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Mac slid out of the booth and Bartlett backed up a couple of steps as a lot of firefighter loomed over him, but Mac just signaled to Kitty, who came over. “He’s threatening to tell Vince I’m dating Liz, which Vince won’t believe for a minute, but the whining he’s doing is putting us off our fries.”
Kitty looked at Bartlett. “Get out.”
Bartlett drew himself up. “I’m the chief of police.”
“Not here you’re not,” Kitty said, and pointed to the door.
Bartlett went, probably because he knew Mac was ready to throw him out the minute Kitty said the word.
“What a little snot,” Kitty said and went back behind the counter.
Mac sat back down. “Vince won’t believe we’re dating, will he?”
“No,” I said. “Vince is many annoying things, but stupid is not one of them.” I picked up a fry and chewed while I thought. “You know, I suddenly feel much better.”
Mac nodded. “Yeah, I really needed to bully somebody smaller than me to end my day.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Nah, I got to flex my muscles, it was fine.”
“You have muscles?”
“Mostly made of fried food,” he said and finished his last fry to start on mine.
Since I’d brought Bartlett into his life, I let him have them.
* * *
When I got backto the Big Chef, I said, “I had dinner with Mac Blake. Bartlett saw us and said he couldn’t wait to tell you that Mac was dating your girl. Kitty threw him out. How was your evening?”
“Fine,” Vince said, and went back to the bathroom drywall while I sat at the counter and tried to get through more of Anemone’s copy edits, which brought me to another problem: Anemone’s stepdaughter. I’d put in a few words about her—basically Anemone had a stepdaughter she’d acquired when the kid was thirteen and she’d married her drugged-out musician daddy (thus getting practice as a sober companion), and she thought the kid was terrific but deserved her privacy—and Anemone had deleted all of it because she was ferociously protective of that now adult step-daughter, saying Olivia doesn’t want the attention.
Okay, fine, no Olivia,I thought, and tried to get back to the edits, but Vince was still sulking and the edits were making me insane, so I gave up and put on pajamas and got into bed, mostly thinking about those damn blue bedroom walls. Okay not so much about the walls, but about what they meant. About how I couldn’t have them if I lived with Vince. Okay, I was not going to tank a good relationship over blue paint, I’m not an idiot, but there was something more going on there I was going to have to think about.
So, when Vince got into bed and reached for me, I said, “How do you see me in your life?”
“Naked,” he said, trying to pull my pj top over my head.
I pulled my top back down. “Are you going to make room for me in your life, or are you going to try to make me fit?”
He sighed, exasperated. “Is this about the blue paint?”
His tone said,You have to be kidding me,and I thought,No, I’m not kidding, I’m completely serious.
I rolled away from him, thinking hard. He had the right to paint the Big Chef white if he wanted to; he owned it, he’d paid for the addition, hell, he’d paid for the white paint. I had no right to insist on anything, paint included.
I did wonder, for the first time, if he’d refused all my offers to contribute to keep me out, to keep the place his only. Which was his right.
But I didn’t want a white bedroom. And I didn’t want to live as a guest in his. I didn’t want to live as a guest in anybody’s. I’d spent my whole life trying to fit into other people’s ideas of me—my mom’s, Cash’s, all the people I’d waitressed for after I left town at eighteen, all the people I’d ghostwritten memoirs for, and now I was working on Anemone’s book and Vince’s diner . . .
Fuck it, I wanted a room of my own. A book of my own. A life of my own.
It was time for a change.
“Liz?” he said after a moment.
“Good night,” I said, not wanting to fight, or at least not wanting to be glared at again.
