, smiling as he watched Stella play kissy-face with Priscilla through the windows of the RV. “Is that your lady, son?”
My lady. The lady. “Yes, sir,” I said as I reached for my wallet in my back pocket. I was seriously ahead of the game. There were still four more quarts to go. We might be here until dinner at this rate. But the only thing I was really in a hurry to do was get back to her.
“Your wife?” he asked, now clutching the quart to his chest, like some memory long gone had come back to him.
It was getting harder and harder to separate the story from the truth, and I didn’t want to anyway. “We’re on our way to get rings right now.”
As I said it, I imagined us together at Albuquerque City Hall. Us going out for a nice dinner after. Us making a life together. I wanted it so bad, I could almost taste it.
Mr. Alvarado smiled at Stella, his dentures bright and sparkling. He touched the stitches on his name badge, his old fingers tracing the threads. “Enjoy every minute with her, son. Life goes by so fast.”
And ding went the register again.
Mr. Alvarado’s advice was still running through my head as we drove from Arizona into California. Once we began to approach cities and towns, the burner for the job started buzzing. Cell service was back. And the sheikh had been posting.
Stella was in the passenger seat, holding Priscilla, and she grabbed the phone from the cup holder. She tapped at the screen and moaned. “It says, Morning, bros. Leg day at the Ritz gym. Check me out.” She turned down the volume on the radio and pressed play on the video. The clanks and bangs of the weight room were unmistakable. I glanced away from the road and saw the sheikh doing a dead lift. I mean, I guess technically it was a dead lift, except I could see that the ends of the bar were unweighted. Even still, he made a noise like he was at the bodybuilding world championships. Or like he was seriously constipated. I refocused on the road. “Spare me.”
Using her thumb and small, quick taps and swipes, she scrolled down the feed. “Here he is swinging a kettlebell between his legs. Caption, Wanna touch my bells?”
“Pass.”
Stella kept scrolling and finished off the last of her coffee with a slurp. “Squats?”
“Pass again.”
As she studied the feed, I noticed her posture change. She leaned in closer and moved her thumb up and down, like she was double-checking something. “This is interesting. Looks like he’s going to be having dinner at a place in San Clemente tonight. Gonna surf and turf it up with my peeps at Ricardo’s on Dana Point tonite.” She groaned. “He spelled it n-i-t-e.”
The idea of going out definitely appealed to me—I’d been mulling it over already. Yeah, the job was first and foremost. But just as important was treating her right and making her feel special. Even better if we were away from the Ritz cameras. I was going to a beautiful place with a gorgeous woman, and I was going to make damn sure I enjoyed every minute of it. Just like Mr. Alvarado said.
“Give them a call,” I said.
Stella stared at me with her thumb hovering over the screen. “Who?”
“The restaurant. Ricardo’s.”
She narrowed her eyes and tipped her head to the side slightly. “Why?”
I looked back out at the road and shook my head. “Just do it. Put it on speaker.”
She didn’t do it right away. I could see her sizing me up—lips pushed together, eyes narrowed. “What are you up to?”
“Call the damn number.”
“Whose pronoun is on the driver’s seat?” she said, pouting a little and pointing at her chest. “This girl. That’s who.”
“Stella. Call the damned number.”
Finally, after some all-for-show huffs and puffs, she did. The ringback tone filled the cab. It rang just twice, before it was answered by a recording. “Hello. Thank you for calling Ricardo’s Dana Point, the only Michelin-rated restaurant in the region. For hours, press one. For reservations, press two.”
I reached over and tapped the two on her keypad. An instant later, a guy answered. “Thank you for calling Ricardo’s. How can I help you?”
“Yeah, this is Mike McNamara. I’d like to make a reservation for two tonight.”
Stella’s mouth dropped open, and she rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, mouthing, Too expensive!
But I just shook my head. I didn’t care how much it was going to cost me. To see her, across from me, in a cocktail dress? To treat her like she deserved to be treated? I wasn’t going to miss that chance. No way.
“We have a table with an ocean view at eight o’clock, sir. How does that suit you?”
“Perfect. It’s McNamara, with an M-c. First name is Mike. It’ll be me . . . and my wife.”
When I said the word, Stella raised her shoulders and beamed.
“We’ll see you at eight,” said the guy at the restaurant, and I ended the call.
Stella tucked the phone underneath her leg and pressed her knees together as she cradled Priscilla in her arms, baby-style. Christ. “Well, I guess we have dinner plans.”
I nodded. “Yep. Our first date-date. We’ll be away from the cameras but still able to keep an eye on the mark. Win-win. Plus we get a nice night out.”
She inhaled and smiled, but then her expression shifted to something that looked a lot more like worry. “That’s not what worries me!” she said. “It’s . . .” she said, and swung her boots side to side, using the heel like a pivot. Shy, almost. Unsure. “I packed to be a bad girl, not to go out for a fancy meal in a fancy dress.”
I sniffed hard and looked out at the endless, unbroken road in front of us. “Then we better do something about that.”
She gave me a sassy pout. “You’re on. But only if I get to pick out your outfit too.”
