Keeping Secrets in Seattle

chapter Five


September 3, 2003

I’ll never forget today. I opened the door today while wearing a miniskirt for the first time since I lost my puppy fat. I asked Gabe what he thought, and he paused. A delicious pause that made my knees weak. He told me that I’d always been beautiful to him, and he leaned in and kissed me.

I’ll admit it…I spent most of the first few weeks after Christmas in a funk.

I tried to put on a happy face every day at work, but Lizzy, my prom dress–wearing drag queen boss, noticed, and made Kim promise to get me out of the house. Apparently coming home to eat ice cream while riding the stationary bike in front of the television every night wasn’t a healthy way to spend my time. Who knew?

But it wasn’t like that was the only thing I was doing with my time. I’d also started looking at jobs in Portland, which was a good two-hour drive south. I didn’t want to leave my beloved Seattle, but starting over in a city where Gabe and Alicia weren’t was infinitely more appealing than hanging around clinging to a man who was in love with someone else.

I guess that glancing at my phone every five minutes waiting for a call or text from Gabe might have contributed to my unhealthy behavior. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since that conversation on Christmas day, and my heart grew heavier with every day that passed, bringing May fifteenth closer. Instead of talking four or five times a day, we’d been reduced to the occasional voice mail and e-mails like this one that came a few weeks into January:

What’s up? Man, I’ve missed you like crazy, Vi. It’s been pure chaos with all the wedding hoopla. Sorry I wasn’t there for your mom and Curtis’s New Year’s party. Did Leandra get hammered and sing the soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof again?

(This is when I snorted to myself. My mother got drunk and sang the soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof every year.)

…Alicia wants me to ask you to meet up on Valentine’s Day morning for a brunch. They’re meeting at the Silver Cascade at 11:00 a.m. Will you please try to make it? For me?

I’d cringed when I read that message…and might have also said a few choice phrases about Alicia. But I really had to dig deep for any interest in hanging out with Alicia and her posse of pantsuit-wearing aspiring models. If Gabe hadn’t written “for me?” on his e-mail, I would have happily come up with a lovely excuse as to why I couldn’t make it to brunch at the Silver Cascade. Hernia. Shingles. Asian flu, perhaps?

Yo,

You were sorely missed at the New Year’s party. During karaoke I was forced to sing our signature song by myself, and the B-52s are never a solo venture. You owe me. Big time. And now, after you’ve barely spoken to me since Christmas, you’re asking me to go hang out with a bunch of anorexic bridesmaids at one of the most overpriced joints in town? Fine. I’ll go. I’ll choke down a plateful of pretention…just for you. Tell Alicia I’ll be there.

Peace out, V.

“Get up off your ass, and take a shower,” Kim snarled.

I looked at her blankly, blinking a few times to adjust my eyes to the light in the living room. When had it gotten dark? I’d been sitting on the couch since arriving home from work four hours earlier, engrossed in a dating show involving a rock star and half a dozen strippers.

I pulled out my phone and checked for messages. There weren’t any. “I guess I can’t avoid it anymore, can I?”

“Nope,” Kim yelled from the kitchen. “We’re going out tonight.”

Betsy frowned at me. “You’re ruining the couch. It’s got a dent in it, the same shape as your butt. You need to come out with us tonight.”

It was then that I realized Betsy was dressed like a cat, complete with black leotard and pointy ears on top of her head.

“What the hell are you wearing?” I asked.

Kim skipped into my line of sight, clad in a deep-blue leotard of her own, but with several ostrich plumes attached to her backside and a plastic beak hanging from her nose. “It’s Animal Night at The Lotus. We’ve discussed this.”

Ah. I remembered now. As I was rushing out the door to work, Kim hollered something from their bedroom about the sixth annual animal costume contest at our favorite club. I blew it off, having already planned a long evening of trashy TV, some hot, spicy kimchi, and a nap. In no particular order.

I gave Kim and Betsy a lazy shrug. “Oh, that’s right.”

