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But alongside that were the things I could do for other people. And at the top of that list was the idea that I could help Gwen give the finger to her bosses at the strip-o-gram place. I need the money, she’d texted me last night. But no, she didn’t. Not if she let me help.
The question was, how to do it? Gwen put on a good show, but she was touchy, and she was proud. I recognized it when I saw it, because I was the same fucking way.
But Devon, with his tattoo that said No Time, had it right. Life was too short to be wasting time on this kind of shit. Not when you could be out there, actually doing something for someone.
I’d believed in that once—in going out and doing good in the world. It was why I’d enlisted, why I’d fought long and hard in Afghanistan. And then it had all disappeared. It had been incinerated by that IED, along with my leg, my confidence, and most of my mental health. But I’d spent long enough in fear and anxiety. Maybe it was time to go get something done again.
But first, I had to be brave enough for the theater.
When the limo pulled up in front of the theater, I got out and made my way through the crowd milling on the sidewalk. The show was to begin in thirty minutes, and the excitement was building. I hadn’t bothered looking up the play online—it was Macbeth, what else was there to say?—but from the look of the crowd, it was a high-end production. Women were in swanky cocktail dresses, men in suits. I’d half expected a bunch of hipsters or intellectuals, showing up for their favorite Shakespeare play. I should have known that Devon would pick something better than that.
The box office knew who I was when I gave them my name—Devon Wilder’s guest—and let me through. I found myself in the lobby, which was lush and red-carpeted, complete with sweeping staircase that led up to the orchestra level. There was a crowd in here too, and I took a deep breath, tried to keep focus. Crowds could be bad for guys with PTSD. I just had to find Devon, Olivia, and Olivia’s sister, and we could go to the box where it was quieter, where I had less chance of an episode.
I spotted Devon almost immediately. He was hard to miss: tall, dark-haired, wearing a charcoal suit that fit him like a glove. He was standing with Olivia, who was one of those women who was quietly, smashingly gorgeous—maybe not the kind of woman who would get a modeling contract off the bat, but the kind you could look at for days without getting tired. She was slender, smaller than Devon, her gorgeous body encased in a simple, classy black dress, her dark curls set loose over her shoulders and down the middle of her back. Devon had said something, and she was looking up at him, smiling with wry humor.
Standing next to her was Gwen.
I noticed her and stopped walking just as Devon pulled his gaze from Olivia and turned around. “Max,” he said.
Olivia turned, but I barely noticed. It was Gwen I saw, wearing a dark red wine-colored dress, that just barely showed her shoulders and ended at the knee. A classy dress that nonetheless made her look sexier than any other woman in the room. She’d tied her blonde hair up at the sides, clipping them back so that strands trailed down over her back and her neck. She turned and looked at me, and her expression fell. There was no other way to describe it.
Now that the two women stood side by side, I could see it. It wasn’t something you’d ordinarily notice, since Olivia was dark and Gwen was fair. But when they stood together, you could see the resemblance in their cheekbones, in the set of their chins. They were the same height. They had the same perfect, slender legs. They were sisters.
Gwen was Olivia’s sister.
I quickly ran that through my brain, calculating how the hell I could have known this. I came up dry. I could see in Gwen’s stricken expression that she was doing the same thing.
But no. There was no way that Olivia’s sister and Devon’s best friend could have known each other when she’d knocked on my door.
I stepped forward. Devon was saying something—introducing us, maybe—but as usual, my words didn’t work the way I wanted them to. I looked at Gwen and said, “Your last name is Maplethorpe?”
Because, yeah. We’d had sex three times, plus part of a blow job, and I didn’t know her last name. I’d never asked.
Smooth, Max. Real smooth. You really know your way around the ladies.
Gwen was just as shocked. “You’re the hot bearded guy?” she said to me.
That gave me pause. “Which hot bearded guy?”
“The one who lives across the way from Olivia.”
I was still trying to figure it out. “I don’t live across from Olivia. She moved out.”
“But she used to live across from you,” Gwen said. “In 2D.”
“Um.” Olivia said this loudly, getting between us, her face red. “Hi there, you two. I didn’t know you knew each other.”
I looked at her. “We met,” I explained.
And then Gwen said the words that put it all in perspective for me.
“By mistake,” she said sharply.
Right. I understood. She didn’t want to know me, not in public. She didn’t want anyone to know what had happened. Because to her, I was an embarrassment.
Not her usual type.
So I shut it down. Slow and deliberate. I cooled off my feelings, pushed them down, made them stop. I tore my gaze away from Gwen and turned back to Devon and Olivia. “It was just one of those things,” I said, shrugging. “We ran into each other at Shady Oaks.”