Two hours later, I was standing in a department store in Palm Desert, wearing gray dress pants, a pair of Italian loafers that squeaked when I walked, a light-blue button-down shirt, and . . .
Suspenders.
When she’d picked them out, I’d said, “Oh, fuck no,” but as she stood in front of me outside the men’s dressing room, buttoning them into the slacks and making helpless groans and moans, I knew I didn’t have the strength to tell her no for real. At this rate, I’d be buying dipped fruit and suspenders for the rest of my life, and honestly . . .
I was psyched about it. When I turned to check myself out in the mirror, I realized the suspenders didn’t look so bad. Not at all. They looked sharp. Old-fashioned in the right way, like out of Peaky Blinders. But I was an ex-con who weighed 275 pounds and rode a motorcycle. I couldn’t be wearing suspenders, for Chrissake.
“It’s a big ask, Stella,” I said, eyeing her as she riffled through a rack of dress shirts. Over her shoulder was a dog carrier bag she’d brought with her, pink and white with black paw prints. Priscilla had nodded off and was slowly sliding down into the bag, her lip stuck on the top edge.
Stella froze with one finger perched on a hanger hook as she chewed an enormous chunk of apple, moving it around in her mouth so that it expanded the inside of her cheek. “I know,” she said, with her palm covering her overstuffed mouth. “But just look at you.”
As she said it, a woman approached, pushing a stock cart. When she glanced in my direction, she promptly drove the cart right into a mannequin, and its arm popped off as it fell. That, in turn, knocked over a second mannequin, which knocked over a third. Everything the lady did just made it all so much worse. I stepped in to stop the domino-mannequin effect, while Stella stood next to the shirts with a big told you so smile on her face. The woman clutched an arm and a foot and stared at me as I tried to reposition a mannequin in a fuzzy track suit on its stand.
“Oh, sir, that ensemble is very nice!” she cooed, with big Bambi eyes. Her gaze went from my tattoos to the suspenders, to the pants, and back again.
“You like it?” I asked as I rolled up my sleeves.
The woman gulped. “I do. Very much. Very much.”
Stella circled back around a table covered with dress shirts, and I saw that in her hand she was holding a fedora—like a stylish hipster sort of thing. Not my jam at all.
“Oh no you don’t,” I growled, teasing her, trying to snatch it out of her hands. But she pressed her body up against mine, and instinctively I pulled her into me. She took advantage of me being a fucking sucker for her body and put the hat on my head. Her eyes lit up, and she leaned back in my arms. Then she said to the salesgirl, “What do you think?”
The saleswoman didn’t even speak. Just dropped a plastic mannequin arm and smiled. Stella made a long, adorable “Mmmhmmmm!” as she slipped from my grasp and headed off toward the cocktail dresses.
Once I’d changed and was sure the woman wasn’t going to knock over another row of mannequins, I followed along behind Stella, weaving and dodging between racks and displays. Stella held up a stunning little black dress, classy and with a slit up the side that was mouthwatering even on the hanger. But then, behind her, there it was. The dress. Little black dresses were fine, but we were going out on the town for our first real date, and that dress was the one. A showstopper. So I shook my head at the black one in her hand, and Stella rumpled up her eyebrows. She put the dress back on the rack, plunged her hand into her purse, and it emerged holding the apple on its stick. She took a bite, stuck it back in its bag, and turned her attention to a strapless red number that would’ve looked great on her, no doubt. But still, it wasn’t the dress.
I tickled her side to get her attention, and when she turned to me, I pointed behind her, at a two-story atrium. The mannequin was set up on a round platform, with a spotlight on it, next to a piano that wasn’t being played. The dress was nothing but rhinestones, with thin jeweled straps coming up from a plunging neckline.
Stella hooted and approached the dress while laughing and shaking her head. “I can’t possibly wear this,” she said, and ran her fingertips over the jeweled front. “I’m not sure anybody can wear this.”
“Oh yeah,” I said as I circled her. “You most definitely can.”
I took the first dress off the nearby rack and held it up. The tag said XS/S. Seemed about right. I held it out, imagining her in it. The very idea made me start to get hard. I let it dangle from my finger and waited for her to take it.
She grabbed the size tag of the dress I was holding. A huge laugh shot out of her mouth, echoing around the marble foyer. “Oh you,” she said, shaking her head, then grabbed the dress marked M/L. She took the dog bag off her shoulder, and I transferred it to mine. Priscilla was out cold, snoring softly. I gave her tummy a little scratch as Stella headed off to the ladies’ fitting rooms.
While she was gone, I picked out a gorgeous light-pink teddy for her and a pair of black panties that had a red ribbon up the back, corset-style. I was thinking through what it’d be like to pull that ribbon off with my teeth while she had them on when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I don’t think I can pull this off.
Let me see.
I look like I just got Bedazzled.
Let me see.
I feel like my phone case.
Let me see.
Or like a disco ball.
Let me see.
Or like the rhinestone aisle at Michaels.
Stella . . .
I can’t wear a bra OR panties!
You’re getting the fucking dress.