Kim took my hand. “I have the perfect costume planned for you. You’ll look hot.”

I glanced down at my cell phone again. No messages. “Well, I suppose.”

“Try not to act so enthusiastic,” Betsy said.

Kim put her hands on her hips. “You’re waiting for Gabe to call, aren’t you?”

“No.” I grimaced. Gabe and I had never gone this long without hanging out. Until this engagement happened, we’d been inseparable. Gabe knew my coffee shop order by heart—chai with a shot of cinnamon—and I knew how he took his burger—medium, with extra onions and a side of breath mints. He knew all about my regular clients—Mary always asked me for platinum-blond highlights, then came in a week later for me to tone them down. Every single time. And I knew all about Gabe’s office drama—his boss had been doing his secretary for years, and Gabe was personally in charge of making sure nobody in the office knew about their afternoon trysts.

I blinked at my roommates, bringing my thoughts back to the present. “I mean, he mostly texts and e-mails.”

“Good grief.” Betsy adjusted her cat ears. “He’s engaged. Betrothed to another. You’ve got to get out of here and meet some new people.”

“Meet a new man.” Kim folded her arms (wings?) and stared at me. “Or woman. You know, whatever floats your boat.”

I scoffed. “Okay, okay. I know. I’m ready…I guess.” I opened my phone again, then closed it. Bummer.

“Oh, good grief.” Kim jumped across the room and snatched the BlackBerry out of my hand.

“Hey,” I screeched, diving for it. “Give that back.”

“No, not until you say that you’ll turn it off for the night.” Kim circled our Formica table to get away from me.

I followed. “I don’t want to. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Nope.” Betsy blocked me. “Doesn’t matter. This is for your own good.”

“Come on, give it to me.” I tried to go the other way around the table, but Kim darted in the opposite direction.

“Forget it.” Kim laughed as I chased her. “Gabe can suck it. You need to go out and find a new man.”

“She’s right.” Betsy grabbed the hem of my T-shirt.

My phone buzzed in Kim’s hand, and her eyes danced when she looked up at me.

“Okay, joke’s over. Give me my phone,” I said, out of breath.

Betsy tugged on my shirt. “Don’t give it to her.”

“Shut up.” My phone rang again. “Seriously, gimme my phone.”

She hid it behind her back. “No.”

I lunged at Kim, but she jumped out of the way just as it vibrated again. “Say you’ll leave your BlackBerry at home, or I’ll answer it.”

“Who is it?” Trying to squirm past Betsy, I bumped against the table.

“Duh. Who do you think it is?” She tossed the phone over my head to Betsy, who caught it with startling precision.

“Come on, guys,” I whined. “I haven’t talked to him in a long time.”

Betsy tossed it back to Kim. “Answer it and tell him that we’re taking Violet out to get laid tonight.”

“Shut up. Give me the phone.” I shoved past Betsy toward Kim again, her peacock feathers tickling my face as she shimmied away.

“I’m gonna tell him that he’s missing out,” she squealed.

I squelched my laughter, not wanting to let them off that easy. “What is wrong with you?”

“Tell Gabe that she’s making out with a male model right now,” Betsy said from behind me.

Kim poised her hand over the button. “I’m gonna answer…”

I jumped and slid across its slick top toward her, but Betsy grabbed my ankle. Looking down at my leg with a frown, she said, “Dude. Exactly how long’s it been since you shaved your legs?”

I squealed as I wriggled off the tabletop and pulled my pajama pant leg back down. “You two are ruthless monsters. I broke my razor, okay?”

Betsy giggled. “You live with two other women, and you couldn’t find another razor?”

“Shut up.” I scowled as the phone rang again.

“Okay, I’m truly going to answer unless you tell me that you’ll leave your phone home.” Kim batted her huge false eyelashes at me. “You need to get out. Seriously.”

