His gaze dropped to my jacket for a second, and then he looked back to me, confused. “It’s, um—it’s a really nice suit?”
“I know, right?” I said. I’d dressed like I was heading into a particularly bloody deposition. I’d blown my hair out and put on matte red lipstick. “I’ve gone Full-Dress Bitch on you. Look at these shoes. The only word for heels this high is vicious. And you’re a wreck, and none of this is helping.” I turned to the side and kicked the shoes off, and stepped down, barefoot.
I hadn’t been nervous, I realized. This kid carried the weight of my life’s largest unpaid debt, and I was terrified of him. I hadn’t recognized it, because terror wasn’t one of my usual modes of operation. But I’d dressed to battle monsters. I’d even laid the relics of our shared heritage out in regimented rows, the way a prosecutor lays out evidence. Now, as he trembled in the hall, I was a little calmer, like a lady who realizes the little garden snake might be more afraid of her than she is of him. Maybe.
I said, “Let’s restart, okay?” I took my jacket off and draped it over the table by the door. Garden snakes could be charming little animals, given half a minute and some hospitality. This was a simple meet. All I had to do was figure out what he wanted, and then give it to him. It wasn’t that different from my day job, and—the last six months aside—I was very good at that. “First, I don’t think you’re racist or homophobic or any other -ist or -ic. I don’t have a sense of you at all. So come in, and let’s change that.” I stepped back to let him enter.
“Thanks,” he said. He still had worried eyebrows, but he no longer looked like he might vomit. He stepped awkwardly in and paused, his breath catching as he saw my wall of windows. “Wow. That is a view!” He looked around, taking in the way the high ceilings, the stark white walls, and the clean lines of my furniture acted as a backdrop for the boldly colored abstract art I favored. “Your place is really, really nice.”
Meanwhile, I was studying him. He had enough familiar features to give me déjà vu: my mother’s eyes, wide brow, and length of bone. He even had paler, hairier versions of my long-fingered hands. It was disconcerting.
I looked back up to his face and found he was now examining me just as intently. He blushed and shook his head. “Oh, sorry. This is weird. We have almost the same nose.”
He was right, though I hadn’t seen it until he said so.
“Weird as hell,” I agreed, because it felt that way, even though it was actually exactly how biology worked.
Another awkward pause, and he said, “Any more news from—I forget his name. The spooky guy you sent to Texas?”
“Birdwine. Not yet. But he will find her,” I said, very brisk, and changed the subject. “Speaking of PIs, when we went to see the one you hired, I asked him to rethink his life choices. He issued you a refund.”
I had Worth’s check tucked in my skirt pocket, and I pulled it out and passed it to him.
His eyes widened as he clocked the amount.
“This is more than I—”
I was already waving that away. “Call it damages. I would have taken his ass to court and made him pay more, if I thought he had it.”
He stared at the check, his lips pressed tight together with some feeling or another. He finally said, “I can’t tell you what this means. Really. When Mom got sick—” He stopped and shook his head.
“Forget it,” I said. Birdwine had been right about the kid’s fiscal hole; this meet that had me so on edge might have a very simple ending.
He started to put the check in his wallet, but then paused in the middle of tucking it away. “Oh, sorry, but the check is to me—do I need to pay you some? I mean, you went and lawyered at him.”
So much for simple. He needed every dollar there and more, especially if he wanted to go finish up at Berry. Yet here he stood in my half-million-dollar loft, staring at a white sofa that had cost more than the amount on Worth’s check—a sofa that I’d bought to match my cat—offering me a percentage. If the kid was playing me, he was a virtuoso.
“You got the friends and family rate,” I said. His smile sparked at the word family, and dammit, it was possible I liked him. It felt uncomfortable and way too personal to like this kid I owed, this kid wearing manly versions of my nose and my hands. “Can I get you some coffee? Or a Coke or something? Or it’s after noon, you want a beer?” I could have used a beer myself, because it was now clear that whatever we ended up being to each other, he wasn’t a problem that could be solved whole, today.
“I’d love a Coke,” he said.
He followed me left toward the kitchen, but paused when he saw all the things I’d spread out on the breakfast bar. “Oh, wow.” He went right to Kai’s Ramayana and picked up the drawing, peering down at Sita. “Did she draw this?”