“Birdwine,” I said. “I didn’t know I broke your heart.”
The very words tasted strange. They weren’t the kind of words I said, but we were friends now, and I had started this. I’d reached for him first, and I had kicked the door shut. He deserved acknowledgment.
I should have answered my phone when Remi called me back last night, should have had him over for some auld lang syne. Instead, I’d called the ghost of an old love into this filthy room. I’d killed it a year ago, before I knew it existed. I found I didn’t like it any better dead. This was not my kind of haunting.
I stood up, and I was instantly horrified at the crunchy feel of the carpet on my bare feet. I hurried to slide back in my shoes. While my back was to Birdwine, I straightened my clothes, smoothing down my skirt and then my hair. When I was more or less put back together, I turned to face him. He was standing quiet and calm by the desk. One big hand was rubbing at his temple, never a good sign. His hair was crazy rumpled, and I had a flash of what it had felt like fisted in my hands as I yanked on it, desperate to get him closer.
I dropped my gaze. We were supposed to be finding my dead mother. We’d agreed to try a friendship—a thing I deeply needed at this juncture. What the hell had I been thinking?
Truth be told, I hadn’t thought at all. I had wanted; I had acted.
Finally I said, “I don’t screw my friends, Birdwine. Not literally, not metaphorically. So that was an asshole move. I’m sorry.”
I’d hurled my truly superior handbag onto the foul carpet in my eagerness. I picked it up now. I almost felt I owed the bag an apology, too.
“De nada,” he said, though I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d walked off to find a MARTA stop and blocked me on his phone. By the time I straightened up, slinging the bag over my shoulder, he’d stopped his hand from worrying at his forehead.
“I’m not going to break your anything,” I told him. I couldn’t parrot that word back to him again. Heart. I didn’t want to keep putting it out there. I didn’t want to re-invoke it. “Can we pretend this didn’t happen? Or chalk it up to the asbestos in this building? I got poisoned by asbestos.”
That made him laugh. Just a little. “Yeah. Asbestos is a well-known aphrodisiac.” When he spoke again, he was businesslike, but not cold. “Give me the keys. I’ll drive so you can go through Worth’s file. We can pick up looking for Kai right where he left off.”
Now I did have a soft place. I felt my own heartbeat, pulsing in my throat. “Thanks.”
I had to stay on the righteous side of any line he drew. Right now, that meant tossing the keys to him. He plucked them out of the air, and we left the filthy office and backtracked down the stairs, single file, to my car. It hadn’t been stolen, and it still had all its hubcaps, so I decided to call that another win. I added it to cutting Worth off at the knees, and for the day, I was still ahead on points. Maybe I’d stepped too close to the edge of this new friendship with Birdwine, but winning was my dear and oldest friend. I could get back in bed with winning full-time, no complications.
We got in the car, the air between us still a little charged. I ignored the awkwardness. We’d had too good a morning to end on something sour or shameful. I pulled Worth’s file out of my bag and held it up in Birdwine’s peripheral vision, and he smiled. He liked winning plenty, too.
“Tell us, Vanna, what’s in the prize pack?” he said.
“Stop by that Kinkos near your place. I want to scan the whole thing. You can have the hard copy,” I said. While we were there, I could scan my mother’s poem, too.
I flipped the file open on my lap to find the photo I’d already seen. I turned it like a page and found a full-body shot of Kai in the same top, same river in the background. Her back was to the camera, and she was watching a little girl throw bread to the ducks. Her brocade shirt was long-sleeved, paired with old jeans. She looked good from the back, but this was not the right thing to point out: Hey, Birdwine, peep my genes. My ass could look this fine for another fifteen years.
“Kai always said ducks were mean sonsabitches,” I said. “Yet here she is, hanging with a bunch of ’em.”
Birdwine shot me a look, like, Really? We’re making observations about ducks now?
“They do bite,” I went on doggedly. I didn’t want it quiet in the car.
Though he’d not said it explicitly, I had no way to un-know this fact: a year ago, Birdwine had been in love with me. What had he been thinking? If a fella was looking for love, I was the wrong road to go down. I was the road, in fact, that was crawling with barbed wire and bears and dynamite, marked with huge signs that said THERE IS NOTHING FOR YOU HERE.