As goofy as they were being, deep down I knew they were right. I’d taken my own sweet time working up my nerves to get back out into the dating world, and now it was time for me to don my big girl panties. If I was ever going to get over Gabe, I needed to leave our apartment on occasion. Besides, I was out of energy from chasing Kim around the table. I had no more fight left in me. “Fine. No phone. Are you happy now?”

She shared a grin with Betsy and handed me the BlackBerry. I looked at the screen and groaned. “My mother?”

Betsy raised a pierced eyebrow at her girlfriend. “Well played, babe.”

“Someone had to do it. Violet is becoming a shut-in. Like the writer in that one movie…” Kim snapped her fingers a few times.

“I know which one you’re thinking of.” Betsy reached over and adjusted one of Kim’s peacock feathers. “The one where she is obsessed with soup…”

“Yeah, that one.”

“What was that called?”

“I dunno.”

I scowled. “I’m not a shut-in.”

Kim led me away from the table with a knowing smirk across her glittering face. “No, really, you are. Now go get in the shower, and for the love of heaven, shave your legs.”

By the time we left for the club, I was dressed in vintage tiger-print cigarette pants, a form-fitting black sequined tank top, black platform heels, and had the sash from my favorite bathrobe pinned to my butt. Kim had teased my hair into wild spirals all over my head and pinned tiger ears to the top of my ’do. I’d painted stripes across one of my cheeks. I looked like a tiger of the night. Yeesh, for a woman on the rebound, I was going all out.

When we arrived at The Lotus, the crowd spilling out onto the sidewalks was fascinating, to say the least. Dozens of species of animals as well as scattered handfuls of people in normal clothes milled around. All the staff members were walking around carrying plastic whips and wearing T-shirts that bore the words ZOO KEEPER on them.

We danced our way through the thick crowd to the pulsating beat of the techno music and approached a corner booth upholstered in deep-purple velvet. A group of Kim’s and Betsy’s friends were waiting for us. As introductions were called back and forth, I greeted a pig, a duck, a goldfish—this girl achieved the look with the use of a heck of a lot of yellow plastic wrap—and what I was fairly sure was supposed to be an elephant, but the paper trunk hadn’t survived the Seattle drizzle.

I fell into the booth, squished between Kim and the duck, who immediately pointed out his boyfriend, a tall man across the dance floor dressed as a dinosaur. “They were all out of animal costumes,” he said, laughing. He took a drink of something bright red and fizzy and waved happily at the dino. “Oh, well, there were dinosaurs around here at one time, right? That still counts.”

Guess I won’t be making out with Kyle tonight. I scanned the dance floor for what appeared to be a single male.

As if reading my mind, Kim shouted over the music, “Hey, everyone. We need to find Violet someone to get her freak on with.” Everyone immediately lifted their drinks in an impromptu toast, causing my face to heat up underneath the tiger stripes. “Someone hot, cool, and not engaged. Oh, almost forgot—he has to be a straight male.”

The goldfish girl put her drink down and booed.

We spent the next hour or so dancing to the thud, thud, thud of music and downing multicolored drinks served in test tubes. I cheered wildly when Kim won second place in the costume contest. She was edged out by a woman dressed as a unicorn wearing nothing from the waist up but body paint and a foam horn. I excused myself to find the restroom right as the floor opened up for a couple of Dalmatians to do some old-school break dancing.

Bumping my way through the thick herd of dancers, I headed toward the back of the club where the bathrooms were. I checked my pocket for my BlackBerry but came up empty.

It’s time to meet someone else. I nodded at a random man dressed as a giraffe. This was going to be a baptism by immersion.

As I walked around the end of the bar, my cool, sexy persona disappeared as my feet slid on some spilt beer underneath me. Yelping loudly, I skidded across the floor and landed on my rear against the men’s room door with a thud.

“Whoa. We’ve got a tiger down,” a cheerful voice called above me. “I repeat, a tiger down.”

Before I could process what was happening, a strong pair of hands had gripped me under the arms and pulled me back to a standing position. I pushed away one tiger ear hanging limply in front of my face, only to find myself chest to chest with a guy whose brown eyes were sparkling with amusement.

