Page 34 of Stay Scared

That is new.

“So you can actually cook now?” I ask.

“I can make one respectable pizza.”

“One?”

“You always said mastering one thing was more useful than being mediocre at six.”

I remember saying that after he bought a pasta machine, a wok, and a bread stone in the same month.

“You hated when I said that.”

“I hated when you were right.”

“And now?”

Cade rolls the whiskey glass between his fingers. “Now I bitch less about it.”

My mouth threatens another smile.

“Still too much garlic?”

“There is no such thing.”

“That answer might actually be correct.”

For several seconds, the room feels almost ordinary.

We used to be good at this part. Cade could drag an argument sideways until I forgot I was trying to win it, and I could make him laugh when he was determined to stay angry. Somewhere beneath everything that went wrong, I had liked talking to him.

Apparently, I still do.

I look toward the entrance. A photograph hangs beside the neon sign. The bar exterior shines under rain. Cade stands beneath the awning in the faded gray shirt he wore on our first date. I am beside him in the black dress, my face turned away from the camera.

Memory supplies what the room can’t: rain striking metal overhead, whiskey on Cade’s mouth when he kissed me, his palm following the zipper of my dress from my ribs toward my hip until he stopped at the lowest point.

I pressed his hand harder against me.

My fingers catch the zipper of my current jacket and pull it higher.

Cade follows my line of sight to the picture. “They rebuilt that tonight,” he says. “Actors.”

The woman’s boots are wrong. The toes are pristine.

“They were careless with the boots.”

“I told them.”

“They ignored you.”

“They listen to Ash.”

One thing in this building doesn’t bend around Cade.

I lift the whiskey and drink. Smoke and oak spread across my tongue while Cade watches my mouth.

“You always drank when the conversation got too honest.”