The weight of the day sits heavy on my shoulders. Going to see Kaya probably isn’t the smartest thing I can do right now, but smart went out the window a long time ago, and I kind of need this. I need to be a young, reckless guy. I need to go and kiss the girl I like, and I need to forget, just for a second, about the fact that my life has turned to shit.
I text Kaya and get her address. She replies with nothing but the details I need to get to her, which makes me think she’s not all that surprised that I’m coming over. She’s a persistent kind of chick. I’ve given her no reason to believe that anything’s gonna happen with us, and yet she’s always seemed quietly confident that something eventually will.
I can’t get the image of her sucking on that red vine out of my head. I’m thinking about that way too much as I hurry across Eastlake. My dick is already hard when I pull up outside the apartment complex. I know immediately which her place is from the boarded up window on the second floor—obviously the window Jameson launched the guy out of. Oh, shit. Jameson. Kaya lives with her brother, and I’m about to go up there and make out with her? With a fucking hard on poking out of my waistband? What the hell is wrong with me?
I ain’t going anywhere until my dick starts to behave itself. If some dude I’d seen fighting at La Maison markets showed up at my front door, sporting an erection the size of the Fort Lewis’s flagpole, and he wanted to hang out with my sister? Doesn’t even bear thinking about. I’d make him hurt so bad he’d cry for his mama and never show his face around my sister again.
I close my eyes and think of Denise Lowell. When I first met the woman, I thought she was hot. Her body is rockin’ and all of that blonde hair makes her look like she could be on the cover of Sports Illustrated or some shit. After spending five minutes with the bitch, I already hated her and couldn’t wait to get the hell away, though. Now, the very thought of her coming anywhere near me is enough to make my hard-on fall flat in a matter of seconds. My dick practically shrinks up inside my body.
I banish all thought of red vines as I get out of the truck and head toward the building. I’m buzzed in without a word when I hit the call button for apartment twenty-three, and then there she is, Kaya, leaning against the peeling beige paint in the second story hallway, waiting for me. She’s wearing a black sweater dress that barely covers the tops of her thighs, and a slash of bright red lipstick stains those perfect lips of hers. Her hair is ruffled all over the place, but not in an unkempt way. In an I-paid-three-hundred-dollars-for-this-haircut kind of way.
“You going out?” I ask. She looks like she’s about to go eat at a fancy restaurant or something. I’m still dressed in the clothes I wore to work this morning, which means I’m in grease stained jeans, a washed out t-shirt and my black leather jacket. I don’t look like I ought to be anywhere near her.
“No. I just got back from a date,” she tells me.
I take a second to process that. A date? Is she serious? From the look on her face, she’s serious. Am I supposed to react to this? I feel like I should be pissed off or something, but honestly how can I be? She’s not my girlfriend. We haven’t even been on a date ourselves. Regardless, the thought of her going out on a date with some other guy has my jealously levels flaring pretty high.
“It’s only nine thirty,” I say, making a show of checking my phone for the time. “Didn’t go well?”
“It went very well, thank you. I had a nice time.”
“And yet you’re home, about to put your PJs on? Doesn’t sound like the end of a successful date to me.”
Kaya shrugs, pushing away from the wall, beckoning me to follow after her. “I’m far from putting my PJs on, Mason Reeves.” She leads us along the hallway and opens a door to our right; standing to one side, she makes room for me to slip in after her. “Jameson’s at work,” she says. “He’s probably going to be back in about a couple of hours, though. You should stick around and meet him properly. If you can withstand the grilling he’ll give you as soon as he walks through the door, he might not kill you.”
“That sounds promising.”
“He’s actually not as over protective as you might think. He normally minds his own business, lets me do my thing.”
“So he didn’t vet the guy you just went on a date with then?”
She laughs. “You seem quite preoccupied with the fact that I just went on a date, Mason. Does it bother you?”
“Maybe a little. Shouldn’t it?”
She shakes her head. “I go on lots of dates with Richard. I like talking to him. He has lots of interesting things to say.”