Suit (44 Chapters #4) Page 4

  I darted over to the checkout stand to grab my coat and purse. As I clocked out on the cash register, I watched Jamal and Ken chatting. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but whatever it was, it had Ken laughing by the time I got back to them.

  I glared at Jamal, telepathically communicating to him that I would not hesitate to kick him in the nuts if he tried to embarrass me.

  Ten minutes later, we were sitting on my favorite bench outside, both holding giant smoothies, as I lit my first cigarette.

  “So, you hate being cold, yet you spend your entire break outside, in February, drinking a frozen beverage?” Ken took a sip of his smoothie.

  “That’s why I sit here.” I smiled, gesturing toward the sun overhead with my lit cigarette. “It’s, like, ten degrees warmer on this side of the mall. But we can walk around if you want. That’s what I do when I get really cold.”

  Ken smiled and shook his head. “I’m just giving you shit.”

  That was good because, the way we were sitting, angled toward each other, my foot was touching his shin, and it was the highlight of my day.

  “How’s that papaya-mango treating you?” I asked, flicking my eyes down to his giant Styrofoam cup.

  “It’s pretty fucking amazing,” he deadpanned.

  “Lemme try it,” I said, sticking my cigarette between my teeth so that I could hold out my empty palm.

  Ken held my stare as he took another sip, shaking his head.

  “No? Why not?” I snapped.

  “You didn’t say the magic word.”

  “What? Like, please? That magic word?”

  Ken nodded, straw still in his mouth. He was so fucking cute and so fucking infuriating, all at the same time. I had to fight the urge to slap his drink to the ground and then kiss the shit out of him.

  With a dramatic eye roll, I said in my best British orphan accent, “Please, Mr. Easton? May I please have a sip of your smoothie, sir?”

  Ken’s lips curled around the straw in triumph.

  Asshole.

  I jerked the cup out of his hand and replaced it with mine. Giving him what I hoped looked like a fuck you death glare, I took a sip, and my eyes instantly rolled up into the back of my head.

  “Holy shit, that’s good.” I took another sip. “I’m keeping this one. You can have mine. There’s more of it left anyway. That’s, like, a better ounce-per-dollar ratio or something. You can’t argue with that.”

  Ken smiled and tapped the side of his new cup against mine. “Only because of the ounce-per-dollar ratio.”

  I watched as he put the straw that had been in my mouth into his mouth. There was no sense of ickiness. No traces of germaphobia at all.

  Weird about touching. Not weird about swapping spat. Interesting.

  As we sat and talked, I realized that I could not keep my hands out of my hair. I had a ton of nervous tics. My hands and mouth were pretty much always busy—smoking, talking, chewing pen caps, gesticulating, laughing inappropriately, picking threads from my clothing, chewing my fingernails, twirling my hair. But trying to make small talk with Kenneth Easton made it worse than ever.

  “Oh my God, if I don’t stop playing with my hair, I’m gonna go bald.” I laughed, sitting on my hand. “I’m not used to it being straight. I normally can’t even get my hands through it.”

  Ken watched me in amusement but said nothing.

  “Did you notice?” I turned my head from side to side, my burgundy bob twisting and falling back into place. “I just got it done a few days ago.”

  “I noticed.”

  That was all he said. No smile. No innuendo. Just I noticed.

  My face fell. “You don’t like it.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether or not I like it.” Ken’s features were serious. As in he was seriously not going to tell me that my new fucking haircut looked pretty.

  “Why not?” I snapped, heat rising to the surface of my ice-cold cheeks.

  “Because you’re Brooke Bradley.” Ken set down his cup and faced me head-on. “The first time I ever saw you, you had a shaved head. You didn’t give a shit what people thought then, and you shouldn’t start now. Do you like it?”

  I blinked. Then, I blinked again. “Uh, yeah…I love it.”

  “Then that’s all that matters.” Ken relaxed against the back of the bench and took another sip from his almost-empty smoothie, the slurrrrrp sound adding some much-needed levity.

