sure why I didn’t just get up and leave.
He hadn’t exactly been rude or mean to me or anything, but so what?
He wasn’t exactly ugly either, but again, so what? I’d been fooled by a handsome face before, and it was not a trend I wanted to carry forward with me into my thirties.
Anyway, handsome on the outside had zero to do with what lay inside. I was grown-up enough to know that by now.
Just because he was nice to look at and his sister seemed to give a damn about him, it didn’t mean I should waste my time on someone who hadn’t even earned it yet. That much, I knew for sure.
“Well, thank you for entertaining this,” I said, trying to politely wrap things up. Maybe after I got out of here and we were no longer staring at each other, I’d be able to make sense of this and give Courteney my report. Right now, I really wasn’t sure what the fuck I was gonna tell her. “It seems to mean a lot to your sister.” Even if it means nothing to you.
I saw the slow rise and fall of his chest as he took a deep breath. His fingers tapped their restless, repetitive rhythm on the arm of his chair.
“My sister thinks I need… people. She doesn’t understand why I work alone.” His eyes held mine. “I prefer to be alone.”
“Do you?”
He studied me for a moment, and his gaze flickered down my arm. He looked at my Gimme Shelter tattoo again.
Then his eyes met mine. “Do you like people?” he asked me. And I realized it was the only thing he’d asked me.
“Sometimes,” I said, honestly. “Sometimes not. But I still like to be around them more than I like to be alone.”
Chapter Three
Cary
Paint It Black
I stared at Taylor, whose last name I didn’t even know. This pink-haired girl I’d just met, who sent a note into my house via my cat and took her shoes off in my yard to dip her foot in my pool.
This girl who looked and smelled like cotton candy. This girl who was now curling her bare toes into my carpet, her toenails and fingernails painted in glittery nail polish, every one of them a different color. This girl who wore a necklace with a skull-and-crossbones pendant on it and a bandage on her arm with Mickey and Minnie Mouse kissing on it. This girl who only sometimes liked people.
She had round eyes that alternated between way too wide open and narrowing into curves that crinkled with soft smile lines at the corners, even when she wasn’t smiling.
She looked way too comfortable sitting in my living room.
I was not.
I like to be alone.
How many times did I need to repeat it?
“I can’t handle a lot of people in my life,” I tried again, since she seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Was that clear enough for her?
Never seemed to be clear enough for my sister.
“Okay,” she said, seeming to think it over, like it was complicated, when it was not. “How about one?”
As long as it’s not you.
I took a deep, slow breath.
I needed her out of my house. Five minutes ago.
But she was still sitting there, still waiting for me to say more as I tapped out a song—the song—with my fingers without even thinking about it. Sometimes I just drummed out the beat. Sometimes my fingers ghosted actual chords. It just happened that way. The music came when I was agitated. When I wanted to escape. When I needed to focus so the world didn’t turn black.
I needed to know why she had that tattoo on her arm.
I needed to be working in my studio right now, alone. But here I was.
With this woman, staring at me.
I’d gone through the motions of this meeting for my sister. I’d given it more time than it was worth, probably. I didn’t even want to let this stranger into my house, but I did. And I’d taken my time deciding.
Out. In.
If it wasn’t for the tattoo, I might’ve shut the door in her face. The anxiety had started creeping in the moment I saw her in my backyard. The moment I saw her face. The moment her eyes met mine and she saw me.
And she was still waiting.
“If it was the right person,” I said, as neutrally as I could without being a total dick about it. “Maybe.”
“Well, then… maybe we can find you the right one.”
Not