Quirks & Kinks (3 page)

“You just landed a job,” she cooed before sipping delicately from the free water.

Giving her my undivided attention, I narrowed my cat-like blue eyes.

“Granted, it’s not a job you’re exactly thrilled about, but it comes with money, and that’s worth celebrating a little.”

“Pff,” I huffed. “So far, all it’s come with is a bag of muffin mix and humiliation.” Exaggeratedly, I checked my purse. “Nope, no money.”

Ashley just shook her head. “We’re eating one dollar tacos. Peanut butter and bread are more expensive. Relax.”

My fingers itched for a cigarette, and astute twenty-three year old lady that she was, Ashley didn’t miss it.

“Besides, if we’re going to get on the money discussion, you’re going to have to take a closer look at some of your other expensive habits.”

Ashley had been trying to talk me into quitting for years, and I knew my lungs would thank me if I somehow managed to follow through. But as desirable as it sounded, I just . . . couldn’t. It wasn’t so much the addiction and the work it would take to kick a years-in-the-making habit. It was that smoking had become my emotional crutch. My timeout in any moment of need and my excuse to busy myself with something other than being a bitch. I was scared of the chasm I’d fall into, the inescapable hole I’d create with my auger-like anxiety without it.

My sister didn’t know any of that. No one did.

“I smoke for my career.”

Her eyes practically rolled all the way out of her head. “This ought to be good.”

“You know this industry is unbelievably vapid, and vapid means skinny. Smoking keeps me that way.”

She shook her head in disdain.

“And it’s cheaper than a gym membership.”

“Global warming, anyone?” she called dramatically. “You’re argument is balancing on some
pretty
thin ice.”

“Shut up,” I poked, shoving her in her petite, narrow shoulder with our usual sibling playfulness.

Suddenly, warmth wafted up into my face as our waiter shoved the toasty basket of complimentary chips into the center of our table. My eyes drifted naturally from the basket to the hand holding it, where a large, oval, heavy metal ring sat in blazing contrast to the tan expanse of his long ring finger, up the line of his muscular—
deliciously
veiny—forearm, to the cuff of his rolled up black sleeve. On a runaway mission of their own, my eyes wouldn’t stop, eating up the expanse of his bicep in an instant, stutter-stepping up the corded column of his slender throat, and landing on one of the most attractive male mugs I’ve ever seen.

A mixing bowl of ethnicity, his naturally tanned skin and dark features stood in stark contrast with the minty green of his eyes. Directly on me and smirking, they were mesmerizing.

And mocking.

Ashley spoke, as I’d apparently lost all of my normal snarky ability.

“Thanks.”

A small glance from me to her preceded his polite answer. “You’re welcome.”

She smiled her prettiest smile, the one that infused her entire being from chest to eyes, and the corner of his mouth notched higher in response.

A foreign heaviness settled in my chest as I watched, and its completely unwelcome presence nearly made me sick.

He turned to leave slowly, one last lingering look in my direction making my nerves ratchet up to an eleven.

Fuck. I did
not
like to be rattled. Confident words were my modus operandi, but a good earthquake could wreck even the strongest of routines. My table at El Loco, tonight—this
guy
—was the epicenter.

The man in question had just earned himself automatic placement on my shit list.

Straight, white, top teeth just barely teased the plump pillow of his bottom lip. It was unintentional, completely innocent, and hot as Jesus’ sauna.

Shit list position confirmed.

“You’re, like, really attractive,” Ashley noted, evidently drunk on her water and speaking via a direct link to my brain.

His chuckle was like a full body vibrator, skating through the nerves on every inch of my skin. One long-fingered hand shot straight to his neck, rubbing the uneasiness of Ashley’s compliment out quickly.

“Thanks.”

“Are you an actor?” she continued. “You’ve got to be, right?”

Los Angeles. Every attractive person you meet
must be
in the business.

I would have laughed at Ashley’s assumption and how ridiculous it was if I hadn’t been thinking the same thing. I tried to avoid making fun of myself when I could.