  No one had ever flat-out refused to compliment me before. Hans had told me I was beautiful every day of our two-year relationship. Every day that he had bothered to call or come home, that is. My parents had been showering me with praise since I was born. My friends and I were constantly feeding each other’s egos. But, somehow, by not telling me what I wanted to hear, Ken made me feel even more special than if he had.

  Just then, Ken shifted in his seat, pulling a vibrating phone out of his pocket.

  “Hey, man.” His brow furrowed. “Shit. I don’t know.” Looking at me, he added, “Do you want Brooke to come help?”

  Brooke. Nobody called me that, except my professors during roll call on the first day of class.

  Placing his fingertips over the speaker, Ken whispered, “Allen came with me. He’s looking at rings, and he needs some help.”

  My eyes went wide. “Engagement rings?”

  Ken hadn’t even finished nodding before I was up and at ’em, practically running in place as I waited for Ken to point me in the right direction.

  “Bales Jewelers,” he whispered, flicking his chin in the direction of the mall entrance.

  No more than thirty seconds later, I was tackle-hugging Allen as Ken hovered near the entrance of Bales Jewelers.

  “What about this one?” Allen tapped on the glass case we were peering into.

  “It’s pretty”—I smiled—“but I think it might be platinum.”

  “So?”

  “So, platinum costs way more than white gold and looks basically the same.”

  The saleswoman behind the counter cleared her precious-stone-adorned throat. “Actually, platinum is far more durable than gold and never loses its natural white hue.”

  “White gold loses its hue?” Allen sounded alarmed as he glanced from the saleswoman to me. “I don’t want it to lose its hue…do I?”

  Poor bastard was so clueless.

  “It’s fine. If it starts to look yellow, you can bring it in, and they’ll make it look white again.” I lifted my eyes to the woman with the big fake smile and even bigger fake boobs. “Isn’t that right”—I glanced at the name tag clinging to her ample chest for dear life—“Karen?”

  Karen’s plastic smile widened. “Yes, ma’am.”

  In the South, ma’am is code for bitch.

  “Do you know what kind of stone she might like?” I used a very different tone with Allen. The same one you would use on a frightened animal. Or a child.

  He looked like he was about to hyperventilate. Ken, who had wandered over to us, looked like he was about to take a nap.

  “Uh…square? I think she likes the square ones.”

  I smiled sweetly at Karen. “Will you please show us what you have in a princess cut with a white gold band…” I turned back to Allen. “What’s your budget, honey?”

  His large eyes got even larger. “Uh…”

  “How much do you make a month?”

  “Shit. Like, two grand? Maybe?”

  I nodded and glanced back at Karen. “Under four thousand dollars, please.”

  As Karen began pulling rings out of the case and placing them on a little velvet-lined tray, Allen turned to me with his eyebrows hiked up even higher than the top of his thick glasses.

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “My dad used to be a jeweler…and a guitar store owner and a car salesman and a stereo salesman and a flooring salesman. I know all kinds of useless information, thanks to his inability to keep a job.”

  Allen smiled weakly. “It’s not useless if it gets Amy back.�
�

  I beamed back at him. “It will.”

  Ken had wandered off again. I peered over my shoulder and found him lazily perusing a case full of expensive watches. Hand in his pocket, stubbled square jaw, navy-blue sweater clinging to his toned shoulders and biceps. If I didn’t already know him, I’d be drooling. At Jason’s house, he was just one of the guys, but out in the wild, where I could watch him from afar, he was breathtaking.

  “Here you go,” Karen announced with a fake smile as she placed a black velvet-lined tray on the glass case in front of us. “These are all of the white gold bands we have that are already fitted with princess cut diamonds in your price range. But we can always swap out—”

  I snatched a ring off the tray and slipped it onto my finger, ignoring the rest of her speech. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. It was a white gold band with tiny square diamonds inlaid across the front, but unlike a traditional engagement ring, the prongs held the large center diamond so that it hovered over the band. You could see all four sides of the crystal-clear stone and even a sliver of space underneath, as if it were floating.

  “You like that one?” Allen asked, narrowing his eyes as he inspected the rock on my left hand.

