Amy Cousins - Calling His Bluff

So much for him wanting to impress me. At least I know why he’s being obnoxious—he’s clumsy and in pain, not to mention freezing to death . Who wears a T-shirt in March in Chicago?

She’d have known him in an instant, even if he was dressed like someone she could’ve bumped into in her brother’s pub. She couldn’t stop smiling. She hoped she wasn’t going to throw up.

He stood in the doorway, staring at her blankly, eyes flickering from her face to her feet to her medical bag and back again.

She resisted the urge to run a hand over her hair or check to see if her fly was open. She’d been heading to a speed-dating event, for Christ’s sake. This was damn near as good as it got for her, appearance-wise. Maybe J.D. was stunned into silence by how much she’d changed.

She could break out a Sharpie and scribble e.e. cummings poetry and Edna St. Vincent Millay quotes on her pants, if that would help him remember who she was. Although it would be a crime to do that to this cashmere-wool blend.

As the moment stretched out, J.D. still staring at her wordlessly, teenage memories of overwhelming awkwardness thickening her tongue and tripping her feet came flooding back in a wave of heat and self-consciousness that she felt as a flush she knew was visible on her face. Fuck. This was exactly how it had happened in high school, too. One minute she was cool and easy with J.D., always happy when he would seek her out in a quiet moment and sit with her. The next minute she was excruciatingly aware of the thick curve of muscle wrapping his shoulder, and unable to speak in his presence.

If he didn’t say something, soon, it was possible she would dissolve into an actual puddle of goo and embarrassment on the sidewalk and never speak to him again.

His grin rescued her.

The white flash of teeth in that cocky smile beneath high, tanned cheekbones and dark shining eyes sparked memories of a skinny teenager who’d claimed there was Cherokee mixed with the Italian blood in his family.

“Hot damn,” he said, the slow grin spreading over his face. He grappled with his crutches, swinging over to rock her back in a fierce hug. “Sarah Tyler!” He pounded her back with one hand. She hung on and tried to keep him upright.

After a moment, he pushed her back and held her at arm’s length. “Holy shit, girl. You’re all growed up, aren’t you?”

She rolled her eyes. Yup, nothing like feeling twelve again. So much for J.D. seeing her as a competent and hopefully foxy adult woman.

“Get your ass in here, girl, and tell me why I haven’t seen you around Tyler’s place since I got back.”

So. The big reunion moment was over, she guessed. That was it? Tendrils of irritation crept into her attitude.

J.D. left her standing in the doorway and thumped off across the cavern of a room to the back corner. His dark hair was tied back in a stubby ponytail at the back of his neck. Oh, no. She shot off a quick prayer that he hadn’t turned into an artistic type. Sarah had always thought of J.D. as the rough-edged boy of her youth, a bruiser more than a finicky, flighty artiste, even as she’d read about his growing celebrity as a photographer. After spending a bit too much time at her brother’s North Side Chicago pub, she’d gotten over her romantic notions about dating artists or musicians easily enough. She’d learned to spot the type that would lecture her for three hours about Scorsese or the history of jazz. But based on the crowds of young women that inevitably gathered around the guys who painted or played or took pictures, she was atypical.

Artists, bah. Nothing but trouble, and you always had to foot the bill for their foolishness, too. Of course, she hadn’t fared any better with her most recent disastrous relationship choices, even if she’d very consciously tried to choose an ordinary, kind of boring, stable guy. One who never would’ve been caught dead in the chaos inexorably taking over this space. “Shut the door, will ya?” The words were more command than request.

“Yes, sir.” She flipped what she considered a properly respectful one-fingered salute at his retreating back.

She tried to slam the door; a nice loud bang would express her frustration at the anticlimactic nature of this fucking long-awaited reunion, thank you, but was surprised to find that she needed to throw her whole body weight into it to swing the door shut. It finally closed with an annoyingly soft click.

Heat blasted her like she’d stepped into a sauna. Sweat sprang out on the back of her neck and along her hairline almost instantly. She was not sweating through her Armani. No way.

She looked for somewhere to hang her coat. Someone had clearly begun converting a warehouse here. She saw more unidentifiable mechanical equipment lying around than she did furniture. But having started this project, it looked like the money had run out before getting a tenth of the way through. The pile of aluminum tubes against one wall explained the clattering crash from before, but it didn’t look promising as a coat rack. She draped her coat over her arm instead and headed into the cavern of a room, sweating in her pewter-gray suit.

She had always thought J.D. had done well with his photography. That he had more sense than the flighty artists she knew. Apparently not. Or maybe it was just his congenital inability to stop in one place for longer than six months. She could see it now. He’d have decided that moving back to his hometown sounded great, but now that he was here, the urge to hit the road again, just like he’d done fifteen years ago, would leave this long-term project abandoned for someone else to clean up.

The left half of the open room was obviously where civilization had attempted to regain a toehold. A kitchen area that looked as if it had been hammered out of galvanized steel stretched along one wall and a fireplace hearth big enough to roast an ox claimed the back, complete with a roaring fire. An enormous wood-plank table with benches and an oversized leather couch, all of the furniture equally worn and battle-scarred, anchored the room, running parallel to the walls. The rest of the walls were exposed brick and steel beams that radiated industrial cool. Also, actual coldness, she bet. She couldn’t even fathom what it cost him to keep a space this big warmer than an equatorial jungle in Chicago’s deep freeze.

Since teetering towers of boxes covered most of the table and bench setup, she dropped her stuff on the wide arm of the couch and flapped a hand at her face as she watched her long-lost love hunt through the kitchen cabinets for god knows what.

In the brighter light provided by metal-shaded lamps suspended from the ceiling on thick chains, not to mention the fierce glow of the fireplace, she could see him better. His thick, straight black hair looked almost reddish in the firelight, but she was sure that it would show blue-black in daylight.

He squatted down to peer into a cabinet under the sink, crutches leaning against the counter, his injured leg sticking out to one side as he bounced comfortably on the other heel. With his hands at the ready in front of him, J.D. looked like a baseball catcher, preparing to glove a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball.

Two minutes in his company and she was already remembering that half the time when she was around J.D. she’d have been tempted to wing a baseball at his fat head if one were to hand.

“So, where’ve you been hiding out these days? Still spending all your free time at the library? Sorry about the heat, by the way. The cat’s under the couch, if you wanna get on your hands and knees and take a look.”

Her head was spinning. No way was she going to mention that she actually did still volunteer for a shift or two a week, shelving books at her local branch, although she couldn’t be sure what would come out of her mouth if she opened it, since her brain was still caught on freeze-frame with images inspired by the “get on your hands and knees” thing.