He looked slightly bashful, his flighty eyes seeking comfort in the ground momentarily, but fought straight through the discomfort and answered her frankly. “Uh, yeah. I mean, I’m trying anyway. I’m not particularly successful.”

Distracted by my reaction to him and his honesty, I didn’t run a pre-check on anything coming out of my mouth. Not that I normally had the best filter, but this particular faux pas really took the cake. “So you’re another one of those actors, waiting tables to pay the bills and pass the time?”

He bristled, and rightfully so.

I really had been out of line with that comment, but I couldn’t seem to call upon the tools so desperately needed to call it back.

But he did it with an otherworldly calm, meeting my eyes directly and speaking in a soft, polite—if only slightly teasing—voice.

“One of those? Oh. No. Waiting tables is my dream. I just act to fit in.”

My cheeks felt hot with embarrassment and shame, and the glint in his eyes told me that he saw it.

Sometimes I hated that my default setting was bitch. Such a dominant trait was hard to overturn. “Okay, so maybe that was a little rude.”

One corner of his mouth—the smug one—rose just slightly. “It’s a distinct possibility.”

Silence hung between us, but while my time was spent avoiding eye contact, his was spent calculating his next blow.

“I guess you must be something really impressive then?”

“Huh?” My wandering eyes shot to his with the focus of a heat-seeking missile.

“Well, you obviously aren’t on the waiting tables slash acting track that the rest of us losers are.”

“Um—”

“I mean, you must spend your time doing something that really matters, right? Educating orphaned kids. Curing Cancer. Coming up with the way to end all of the world’s unrest.” Attractive arms crossed over an equally nice chest. “Am I right?”

As confident as I usually was, and as many comebacks as I normally had, I couldn’t think of one single thing to say. I’m talking silence. Not even a stutter.

Unfortunately, my sister wasn’t suffering from a similar problem.

“Hah! She’s an actor too. But she’s too busy to wait tables.”

“Working?” he asked, one manly eyebrow cocking in time with his question. If I wasn’t mistaken, he actually looked impressed for a minute.

I was ready to leave right then, get out while I was ahead, but Ashley, being the one of us with a conscience, had a knack for ruining a good thing.

“Oh. No. She’s just too busy being her. You know, cutting people like you down in her spare time.” She looked away, bopped her blond head to the music in the background. “But, she doesn’t do it on purpose. She was born this way. Cold, dead heart and all. I guess that’s why people like me still love her.”

I tried not to let her words hurt. After all, if I were describing myself, I probably would have chosen the exact same phrasing, and because I knew her so well, I knew she was just trying to make a joke and bail me out of a situation of my own making.

And yet, I still couldn’t stop the smile from slipping and sliding its way off of my face. Eyes on the table, I blinked rapidly, pushing the emotion back inside forcefully.

I wanted to be nicer. I really did. But I couldn’t seem to figure out how to be emotionally exposed and strong at the same time. And when I had to make a choice between the two, strong always won out.

It only took a few seconds to recover, but when I looked back up at the waiter, he was looking at me differently. Assessing.

Uncomfortable was too cushy a word for what I was feeling. Bombs exploded and sprayed shrapnel, the sharp edges of his scrutiny digging into the flesh of my muscle and making it twitch just beneath the not-protective-enough layer of my skin. So much sensation at once made my eyes jump back and forth, struggling to compensate for the sensory overload.

I didn’t like being judged. I mean, the actual process of it. Not just the result of someone’s perusal, but the examination itself. This guy was reading me, studying the order and punctuation of my paragraph and piecing it together to understand my story. It felt invasive. Personal. Nearly intimate.

I knew it was a necessary part of life, and unfortunately, with acting, it came as a pretty regular part of the job. But for the most part, when it came to my professional life, people did it behind my back. Some might call it underhanded. I just called it preferred.

“Anderson,” he said, offering his hand to Ashley first.

“That’s your first name?” I asked, interjecting myself back into the conversation just in time to sound like an asshole. Obviously, it was.

Jesus.

I was on a goddamn roll tonight. Next I’d be implying that he walked and talked wrong. Or maybe, if I really got out of control, that his penis somehow didn’t measure up to societal standards. I didn’t know how I’d make the geographical leap from simple insults to belittling the most essential part of the male form, but if anyone could do it, it’d be me.