  “Uh-huh,” I murmured, staring at the rock on my left hand in a daze.

  “Let me see…” Allen leaned over to get a better look, but I jerked my hand away and sneered at him like Gollum guarding my precious.

  “Not this one,” I blurted. “It’s not…Amy’s style. Like, at all. I’m pretty sure she’d hate it and dump you all over again.”

  “Jeez. Fine,” Allen mumbled as I pointed at the tray of other perfectly acceptable engagement rings.

  Ten minutes later and after much reassurance from Karen and me, Allen bought Amy two rings—a beautiful white gold engagement ring with a romantic filigree design and a wedding band to match.

  Ken had magically appeared during the checkout process to grill Karen on the interest rate and compounding, revolving something-or-other of the store credit card she was trying to get Allen to open.

  Evidently, “Twenty-one percent,” was the wrong answer because Ken snatched the credit application out of Allen’s hand as if it were about to self-destruct.

  Then, he reached into his own wallet and handed Karen his Mastercard.

  When Allen asked what the fuck he was doing, Ken said, “Saving your ass a couple grand in interest. You can just pay me when you get the money.”

  It was really sweet—in a Ken kind of way.

  As we exited the store, Allen gave me a huge hug, little black gift bag in hand, but when he went to hug Ken, he stopped mid-lunge.

  “Thanks, man,” he said, dropping his arms with a sheepish smile. Then, flicking his eyes back and forth between us, he added, “I’ll just meet you at the car.”

  I floated back to Macy’s on a static-charged cloud. I was excited for Allen, but mostly, I was excited about the fact that my arm kept touching Ken’s as we walked.

  It didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t my type. He’d never once come on to me. And he was about as emotionally available as a cucumber. But there was an intoxicating current of energy surrounding him that I couldn’t get enough of. I knew that electric charge was meant to keep people out, but I was a defiant little shit. I was the girl who unwrapped her presents before Christmas because her parents had told her not to. I was the girl who pushed red buttons marked Do Not Push. And, when we got back to my department, I was the girl who hugged Kenneth Easton even though he did not do hugs.

  I don’t know if it was because we were in public or if I’d just imagined our connection the night before, but for whatever reason, Ken was as stiff as the starched collars on the men’s dress shirts just down the hall.

  “Thanks for coming,” I whispered into his ear, my voice low and husky.

  “Yep,” Ken replied, standing straight up, causing my hands to fall away from his neck.

  I forced a smile despite the scalding slap of rejection and embarrassment staining my neck and cheeks pink.

  “I, uh…” Ken buried his hands in his pockets. “I get off at six tomorrow…if you want to grab dinner.”

  Huh?

  I nodded with my eyebrows pulled together. “Sure. Yeah. I’m off on Sundays, so—”

  “I know,” Ken interrupted.

  “Oh. Right.” I smiled.

  “Right,” Ken echoed.

  I waited until he made it all the way to Men’s Fragrance before I let out the dramatic, wistful sigh I’d been holding in.

  “Okay, he cool, but you have got to work on yo’ hugs. That was not even a little bit smooth.”

  I turned around and glared at my co-worker, who was shaking his head at me in disapproval. “Shut up, Jamal. Nobody asked you.”

  The next day, I pulled into the Showtime Movie Theater parking lot, prepared for our dinner date to begin just like every other encounter with Ken had begun—with some smart-ass comment and zero physical contact.

  As I parked my Mustang and checked my appearance in the rearview mirror, I gave myself a little pep talk to make sure that my expectations were nice and low.

  Listen, homie. This is so not a big deal. You’re gonna go in there, Ken is gonna give you some shit about being five minutes late, and then you guys are gonna ride in an awkward silence to some chain restaurant where he’ll make you order a combo because he has a Buy One, Get One Free coupon. This will not be romantic. This might not even be fun. But it will probably be better than sitting at home, screening your calls. Maybe.

  Satisfied with the hair and makeup I’d spent all afternoon working on, I grabbed my purse and slammed my door.

