The Space Between Us. Megan Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ anyway, so I just smiled and winked at him, a response guaranteed to drive Vic batty. Elaine laughed, though. For someone who loved him enough to marry him and have his babies, she surely did like to tease.

      It was good for him, to be teased like that. And to be loved.

      “Later, gators,” I said, and was out the door before any grubby hands could streak my clothes.

      Meredith had called it a date, and I assumed she’d meant it whimsically. Still, I’d dressed accordingly. My heart beat faster, my palms a little sweaty, and I felt as much anticipation as if it were a date. Maybe more.

      We’d agreed to meet at The Slaughtered Lamb because, according to Meredith, they had a shepherd’s pie to die for, and live music. Some Irish band I didn’t know. It was tucked neatly off a side street and not part of the Second Street strip of bars and clubs, so while I’d been there once or twice, it wasn’t a place I hung out in regularly.

      Meredith did, apparently, based on the way the guy at the door greeted her and the waitress smiled when she showed us to our table. Meredith settled into her seat and pulled off her leather gloves with the sigh of a woman grateful to be out of the cold, while I thought seriously about leaving my mittens on to disguise the sudden trembling of my fingers.

      “Hello, gorgeous,” Meredith said when the waitress had handed us our menus and left. “I love the scarf.”

      It wasn’t anything fancy, just a strip of teal silk I’d tied to one side of my throat above the boat neckline of my peasant blouse. I touched it, though, when she admired it.

      “Very fifties French sailor,” she said. “Very Audrey Hepburn.”

      That had been the sort of look I was going for, with makeup to match. “Thanks.”

      And after that, it was fine.

      Most of it was her way. How easy she made it to be with her. She was different here than she was in the Mocha. A little less bright, a little softer, her voice more a murmur, so that I had to lean across the table to catch what she was saying, though I never had any trouble hearing her laughter.

      I liked making her laugh.

      “See,” she said, when I’d finished describing to her the situation with my brother and his roommate. “You have a great talent for telling stories. I don’t know why you’re so hesitant to join in at the Mocha.”

      “I don’t want to share my secrets with strangers. Then they wouldn’t be secrets anymore.”

      “Why’s it have to be a secret?” She smiled.

      I drew my fork through the mashed potatoes left on my plate. She’d been right about the shepherd’s pie. “I have to face those people every day at work. I don’t want them knowing about my sex life.”

      “We don’t only talk about sex. We talk about lots of things.” Meredith had eaten only half her food, and now she pushed her plate away with her fingertips.

      I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and thought of how she’d left the imprint of her lips behind on the one I’d eventually tossed in the trash. “What is it about secrets and stories you like so much, anyway?”

      She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always liked knowing things about people. I guess you could say … I’m a collector.”

      “Of what?”

      “People,” Meredith said. “Interesting people.”

      “How do you do that?” I asked, meaning to sound light, but realizing I was leaning closer again.

      “I watch them for a while, see if they look interesting. You can’t always tell at first.”

      I nodded. “Of course not.”

      “So I talk to them. See if they don’t seem stuck-up. If they’re cool, I get them to tell me about themselves. People like talking about themselves, Tesla.” She paused. Smiled a bit reproachfully. “Most people do, anyway.”

      I thought of the group she gathered around her at the Mocha. I was probably my least interesting at work, where Joy managed to suck the life out of any attempts at creativity. “Did you collect me?”

      “Doing my best,” Meredith said, with another of those smiles that turned me inside out. She cocked her head. “I’m not a stranger, am I?”

      I wasn’t quite sure what she was, but it wasn’t that. “No.”

      She looked around the bar, which had become steadily more crowded as the evening went on, but still offered us a lot of privacy. “And you’re not at work.”

      “Thank God.”

      Meredith was the one who leaned, this time. “So, Tesla. Tell me something.”

      “What do you want to know?”

      She pretended to think, in such an exaggerated way I was sure she’d already thought of what she wanted to hear before she’d even asked. “What’s the best sex you’ve ever had?”

      “You go first.” I made the same offer I’d made the last time I told her a story, but again, she put me off.

      “The best sex I’ve ever had is always the last sex I had,” Meredith told me. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

      “Lucky you,” I murmured.

      She leaned closer. The table was just large enough for our two plates and glasses, and since I’d already leaned in a bit myself, she got pretty close. Her pupils had gone wide in the dim light, giving her a look of innocence completely at odds with the tilt of her mouth.

      “So. Tell me,” she said, and again, I did.

      Chapter 9

      Her name was Melissa. She was two years older than me, and unlike the other partners I’d had, she came on to me first. We were camping, of all the crazy things to be doing in the late fall, but the leaves were turning colors, the rates at the state park campgrounds had gone down, and I was friends with a bunch of people who liked to go out into the woods and get liquored up and rowdy.

      She had dark, dark hair that fell to her ass in long, straight lines. Her hair was heavy. Even now I can remember the weight of it against me, how when she slept next to me her hair would cover me, warm as a blanket. She had dark eyes, too, tilted at the corners, and she wore eyeliner to emphasize them.

      We had mutual friends and had met a bunch of times before, but we weren’t quite friends ourselves. When we got to the set of matching cabins we’d rented for the weekend, people started pairing off—some of them couples, some friends who’d already decided they were going to bunk together. I didn’t mind sharing with a guy, but I didn’t want to share a room with Shawn, who had some personal hygiene problems. Kent had a nervous laugh and bad acne, which wouldn’t have been an issue except that rumor also had it that he had the hots for me—and I didn’t feel like fending off his advances and ruining the weekend for all of us by turning him down. I hadn’t met the other three girls, Cindy, Dee and Tina, before, so when Melissa asked me casually if I wanted to room with her, I said sure.

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