Chapter Thirty-One
Eyes Open
It’s too-old-to-be-touching-me-that-way Jack. Too old to put a smile on my face, but I smile anyway.
“Didn’t see you downstairs,” he hollers over the music. “Had to pay again to come upstairs.” He returns his hand to my waist. I’m not sure I like that. I’m not sure I don’t like it, either.
I lean forward. “I got promoted.”
He raises thick eyebrows to show he’s impressed. “That what you want? To stay in this fairy-tale castle?”
I hesitate before answering. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“I could help you do that is all.” His hand is still on my waist. I can feel it there like a bee sting. “You need those coins, right?”
I nod.
“Tell you what; I’ll help you out, but you have to help me, too.” He smiles, but his eyes don’t smile with him.
I lean close to his ear because I need his coin, and because Poppet has our other two customers entertained. “What do you want?”
He squeezes my hip, his fingers digging deep. “Tell me one true thing about yourself every night.”
I forget his touch. He wants me to talk about myself? I wonder why he cares. I’m one girl among many.
My mind snaps to the house I want so badly, and my reservations slide away. “Show me what you can do to help me, and I’ll talk.”
His other hand finds my waist, and he lifts me into the air. I’m so surprised that I laugh. The sound is foreign, someone else’s happiness. Jack jostles me over his head like I’m a child, light as a snowflake, as the disco ball dances across my face.
“I have here in my hands the most beautiful girl in the room,” he bellows.
The smile leaves my face, afraid the other girls won’t like what he’s saying, but now the other customers are laughing, too. They take a hesitant step in our direction, and when Jack gathers my legs into his arms and clutches me against his chest, they take another. His body feels slight against mine, dainty almost. I imagine him without his shirt, bones above his hips sharp as lightning slicing the sky.
Cain could destroy him.
I don’t know why my mind always goes there. Destructive, wicked places. Who’s stronger? Who’s more dangerous?
I am, Wilson answers.
His voice disappears inside the folds of my mind when Jack hands me to another customer. A boy of fifteen, sixteen at best. He’s missing a canine tooth, and there’s an insistent freckle in the center of his bottom lip. The boy celebrates the gift Jack has given him, raising me up to show his strength. I’m still being cradled like a doll, and realizing, remembering, I hate people’s hands on my body.
The boy’s hand trails down my side where a viper slithers in faded green ink.
“Let me down!” I yell.
He lets me down.
I figure I’ve undone Jack’s work, but he’s created a ripple in the tide, and now the customers have circled around Poppet and me. Jack’s hand finds the bottom of my back. A gentle nudge, and I’m pressed against my friend. Poppet’s small eyes enlarge when she finds me so close.
The room holds its breath, and then Poppet pulls me into her orbit. Now my hands are on her shoulders and her hands are on my hips and Jack reaches over to touch my bottom lip. My mouth opens on instinct, a venus flytrap welcoming a slippery-legged insect.
He tips his glass, and champagne rushes down my throat. Poppet does the same when he balances it over her lips. Jack raises the glass and the music thrum, thrum, thrums and my mind goes fuzzy and alert at once. Focusing on everything and nothing, becoming one with the dancing bodies. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.
Oh, Holy Father.
Forgive me my sins.
It doesn’t take long for me to understand it was more than champagne I swallowed. Three whirls around my merry-go-mind and I knew. I didn’t care that Jack slipped me something as much as I should. It pushed Wilson down the way I thought it might, and now the people that reach out aren’t as intimidating as they were before. Poppet grabs hands with a customer next to her, and another one, too. We form a circle and sway side to side slowly, though the song calls for something much faster. Jack takes a piece of my hair in his hand, and I close my eyes to his touch.
I don’t know the first thing about him.
But he wants to know about me.
Should I tell him I’m lethal? That I’m as safe as a highball of arsenic? That would go well, I think. Jack’s hands find my neck, and I’m pulled away from the pack of customers, singled out like a gazelle, a hyena in pursuit.
I open my eyes, and Jack is everywhere at once. How can a skinny guy take up so much space? Maybe guy is the wrong word for him. He’s in his mid-twenties, I’d say. But I can already spot the place his hair will thin, like it’s holding its breath for an especially windy day.
“How do you feel?” His words slide down my back, sticky-sweet sap oozing from the trunk of a tree.
“Good.” I cross my arms over my head and let the music hold me up by the collar. How long have I been dancing? An hour? Three? “You put something in my drink.”
He smiles shamefully, shifts to his right.
That’s when I see Cain over his shoulder. His jaw is tight, and his hands hang heavy by his sides, the muscles jumping in his biceps. He reaches for me and pulls me away from Jack. But Jack’s not one to be abandoned so easily. He makes a grab for my wrist and tugs.
I turn around, and his face blurs in and out of focus.
“You didn’t tell me anything,” Jack accuses.
I bow for whatever reason. “You haven’t guaranteed me anything yet. Tomorrow, we’ll see.”
“Domino,” Cain says low in his throat.
Jack ignores him. “Tell me.”
I don’t look back at Cain. Instead, I keep my gaze steady on this man who does as he pleases. This man who is laughter and playfulness to Cain’s biting truth and solidarity. “Okay, Jack,” I say. “You want to know something about me?”
He nods, solemn.
I lean close. “I was born with my eyes open. When I slid from my mother’s womb, my eyes were open. I see everything. I don’t always pay attention, but I see it.”
“Do you see me?” he asks.
“Yes, you,” I answer. “One day, you may wish I didn’t.”
Cain touches my shoulder blade and I spin around, head downstairs toward our place beneath the stars. My blood kicks in my veins, and my mind thumps recklessly. I answered Jack’s question, but it’s Cain who has my attention.
Tonight, I’ll ask him a question of my own.
Already, nerves fire through my body, anticipating how he’ll react.