A rush of excitement dashed up my spine and set the hair on the back of my neck on end. He was hot. Really hot.

His broad grin was lined with straight, white teeth. His blond hair, streaked with white, had been cut into a faux-hawk, then tousled into what Kim often referred to as “sex hair.” Colorful tattoos covered his arms, and a couple of silver earrings in each ear matched the rings he wore on several of his fingers…except for the all-important ring finger. His Neil Young concert T-shirt was deliciously thin and worn, and was covered by a sleeveless plaid shirt, one of my weaknesses. His jeans were appropriately frayed in the right places, and it looked like he might have ridden a motorcycle to The Lotus, or at least owned one at home. He resembled a punk version of a certain hot British soccer player, only more cheerful. And exactly my type.

My stomach turned a cartwheel, and my skin warmed beneath his fingers. We matched, which was something I couldn’t say about men very often.

“You all right, tiger?” Faux-hawk Boy asked over the loud music.

“Tiger?”

He flicked at the fake ear that had found its way in front of my face again. “You’re dressed as a tiger. A mighty good-looking tiger, I might add.”

I grabbed the ear, my face heating. “Oh…right. Thanks.”

“Here, let me help you.” He led me away from the rowdy group we’d been standing next to, took the ear from my hand, and carefully reattached it to my hair.

“Thanks again.”

His brown eyes danced. “My pleasure.”

I cupped my hand over my ear. The music was throbbing. “What?”

“I said it’s my pleasure.”

Good Lord, he was attractive. Maybe it was because of his hairdo, or maybe it was because of his wide, unabashed grin. Or…maybe it was because when I looked at him, my gut did impromptu yoga positions. Either way, I liked it.

“Come on.” He took my hand. “I wanna dance before your boyfriend comes looking for you.”

I let him lead me onto the dance floor, yelling, “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He glanced over his shoulder and grinned. His deep-brown eyes crinkled at the edges. “Good.”

We danced for a solid hour, our bodies close, moving to the bone-vibrating music. Every once in a while, he would lean into my ear and say something funny, making my pulse speed up. When I lifted my hair up to cool down, he blew on the back of my neck, and it sent a shiver of excitement down my spine. Occasionally, Kim and Betsy danced over and joined us, excited to see me out on the floor with a man, but I tried my hardest to ignore them as they gave me the “thumbs-up” sign and made kissy faces behind his back.

Once we were good and sweaty, he leaned in close. “Wanna get out of here?”

I looked at him, my eyes wide. I wasn’t ready to go home with the guy. Well, in theory. “I’m here with friends.”

He grinned. “No, not like that…I mean, do you want to step outside so we can talk?”

I sighed with relief. “Sure, okay.”

We walked off the dance floor, prompting Kim and Betsy to stop dancing and stare. When we got outside, the cool night air hit me and chilled my sweaty skin. He stopped a foot in front of me and held out his hand. “Landon Harlow.”

I shook his hand. “Hi, Landon, I’m Violet Murphy.”

“That’s a beautiful name.” Landon didn’t release my hand, and it was creating thrilling tingles up and down my arm.

I looked at him closely. There were wrinkles on either side of his eyes, which made me think he must smile a lot. I loved that. “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a carpenter. You?”

“Hair stylist.”

“That must be why your hair is so great.”

I bit my lip. Flattery would get this guy everywhere with me. “I like yours, too.”

“You’re here with friends, then?”

“Yeah. You?”

“My buddy is in there dressed as a devil.”

“A devil isn’t an animal.”

“He’s dressed as the Tasmanian devil.”

“Oh, I see.”

“It’s kind of lame.”

“No, it’s an animal. But it’s also a cartoon.”

“I consider the Tasmanian devil to be more cartoon than animal,” he said.

I laughed. “There are a lot of costumes in there that look a little cartoonish. I was sitting next to a girl who was supposed to be a goldfish.”

