“It’s very pretty. Does it have meaning?”
“Yeah. When I was six years old, I wanted to wear this crazy leotard to my first day of ballet class. It was pink and purple and had this pattern on it, the one that’s my tattoo. My mother told me I had to wear black, so I’d match the other girls, but I didn’t care. I thought it was pretty, and I didn’t want to look like everyone else.”
She curled in closer, putting her leg in between mine.
“We fought all week about it, until my mom finally told me if I wasn’t going to wear the approved attire, I couldn’t go.” It was dark enough I couldn’t make out her expression, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “I wore the leotard I wanted to, and the black one over it.”
I chuckled, and her story made me appreciated the tattoo even more. A sign of her defiance, her desire to be unique. “You can cover it up, Tara, but don’t worry. There’s no one else like you.”
Lying together in the warmth of my bed, it didn’t take long for us to drift to sleep.
When I woke, the bed was empty. My bedroom door was open, and light streamed in from the kitchen. A timer beeped and was shut off, followed by the sound of my oven door opening.
Was she cooking? I glanced at my phone. Was she cooking . . . at eleven-thirty at night? I climbed out of bed and went to see what was going on, only to have the smell of pizza slam into me. My stomach growled.
Tara set the cooked pizza on top of the oven, grabbed the glass of wine she’d poured for herself, and glanced at me. “Oh, hi. I was just about to wake you.”
“Pizza again?” I asked. She’d found my stash in the freezer, judging by the label and plastic wrap sitting on top of the trash can.
“I thought you said you could eat it for every meal.”
“I can. I’m just surprised you’re all right with eating it again.”
“I’m hungry, and this was fast. We’re supposed to head over to Regan’s soon.”
She poured a glass of wine for me, and we ate quickly. My excitement mixed with my unease about not telling her the truth, and as we finished, I couldn’t help but think she felt the same way.
We took an Uber and arrived a little after midnight, which added to the atmosphere of the evening. As if what we were doing wasn’t suitable for normal hours. Silas was on a deadline for a project, and his most creative time was at night, I’d been told. We hadn’t known how long the audition was going to run either, so had scheduled our late-night get-together very late.
After we were buzzed into the apartment building, I followed Tara up the steps, carrying a bottle of red wine. My hold on it might have been too strong. I was tight with anticipation, like a string on my cello that had been keyed too tight and could snap at any moment. My pulse leaped as she turned and knocked on an apartment door. What if I didn’t like them? What if our personalities didn’t match, or they only listened to country music? Anxious questions spun through my mind, but it was too late.
The door swung open.
Despite everything else, my first thought was I needed to know if Silas was any good at sports, because he was built for the front row of rugby, and we needed fresh blood on the Lions.
He took up most of the doorway, and when he saw me by Tara’s side, he immediately began to size me up. I did the same. There were tattoos sprawled across his meaty forearms, and the ink disappeared beneath the sleeves of his shirt. I wasn’t attracted to men, but I was open enough to begrudgingly admit he was good looking.
Maybe better looking than I was, and the primal male instinct of competition didn’t like that. As his blue eyes scanned me, they shuttered. It looked a hell of a lot like he was thinking the same thing about me.
“Silas,” Tara said, “this is Grant.”
“Hey, man.” He extended a hand, which I took, and the handshake was aggressive from both sides.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
When he released his grip, he stepped back and gestured to the apartment. “Come on in.”
The place was nice and open concept. The artwork on the walls—no doubt his—was eye-catching. Full of patterns. The couple had obviously set the mood. The lighting was soft, a few candles flickered, and the music that tinkered from the kitchen sounded like Sigur Rós.
But something was missing.
“Where’s Regan?” Tara asked.
“She should be here any minute. She left the club a while ago.” He motioned toward the bottle of wine in my hand. “Want me to take that?”
I didn’t move. Tara had said Regan was an accountant. That she’d met them at a wedding. I tried to keep dread from my voice. “Club?”
“Oh.” Tara’s expression was vacant, masking her thoughts. “Regan . . . uh, she sells wine at the club too.”