Smalls looked down for a second, then up at me and said, “We have to conduct our investigation, Miss Thompson. Your boyfriend here made very serious accusations.”
“Then do it with some professionalism and courtesy. It’s no wonder he was reluctant to report it, if this is the response you get for doing the right thing.”
Ray touched my arm, and said, “Carrie, please….”
I looked him in the eyes. “Fine. I’ll stay out of it. But I want you to know that someone is on your side. Why don’t you show me where the shower is, and I’ll clean up while they finish.”
He smiled, and ignoring the other two, took my face between his hands and mashed a fierce kiss on my lips. “I love you, babe. Come on.”
By the time I got out of the shower, Smalls and Coombs were gone.
Just a guy from Southie (Ray)
“Okay,” I said. “I agree, you were right about the car.”
Carrie smiled, which was something I always like to see. She had a purple cap on, and wore a matching purple coat. Velvet? I don’t know… some kind of fuzzy looking fabric anyway. I’m not really up on that sort of thing. She was driving at the moment, but she glanced over at me with that smile and tapped her cheek with one gloved finger. I snickered a little, then leaned over to the driver’s side and kissed her on the spot she’d indicated.
“You can tell me I’m right any time you want,” she said.
“I’ll let you know when it happens,” I replied, grinning. “So help me out here, I don’t want to embarrass myself, and I still don’t have your family straight. Who exactly are we meeting tonight?”
She grinned, and said, “Well, there’s this guy Dylan. He used to be in the Army….”
“Oh, come on. Seriously, help a guy out here?”
Carrie laughed. “All right. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Okay… Julia is my older sister. Last I saw her she had blonde hair, but that may have changed by now. She wears a stud in her nose, and you’ll know her because of her husband.”
“That’s Crank Wilson. The guy from Morbid Obesity.”
“That’s right. And one of my younger sisters is coming, Sarah. Julia picked her up at the airport today. You’ll know Sarah because she’ll be very conservatively dressed.”
“Okay. And Alex I know.”
“Right.”
“You have … how many more sisters?”
“Two more. Jessica is Sarah’s twin, she stayed in San Francisco, and Andrea is the youngest. She’s in Spain right now.”
“Okay. I think I got it. Sarah… conservative. Julia … won’t be. Crank… I know what he looks like. So I’ve got a semi-serious question for you. How the hell did your sister get involved with a rocker?”
She shrugged. “They met when she was at Harvard, he’s from Boston.”
“Strange world.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s no more unlikely than me being involved with a soldier.”
“Former soldier, doctor babe. I’m all done with that.”
“That seems reasonable,” she replied.
By this time we were almost there. I’d reserved a room at a nice hotel near Madison Square Garden, but the plan was to drop the car off there first, then walk over to Mustang Sally’s on 7th Ave and 28th, where we were meeting Dylan and her sisters for dinner, then over to the Garden. Morbid Obesity was playing a New Years Eve concert there.
So, we got checked in at the hotel, left the car with the valet and dumped our bags off, then walked hand in hand the two blocks to Mustang Sally’s. Even through my gloves, I loved the feel of her hand in mine. It had only been three weeks since I’d been in Texas, but it felt like an eternity.
Look, I’m not an idiot. I knew we were moving too fast. You don’t make lifetime commitments when you’ve known someone just a few days here, then a few days there, with lots of phone calls and emails in between. But the thing is, there’s one thing I learned in Afghanistan. Life is fragile. Screw all that hesitant bullshit. We were going to go for it.
As the thought ran through my mind, I tugged on her hand and pulled her to me. Her cheeks flushed red, and I said, “I couldn’t walk another step without kissing you.”
Then I leaned in and our lips touched. People were all around us, jostling us as traffic rolled by on our right. But at that moment all I could see was Carrie. The kiss was intense, but even more so was looking in her eyes. She had pale eyes, blue-green, with a dark iris surrounding them in a way that made me feel like I was slowly falling off a cliff. She closed them as our kiss deepened, and her mouth slowly opened, our lips exploring each other, our tongues just barely touching.
My whole body came alive at that touch, urgent sensation, and I pulled her to me and whispered, “I’m love you, Carrie Thompson.”
She caught her breath, and said, “I love you, Ray Sherman.”