“Oh, yeah. I saw her.”

“You couldn’t miss her. She was wrapped in plastic.”

“Your costume looks great, too. You should have won the contest.”

“Thanks. My friend came in second place.”

Landon paused for a beat. “The bird?”

I nodded. “Peacock.”

“Right. She looked awesome.”

“So why aren’t you dressed up?”

Landon chuckled sheepishly. “I’m dressed as a guy visiting the zoo.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I must say, that’s not very creative.”

“I ran out of time. Worked late.”

“Too bad. You would have made a good-looking tiger with me.”

“Does that mean I would have had the hottest girl in the club as my date?”

I giggled, unsure what to say next. Part of me wanted to launch myself at Landon, wrap my legs around his waist, and ram my tongue down his throat. However, I knew that would come across a bit too strong. But I really liked him. I liked the way he made my body react, all fluttery and dizzy, and it was incredible to have forgotten about Gabe for an entire evening.

I was shocked by how badly I wanted Landon to pull me against his body and crush his mouth to mine, and that need created an odd sense of guilt inside of me. Guilt I didn’t want to give in to. Not again.

The silence stretched into a few moments, and we found ourselves staring at each other awkwardly.

“I really want to kiss you,” he said finally.

My lips started to tingle. “I want you to kiss me, too.”

“Well then, it looks like we’ve come to an agreement.” Landon’s voice had dropped an octave. He adjusted one of my tiger ears, then let his hand trail down the side of my face. His palm felt slightly rough. He was so strong and masculine, it made my stomach tighten.

My voice trembled. “You should hurry up and do it, then.”

“You got it.”

Landon’s face came toward mine slowly, his other hand cupping the other side of my neck, his thumb running along my jawline. When his lips touched mine, they were a thrilling mix of tender and anxious. I could feel his pulse through the thin fabric of his T-shirt when I brought my palms up to his chest. He tilted his head to the side, opening his lips tentatively and sending a rush of excitement down my spine. I’d missed this, the thrill of kissing someone new. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pulled myself closer, deepening our contact and losing myself in the moment.

I’m not sure where along the way we started making out, but we sure did. Right there in the alley. And it was fabulous. We kissed, intermittent with short periods of conversation, until The Lotus closed at two a.m.

Kim came stumbling around the corner of the building with a flood of people emerging into the night and a very inebriated Betsy hanging from her arm. “Violet! I thought you’d left. I was worried.”

I peeled my face away from Landon’s and grinned sheepishly. “Uh…sorry. Guess I found that distraction.”

Betsy raised her heavy head and gave me a lopsided thumbs-up. Kim observed her girlfriend and snickered. “I’ve got to get some food in her to absorb some of those drinks. She’s gonna wind up with the spins.” She eyeballed Landon, whose lower half of his face was smudged with some of my tiger makeup. “We’re going to Mildred’s Cafe for breakfast. Want to join us?”

Landon pulled apart from me. “I’m a distraction? From what?”

I stood on my tiptoes and pressed a peck to his lips. There was a soft tug in my chest, but I pushed the guilt that was creeping up on me to the back of my mind. “I, uh, had a good time. You know…kissing you.”

I could have sworn he blushed underneath the orange-and-black streak I’d left on his cheek. “Me, too.”

Landon’s fingers ran through his messed-up hair, and I noticed they were trembling. “So…want to do it again sometime? I mean, after dinner and a movie, preferably.”

I grinned. “Come to breakfast with us.”

The sparkle returned to his brown eyes. “Can we make out after breakfast?”

I pretended to think. “Possibly…”

Landon stepped closer to me, and he touched my waist. “I’m kidding. Sort of. I’d love to come to breakfast with you guys. We can take my bike and meet your friends there.” He gestured to a silver Harley Fat Boy parked a few yards down the sidewalk.

Oh, snap. This guy was making it very easy to push thoughts of Gabe to the back of my head. At least for the night.