I held onto her eyes, felt the moment between us, warm and thick. “Thanks for guarding my coffee,” I said. “It’s important.”
Her eyes softened. “Will you tell me why?”
“I uh…I had a heart transplant,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, sitting back in her booth seat. Her eyes stared far off a moment, then she gave her head a brusque shake. “A heart transplant. But…you’re so young. Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six. The virus that wrecked my heart didn’t give a shit how old I was.” I smiled ruefully. “Viruses are assholes like that.”
Kacey didn’t smile. She pointed toward my wrist and the medic alert bracelet. “Can I see?”
I slid my arm toward her on the table. She flipped the rectangular tag over, from the red enameled cross to the words inscribed on the other side.
“Heart transplant patient. See wallet card.” Kacey looked up at me. “What’s on the wallet card?”
“My emergency contact info, my blood type, yadda yadda.”
Her gaze pressed me. “‘Yadda yadda’?”
“What to do in case I get in trouble.”
She nodded. Next she’d ask what kind of trouble I could get into, and I’d make up something about medication side-effects, which was a hell of a lot easier to hear than total heart failure.
Instead she asked, “Was it recent?”
“Almost a year and a half ago.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s really recent.” She let go of the tag and the heel of her hand settled on mine. A frozen, soundless moment, then her hand slid backward, palm to palm. Her fingers curled around mine and held still. I stared as my thumb came down on top of her knuckles and slowly moved back and forth.
The waitress came back with the orange-lipped, decaf pot. The look on her face was sour, until she saw our hands. She smiled as she topped up my cup.
“I’m sorry to hear all this,” Kacey said, when the waitress had moved on. She gave my fingers a final squeeze and let go.
I put my empty, bewildered hand in my lap. “So am I.”
Kacey toyed with her spoon. “Is it hard to talk about?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Only the people closest to me know.”
“And I’m the newcomer busting into your personal space and asking all kinds of questions.”
“Yes,” I said, “you are goddamn nosy.”
She squawked and chucked a French fry at me. I laughed and plucked it off my lap.
“Wait, shit! You can’t have that!” Kacey reached across the table to snatch it back. “I did not just almost scald myself over your damn coffee so you could eat a fry instead.”
“Your sacrifice is duly noted.” I crammed the whole thing in my mouth, and nearly groaned in ecstasy. I’d forgotten how good a fried potato could be. Salty, greasy perfection. “Holy god, that tastes good.”
Kacey moved her plate out of my reach. “That’s all you get, buddy. I’m not going to be responsible for breaking your diet. I’ve already broken the routine you keep talking about, right? I’m a bad influence on you…”
My laughter died and my smile froze. She was right. In the space of one lunch, Kacey had not only broken my diet, but she’d put a dent in my carefully-crafted routine. It wasn’t just taking up my time that could’ve been spent in the hot shop. It was this. Lunch. Easy laughter and sharing. Trusting one another with secrets. Fingers curled softly together…
This was a forbidden item on the menu.
This was bad for my heart.
I wiped my mouth with a napkin and set it on the table.
“Yeah, speaking of my schedule,” I said. “I only have a few hours before I start my shift at A-1 and you have a show tonight. We should get you back to Summerlin.”
Kacey’s smile faded away and her chin tilted at my obvious change in demeanor. “Oh. Sure.” Her luminous light dimmed. “Ready whenever you are.”
I drove us back to my apartment so Kacey could retrieve her bustier and the remnants of her fishnet stockings. But when I pulled into the parking lot, she didn’t get out of the truck, only sat there, unmoving.
“Throw the stupid bustier away,” she said finally.
“You sure?”
“Let’s just keep going,” she said, but it sounded more like, Let’s get it over with.
I drove Kacey back to the Summerlin house in silence. I stopped the truck in the great circular driveway. Kacey climbed out of the truck and stood facing the house.
“I fucking hate Las Vegas,” she muttered so low I almost didn’t hear her. She turned to me, leaned into the passenger window. “Thanks for taking care of me last night.”
“No problem,” I said. Say something else. Say something better. But the words stuck in my throat.
“And thanks for paying for lunch. It was supposed to be my treat, but I had no money on me. Naturally.” She shook her head. “If you wait a sec, I’ll run up and get some cash.”
“Forget it,” I said. “I ate a French fry for the first time in a year. It was worth twenty bucks.”
She raised her eyes to mine. “Thanks for that, too.”
“What? Eating a fry?”