Plus, I had absolutely
no
room for making fun of someone’s name.

My parents had named me Easie. Seriously, Easie—said just like ‘easy.’ And no, it wasn’t a cute nickname for something far more elegant and sophisticated.

I can’t even count the number of times I heard my parents tell the story of my name. How they knew their first child wouldn’t be easy. That even though everyone thought they were young and naive, they knew I would be the biggest challenge of their lives. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t try to sway the odds in their favor with my name.

It was a pretty annoying name to be saddled with as a kid, but even I had to admit it was clever for a couple of sixteen year olds.

“Well, I’m not Bond. I don’t make a habit of introducing myself with just a last name.”

“Ashley,” my sister introduced herself, ignoring my stupid comment. “And this is Easie,” she explained, pointing to me.

His eyes lit up like fireworks, sparkling and splaying with mischief and mirth in a riotous explosion of green that sucked at my attention just like an unexpected explosion in the dark, night sky would have.

Fuuuck.

I needed a cigarette. Stat.

Ignoring his imploringly naughty green eyes and Ashley’s smug yet innocent smirk, I pulled the strap of my bag off the back of my chair and rummaged through the contents of my purse recklessly. I knew that being a disorganized mess would come back to bite me at some point, but I never would have guessed it would be in a moment like this.

Thin, sturdy cardboard met the tips of my fingers surprisingly quickly, but the churning whoosh of my panicked blood made it feel like a lifetime.

By some mini miracle, my hand emerged uninhibited, though the thrill of victory didn’t last long.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Anderson informed me swiftly, his words completely devoid of flirtation. He didn’t mean it as a suggestion.

Fucking fuuuuck.

Were there no lung-destroying people like me left in this world?! I missed the days when you could actually light up indoors.

“Alright,” I agreed in the name of expediency, hopping down off of my stool height chair. “I’ll just pop outside real quick.”

“Or you could stop smoking,” Anderson suggested, cocking a brow with interest he had no right or reason to have.

Who the fuck did this guy think he was?

Hackles fully risen, I snapped back, “Right. I’ll just go outside,” moving to skirt my way around his imposing posture.

His eyes lingered on my face, scanning the line of my mouth and trailing their way up to my eyes. The set of his jaw sharpened noticeably from the exaggerated clenching of his teeth, but he didn’t move. Not with a turn of his shoulders or his hips, and certainly not to take a step out of my way. His body acted as a literal barricade, a fortress I would have to escape should the cigarette be that important to me.

If I hadn’t found his highhanded response so fucking irritating I might have given in. I was all about expending the least possible effort.

Of course, I
did
find it irritating—on a fairly epic level—so I shoved my way past, practically body checking him with the full weight of mine as I did.

His green eyes followed me, yielding to my movements when his body refused to do the same, and for some God-awful, weak-willed reason, my traitorous bright blues looked back and held them.

Like a twisted turn of fate, the features of his face were made to smile but instead sat stagnant, weighted down by years of sadness. I didn’t know him, but I knew what I saw in his frighteningly open expression—pages and pages of irreversible history waging a war within his story.

I didn’t break the contact quickly enough, and not looking where I was going, I tripped over the leg of a chair and fell straight into another man. Big hands gripped the skin of my upper arms, righting me to standing again and pulling my attention away from Anderson once and for all.

“Excuse me,” I murmured quickly before gathering my will and barely surviving dignity and bolting for the safety of outside. Located in one of the less desirable neighborhoods of Los Angeles, the irony of being safer
outside
of El Loco rather than
inside
of it wasn’t lost on me.

The hot, muggy air of the urban outdoors hugged me oppressively as soon as it hit my air-conditioner-cooled skin, but compared to my burning rage, it felt like a fucking freezer.

Shaking the package violently, I freed one cigarette, tucked the pack back into my bag, twitched the wheel of my lighter with my thumb, and touched the brilliant orange flame to my eagerly waiting paper.

What an unbelievable
asshole.
Jesus. The fucking
nerve
of that guy.