The first shining tear trailed down his cheek.
I reached out to him, and said, "Nathaniel."
He shook his head and backed away a step, another, then he turned and ran. Jason and Micah tried to catch him as he rushed past them, but he avoided their hands with a graceful gesture of his upper body that left them with nothing but air. He ran out the door, and they both turned to follow. But it wasn't either of them who had to chase him down. It was me. I was the one who owed him an apology. The trouble was, I wasn't exactly clear on what I would be apologizing for. For using him, or for not using him enough.
9
The first person I saw when I hit the parking lot wasn't any of the men, it was Ronnie. Veronica Simms, private detective, one time my best friend, was standing off to one side from the door. She was hugging herself so hard, it looked painful. She's 5'8", a lot of leg, and she'd added high heels and a short red dress to show off the legs. She'd once told me if she had my chest she'd never wear another high neck shirt in her life. She'd been kidding, but when she dressed up, she showed off all that nice long stretch of leg. Her blond hair was cut at shoulder length, but she'd curled the edges under tonight so the hair bobbed above the spaghetti straps on her nearly bare shoulders. It was bobbing a lot, because she was talking low and angry to someone I couldn't see clearly.
I took another step into the parking lot, and the shadows cleared, and I saw Louis Fane. Louie taught biology at Washington University. He had his doctorate and was a wererat. The university knew about the doctorate but not about what he did on the full moons. He was an inch or two shorter than Ronnie, built compact, but strong. His shoulders filled out the suit he was wearing nicely. He'd cut his dark hair short and neat since last I'd seen him. His dark eyes were almost black, and his clean-cut face was as angry as I'd ever seen it.
I couldn't hear what they were saying, only the tone, and the tone was pissed. I realized I'd been staring, and it was none of my business. Even if Ronnie and I had still been working out together three times a week, which we weren't, it still wouldn't have been any of my business. Ronnie had had problems with me dating a vampire, Jean-Claude in particular, but her main objection seemed to be the vampire part. At a time when I'd needed girl advice and a little sympathy, she'd offered only her own outrage, and anger.
We'd started seeing each other less and less over the last few months, until it had gotten to the point where we hadn't talked in a couple of months. I'd known she and Louie were still dating, because he and I had mutual friends. I wondered what the fight was about, but it wasn't my fight. My fight was waiting out there in the parking lot, leaning against the side of my Jeep. All three of them were leaning against the Jeep. It was like a lineup, or an ambush.
I hesitated in the middle of the asphalt, debating on whether to go back and offer to referee Ronnie and Louie's fight. It wasn't kindness that made me want to go back; it was cowardice. I'd have much rather gotten dragged into someone else's fight than face what was waiting for me. Other people's emotional pain, no matter how painful, is so much less painful than your own.
But Ronnie wouldn't thank me for interfering, and it really wasn't my business. Maybe I'd call her tomorrow and see if she'd talk, see if there was still enough friendship left to save. I missed her.
I stood there in the darkened parking lot, caught between the fight behind me and the fight waiting for me. Strangely, I didn't want to fight with anyone. I was suddenly tired, so terribly tired, and it had nothing to do with the late hour, or a long day.
I walked to the waiting men, and no one smiled at me, but then I didn't smile at them either. I guess it wasn't a smiling kind of conversation.
"Nathaniel says you didn't want to dance with him," Micah said.
"Not true," I said. "I danced, twice. What I didn't want to do was play kissy-face in front of the cops."
Micah looked at Nathaniel. Nathaniel looked at the ground. "You kissed me earlier in front of Detective Arnet. Why was this different?"
"I kissed you to give Jessica the clue to stop hitting on you, because you wanted me to save you from her."
He raised his eyes, and they were like two pretty wounds, so pain-filled. "So, you only kissed me to save me, not because you wanted to?"
Oh, hell. Out loud I tried again, though the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that I was going to lose this argument. Lately, around Nathaniel, I always felt like I was doing something wrong, or at least not right. "That isn't what I meant," I said.
"It's what you said." This from Micah.
"Don't you start," I said, and I heard the anger in my voice before I could stop it. The anger had been there already, I just hadn't been aware of it. I was angry a lot, especially when I wasn't comfortable. I liked anger better than embarrassment. Marianne, who was helping me learn to control the ever growing list of psychic powers, said that I used anger to shield myself from any unwanted emotion. She was right, I accepted that she was right, but she and I hadn't come up with an alternative solution, yet. What's a girl to do if she can't get angry, and she can't run away from the problem? Hell if I know. Marianne had encouraged me to be honest, emotionally honest with myself and those closest to me. Emotional honesty. It sounds so harmless, so wholesome; it's neither.
"I don't want to fight," I said. There, that was honest.
"None of us do," Micah said.
Just hearing him be so calm helped the anger ease away. "Nathaniel pushed it on the dance floor, and the ardeur rose early."
"I felt it," Micah said.
"Me, too," Jason said.
"But you don't feel it now, do you?" Nathaniel said. His eyes were almost accusing, and his voice held it's own thin edge of anger. I wasn't sure if I'd ever heard him that close to being angry.
"Anita is getting better control over the ardeur," Micah said.
Nathaniel shook his head, hugging himself tight. It reminded me of the way that Ronnie had been holding herself. "If it had been you, she would have just come out into the parking lot and fed."
"Not willingly," I said.
"Yes, you would," he said, and his eyes held the anger his voice had held. I'd never seen those lavender eyes angry before. Not like this. It was strangely unnerving.