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Archer definitely didn’t want to join, but I was intimidating, and I could tell that he wasn’t stupid. He wiped his hands on the cloth napkins and stood up. ”Yup,” he said. ”You lead, I’ll follow.”
I waited for him and we stood outside the restaurant, off to the side, as my heart raced.
”You don’t look like the kind of man who smokes,” he said.
”What does someone who smokes look like?”
”I don’t know,” Archer replied. ”Less buff?”
I laughed. ”It’s just once a day,” I said. ”Bad habit I got into when I was a kid. I mostly dropped it years ago.”
He nodded, leaning against the concrete. ”So where did you find her?”
I looked at him for a long time, wondering what the fuck he meant by that. ”Sofia? She was at the club when I popped in,” I said. ”She caught my eye, we got to talking, and we’ve been inseparable ever since.”
I always found that the easiest way to get away with lying was making sure I adhered as closely to the truth as possible and everything that I just said was technically the truth.
Archer nodded, but I could tell that he wasn't entirely convinced. ”She’s very pretty,” he said.
”She is.”
”She’s a reporter, right?”
I nodded. He was fishing. This was definitely something Sam would’ve told him. Maybe he was just a detective doing his job, but something about the way he was asking questions struck me as odd.
”So are you two serious?” he asked.
I looked into the restaurant, but all I could see was my reflection. I finished my cigarette with a long drag, dropped it on the sidewalk and stubbed it out with my foot. I wasn’t sure why, but I had a feeling that I needed to make sure that Archer knew Sofia was protected.
Though maybe that was just because I liked her so fucking much.
”Yeah,” I said. ”Serious as a heart attack.”
Chapter Eighteen: Sofia
Myheartwashammeringin my chest when Teo chose to leave me with Sam.
Sam was my confidante; we’d always been the best of friends since we were little, and I had rarely–if ever–kept secrets from him. Once, when we were teens, we’d gotten into a spat because we both liked the same guy. He turned out to be an asshole and we’d laughed about it over ice cream and stolen cabinet liquor as we watched a movie in the living room, well past the time our parents had gone to bed.
We’d drifted a bit after we both moved out, it was hard to stay in touch. Then our parents died and we became best friends again.
This was different. I needed to keep the secret to myself because I needed to be careful. And I was worried about him; worried about the date he’d brought along, worried because my brother usually asked more questions.
Something was troubling him and I wanted to know what it was.
As soon as Teo and Archer were out of the restaurant, he picked his head up to look at me. ”Are you sure you’re okay, Sof?” he asked. ”I’m worried about you. This isn’t like you.”
”He’s very good-looking,” I replied, as if that could explain everything. It couldn’t, of course, but I could appeal to Sam's sense of beauty. He'd always been pretty shallow. ”But honestly, Sammy, I could say the same thing about you. You're dating a detective?”
”Well,” he replied, narrowing his eyes. ”He's also very good-looking.”
”But he’s nice? He treats you well?”
He thought about it for a second. ”He’s…intense,” he replied. ”Interesting. Smart. A little possessive. Really good in bed.”
”Does that mean he doesn’t treat you well?”
”No, he treatsmevery well,” he replied, and I noticed the heavy emphasis he’d put on the word me. ”He’s just kind of a hard person for other people to get to know, that’s all. I think he has a reputation at work for being kind of a hardass.”
