A pause. “Where we eating?”
“Your favorite, the New Orleans Fish House,” I said. “All the spicy-as-hell crawdads you can eat. Eight o’clock.”
That won him over. Or maybe he wanted to watch over me like a damn mother hen all night, but he agreed to go.
I told Kacey I’d pick her up at 7:45. She opened her door wearing an oversize, off-the-shoulder blouse in some kind of shimmery material. It slipped over her skin like molten silver, leaving one shoulder bare, and hung to her thighs where a short black skirt peeked out. But it was the black stockings she wore just above her knee that drained the blood from my brain.
She’d piled her hair onto her head and secured with some kind of clip or band with a large silk black rose over her right ear. Her striking features were done up in dark, cat’s-eyes makeup and bright red lips. A cloud of her perfume—her favorite and the one she kept in the bottle I had made for her—wafted through me.
I was so busy staring at her that I hadn’t noticed she was staring at me.
“Wow, Fletcher,” she said. “You…you clean up nice.”
I’d put on a dark gray suit with a bright blue tie that may or may not have been the same color as Kacey’s eyes.
“You look…” I trailed off, staring, because no words existed.
She smiled and moved in to straighten my tie. “Thank you.”
When we arrived at Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House, the hostess led us through the amber-colored elegance of the restaurant to the table where Dena, Oscar, Theo and Holly were seated. Kacey, of course, hugged Dena and Oscar off the bat, and they hugged her back, telling her how much they’d heard about her, and that time there was no mistaking her blush. She glowed with happiness under the light of Dena and Oscar’s warm welcome and I never thought I’d loved my friends more.
“Don’t you look handsome,” she said to Theo, smoothing the collar of his dress shirt. “Hi, I’m Kacey,” she said to Holly, whose full sleeves of tattoos were on display in a sleeveless blouse. I buried a smile while Kacey held Holly’s hands to admire the ink.
“Wow, amazing.” She turned to Theo. “Yours?”
He nodded, shrugged.
By the time we finished our appetizers, any qualms I’d had about Kacey fitting in were gone. She and Holly talked tattoos, and even got Theo to roll up a sleeve to compare ink, before Kacey fell into a conversation with Dena about poetry and songwriting.
Oscar leaned in from my left. “Are you going to eat or stare at Kacey all night?”
No point in denying it. I didn’t even try. “I’m going to stare at her all night.”
Oscar grinned and chucked me on the arm. “You do that.”
At dessert, Oscar steered the conversation toward camping in a hairpin turn of a topic change, and asked Kacey if she’d ever been.
“Never,” she said. “I’m not much of a nature person, except for the beach. Where are you camping?”
“Great Basin National Park.”
“It’s quite stunning,” Dena said. “It’s a little bit of everything—desert, forest, lake. You’d love it.”
“You should come with,” Oscar said.
“You should,” Dena said. She turned to Holly. “You too. Then there’d be six of us.”
“I’m in,” Holly said, while from behind her shoulder Theo stared daggers at Dena.
“It sounds great,” Kacey said, then turned to me. “What do you think? Would you… like the company?”
Maybe I was supposed to be guarded or wary, but I was just happy. Tonight, I’m trying it Dena’s way. Be happy. Be normal. A part of the circle, not alone in the center.
“I would love the company.”
Kacey’s cheeks reddened prettily, and she turned back to Oscar. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Don’t thank me until you’ve crapped in the woods and heard mountain lions outside your tent. This is your initiation, kid.”
“Bring it,” Kacey laughed.
And her smile was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“So who’s up for a little bit of gambling?” I said as we left the restaurant. “I’ve got forty bucks burning a hole in my pocket.”
Dena exchanged a look with Oscar, then yawned. “I overdid it on the crème brulee,” she said. “My pillow is calling.”
“Yeah, me too,” Oscar said, glancing at Jonah. “Why don’t you guys go ahead without us? We’ll do it again some other time.”
“You sure?” I said.
“Next time,” Dena said, hugging me.
“I’ll gamble,” Holly said. “I haven’t in ages.” She tugged on Theo’s arm. “You want to?”
Now Theo ricocheted a glance between Oscar and Jonah, and shook his head. “Don’t feel like it. Calling it a night.”
Holly pouted before hugging me goodbye. Theo slid stiff arms around me and bent his mouth to my ear. “Try to keep it under an hour in the casino. He shouldn’t be around the smoke.”
“Got it,” I said.