It was an automatic reaction to put my hand in his, a reflex of politeness. But I immediately regretted it as a zing of electricity sparked up my arm. That was bad news. I needed to let him go, stat. “Brit Creighton,” I said. “My name is Brittany. But everyone calls me Brit.”
“Okay, Brit,” Axel said with his easy smile. “It’s a nice day, and I was about to go out for lunch. Wanna come?”
THREE
Axel
I had a new neighbor. Interesting.
Actually, it was the most interesting thing that had happened to me in a long time.
When I say my life was boring, I mean it in the best possible way. Boring was a privilege. Boring meant that after years of chaos, my life was finally under control. To be boring meant I was alive, a fact that still sometimes surprised me.
I’d never liked the constant shitstorm of addiction. I’m a mellow guy. The shitstorm snuck up on me, and by the time I realized I wanted off the ride, it was already going full speed and I didn’t know where the off switch was.
Since I’d gotten clean three years ago, I’d had a lot of days in which my main activity was cleaning out a closet or reorganizing a kitchen cabinet—meditative days that didn’t belong on even the dullest Instagram feed. I’d learned the beauty of regular sleep, regular exercise, and a regular digestive system. (Those “don’t do drugs” seminars they show to kids never mention the hell that addiction wreaks on your guts, turning you into either a parched desert or a cauldron of molten lava on any given day.) I’d once stayed awake for thirty hours straight as the Road Kings played two crazy nights in Miami with a long party in between that I barely remembered. Now I made soup, and I wasn’t even sad about it. I had made it to thirty-seven, I was alive, and my soup was fucking good.
Still, when I opened my door to find a strange woman—a strangebeautifulwoman—standing there, I felt a welcome jolt of curiosity, like something out of the ordinary was going to happen. She had long brown hair and brown eyes in a perfect almond shape, her brows arched above them in a line that was just a little bit skeptical. She had no makeup on. She’d shoved her hands nervously into the back pockets of her jeans.
So after I told off Johnny and his crew of Neanderthals, I asked her to lunch. What can I say? I like women, especially beautiful ones. This one was mysterious, because she’d left L.A., moved in with Ellen, and said she didn’t cut hair anymore. Why not?
When I said those words—It’s a nice day, and I was about to go out for lunch. Wanna come?—Brit gave me a look of pure surprise, followed by a narrow squint of suspicion. It’s a fact that if a man asks a woman to do anything at all, just the two of them alone, he’s immediately and correctly suspect. There was nothing I could do about that. I could only shrug and hope she got my telegraphed message that I wasn’t trying to sleep with her.
I wasn’t. Not because she wasn’t attractive—she was—but because I had no intention of fucking a) a woman I had just met sixty seconds ago, and b) Ellen’s niece, who lived next door. That was the kind of messy, chaotic thing that High Axel would do, not Soup Axel. I liked what I saw of her, and I really was about to get lunch. She would either believe me or she wouldn’t.
She decided to believe me. “All right,” she said after a moment, the words drawing out as if she couldn’t believe she was saying them. “Let me change my shoes.”
I glanced down. She was wearing flip-flops, the remnants of a very old and very ragged pedicure plainly visible. “Meet me out front in ten,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
* * *
We endedup at a patio café that served brunch. Brit pulled a huge, face-eating pair of sunglasses from her purse, along with a black elastic that she used to twist back her hair so it wouldn’t blow in her face while she was eating. I put on my own aviators and hoped I didn’t look too much like a rock star asshole. The tats, the man bun, the beard, and the black shirt were a bit of a look.
I ordered eggs over easy, a stack of brown toast, and a pile of fruit, along with the biggest glass of orange juice they would sell me. Even behind her sunglasses, I noticed the laser stare Brit gave the menu, the way she assessed every item. Counting calories and grams of fat was a reflex for her, math that she did silently in her head. I filed that little piece of information away in my mental Brit file.
She settled on a chicken salad, dressing on the side, and when the waiter had left, she looked at me. Her defenses were up after the menu thing. “So what’s your deal?” she asked.
“You know at least some of it,” I replied. “You know who I am.”
I saw her eyebrows rise behind her shades. “Well, I know you have a big ego, I guess.”
“Ellen told you about me,” I shot back. “Yes or no? No lying.”
Brit’s lips pressed together as she fought a smile. “Okay, fine. I know you’re a Road King. And yes, I’ve heard of the band. Are you satisfied?”
“Probably not.” I accepted my glass of orange juice from the waiter. “I’d rather talk about you.”
“I amnotinteresting,” she declared as the waiter put our meals in front of us. She picked up her fork and poked at her salad. “I’m not the famous one at this table.”
“Blah, blah, blah, I play drums,” I said. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll answer one of your questions if you answer one of mine.”
Her body language got tense, and I instantly knew there were going to be landmine topics. “Okay.” She sounded unsure.
“Why did you quit your job in L.A.?” I dunked toast into an egg yolk. Fucking delicious. It was nice to enjoy food again.
Brit took a second to organize her answer. “I didn’t exactly quit. I kind of got fired.”
“Fired by who?”