  No big deal, I repeated in my head as I crossed the parking lot with my fists shoved in the pockets of my flight jacket. Just a little BOGO dinner between friends.

  I stepped up onto the sidewalk and marched past the box office window.

  He’ll probably even make me drive to save on gas.

  Grabbing the freezing cold handle on the heavy glass door, I had to throw most of my ninety-eight pounds backward just to yank it open.

  Warm air blasted me in the face as I stepped inside. Concession stands lined both sides of the large, open foyer, and there, in the middle, addressing a group of zit-faced teenage employees, was Ken’s black-clad alter ego, Mark McKen.

  He looked every bit as breathtaking as I remembered from Jason’s Super Bowl party—sexily mussed sandy-brown hair, hands tucked inside the pockets of his casually loose black slacks, biceps straining against the rolled-up sleeves of his black button-up shirt, and that goddamn skinny black tie.

  His expression was dead serious as he addressed his teenage minions, but as soon as his eyes landed on me, Ken’s sharp eyebrows lifted along with the corners of his mouth. He said something that made the underlings scatter, then walked across the lobby to where I was trying real hard to keep my saliva inside my face.

  “Hey.” He smiled.

  “Hey.” I smiled.

  “You ready to go?”

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded in three slow, exaggerated movements.

  Opening the door like it didn’t weigh five tons, Ken held it for me as I stumbled back out.

  No sarcastic comment.

  No gibe about me being late.

  But also, no hug.

  Two outta three ain’t bad.

  “So, where do you want to go?” Ken asked as he led the way to his little maroon Eclipse convertible parked in the primo front spot.

  I wanted to be easygoing and relaxed like the cool girls I knew or coy and demure like the pretty ones, but it simply wasn’t in my nature. I was a headstrong, spoiled only-child with no filter, and when presented with the opportunity to get my way, I took it. Every. Single. Time.

  “I love Italian,” I blurted out.

  “Really?” Ken asked, meeting my gaze over the roof of his car. “Italian is my favorite.”

  Much to my surprise, we didn’t end up at a chain restaurant. We went to some mom-and-p
op Italian place that neither of us had ever been to before. And the ride wasn’t an awkward cringe-fest. It was…easy. Fun even. I flipped through Ken’s CD case as he drove—no more than five miles over the speed limit—and squealed in delight over every single album in his collection. He had underground punk, pop punk, ska punk, ska ska, power pop, pop rock, grunge rock, classic rock, alternative rock, and emo for days. Our musical tastes were so similar; I think we could have switched CD cases without ever realizing it.

  “No fucking way,” I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.

  “What?” Ken glanced at me in amusement.

  I stared at him with wide, astonished eyes.

  “What?”

  “This is what!” I held the heavy black canvas CD case up, open to the last sleeve. “You have Marvin the Album by Frente!?”

  Ken chuckled. “I had to, man. They did that cover of—”

  “‘Bizarre Love Triangle’! I know! It’s amazing!”

  “I don’t even remember where I first heard it. Probably on MTV, back when they still—”

  “Played videos!” I cackled. “Now it’s all goddamn Real World and Road Rules and—”

  “Fucking Cribs,” Ken added.

  “Fucking Cribs.” My giggles morphed into a gasp as the next track on the CD we were listening to began to play. “Oh my God, I love this song! It’s about me and Juliet!”

  Ken smirked at my enthusiasm and turned the volume knob to the right just a little. We were listening to Weezer’s Pinkerton album, which I also didn’t know anyone else on the planet owned, and “El Scorcho” had just come on. It’s a silly, almost-spoken-word jaunt with a chorus like a barroom sing-along.

  “Goddamn you half-Japanese girls,” I shouted along with Rivers Cuomo.

  “Do it to me every time,” Ken quietly sang back, eyeing me sideways as he drove.

  What the…

  Turning toward him in shock, I grinned and belted the third line about a redhead.

  And, right on cue, Ken took the fourth, singing quietly and with much better pitch. His stern mouth curled upward just a little, but when the chorus kicked in, it spread into a full-blown smile as we sang the rest of the song together, Ken watching me out of the corner of his eye the whole time.