Bird After Bird (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

Wren

I shouldn’t have had that coffee with Darcy! My already racing heart went into overtime, and all the way home I was so nervous I couldn’t stop jiggling. I also had to pee. When I got home, the apartment that had been practically spotless in the morning light now look like a dog’s butt. Everything was slightly dusty, or old. The abstract art I’d bought the year before suddenly looked less like an investment piece and more like an idiot’s folly. Laurie was an artist! He’d see my horrible taste immediately and head right back to Birdseye!

“Since when have you cared about Birdseye?” I asked myself in the mirror. No matter what I did with my hair, it wasn’t right. I’d long ago given in to the wild curls, but now I was braiding it, taking the braid back out. Pulling it half-up, taking the barrette back out. I was midway through pinning up a doomed French twist when the knock came.

“Oh, God,” I said to myself in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my lips bright pink. I hadn’t refreshed my makeup. Hadn’t had time. I did a last minute check of everything—were my armpits stinky? No. Thank GOD! I wished I’d had time to change my clothes, to change into some fresh underwear—

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

My phone bleeped in my pocket.

-I’m outside, Wren. Are you home?-

I could barely breathe. No one had ever affected me like this before.

I raced down the stairs and threw open the door, surprising him. He shoved his phone in his pocket and smiled. “Wren!”

“Laurie! Come on in!”

And then he was smaller, walking toward me at the end of a very long, dark tunnel as my knees disappeared and the carpet felt crunchy against my face.

I fainted.

First time for everything.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Wren

“Hey, hey, there she is,” he said. He’d moved me to the couch. “Thought I was going to have to call 911 or something,” he soothed. His hands caressed my face, and I could feel the warmth of his lap as I realized my head was resting on it.

I tried to sit up.

“Easy,” he said. “You tried sitting up a little bit ago and passed back out. That’s how you ended up in my lap. Have you eaten today? Can I get you something?”

I searched my mind. Had I eaten since Janice’s party? It wasn’t unusual for me to nibble a bit on the go during a busy Monday, but I realized I’d been so excited to see Laurie that I’d forgotten to eat at all.

“Does coffee count?” I asked.

He smiled. “I don’t think so.” He lifted my head and crawled out from beneath me, standing. “Let me have a peek in your fridge. Maybe there’s something that that’ll help.”

I sat up slowly, feeling like a complete and total idiot. I’d had blood sugar issues in the past but nothing like this had happened since those marathon nights in college when I was interning all day and going to classes at night.

Plus, there was my kitchen. I wasn’t exactly a great housekeeper. I’d been in Laurie’s home and I knew he was tidy. He’d probably be totally grossed out by my kitchen sink.

“Damn, girl. Your fridge is as empty as mine! I’ll have to take you out, I reckon.” He fiddled with something, anyway. I could hear him opening and closing cabinets.

In a moment, he returned with a tall glass of lemonade. “Found a lemon in your fridge, and some sugar in the cabinet. Try this, okay? Sorry if it sucks.”

It did not suck. It was the best lemonade I’d ever had. I drank it gratefully.

“I’m sorry I fainted, Laurie.”

“That happen to you a lot?”

I shook my head no. “Not often. Been a few years, actually.”

“Hrm,” he said. He tilted his head and looked at me appraisingly. “I know I’m a knock out and everything…” He puffed up as he said it, and I had to laugh.

“There’s nothing worse than an overblown peacock who thinks he’s the prettiest bird in the room,” I said.

“Cacaw! Cacaw! Guilty as charged,” Laurie said. Then he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “As long as you’re in the room that’ll never be true of me, okay?”

I wished he would kiss me again.

And so started our evening. After the lemonade, I felt refreshed enough to change out of my suit and into jeans, and we walked to the corner for dinner. I introduced Laurie to Chicago pizza and we laughed as the slices disappeared, trading stories about our lives.

He told me all about his art classes, the puppy, about search and rescue, and about the military.

“There was a girl, too. Sylvia. We were high school sweethearts, but she and the dog died while I was deployed.”

I put my slice down. “Laurie, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to hear that.” In the back of my mind, the name from the letters I’d found in the cranes rang a bell.

Was Laurie Byrd the Birdy from the letters? Could I tell him that I’d read them? They’d been so personal. Should I show them to him?

I tamped down minor feelings of jealousy as he spoke about this other girl, reminding myself she was gone and it would be ridiculous to see her as a threat.

I wasn’t the only one with jealous feelings, though.

“And what about that guy who called you ‘babe’ when we were video chatting?” he asked me, changing the subject without warning.

“Oh, Troy? He’s no one. He wanted more from me than I could give.”

“Friends with benefits?” Laurie asked, blushing as he said it.

“More like frenemies with benefits.” Now it was my turn to blush. I’d never been embarrassed by my sexuality, but that didn’t mean I wanted Laurie to know every detail of my past. “At any rate, I might be leaving Parker & Bash, altogether.”

He smiled at that. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the alternative was New York City.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Laurie

We talked all night. Despite her initial fainting spell, Wren bounced back after she’d had a good meal.

“I’ll have to take you for pizza more often,” I said, and she hugged my arm as we walked back to her apartment.

“I’d love that.” She smiled up at me and my heart felt as full as my belly.

“I wish I could stay longer, Wren. I’d love to see more of you. More of this city, too. It’s so cool.”

“I guess we should make the most of it,” she said, unlocking her apartment and leading me inside by the hand.

I wanted to make the most of it, alright. I wanted to peel her clothes from her, one piece at a time, to feel her all over.

She pulled me onto the couch and started kissing me. It was happening. I could have her, I could feel it. I was stiff as a pine and I wanted nothing more to than to plant myself between her legs and work out all the kinks of that particular knot. After a few minutes of kissing, though, I pulled away.

Her lipstick was gone, her face flushed, her hair mussed from where my hands had dug into it. She was a goddess.

“You want to go upstairs?” she asked.

“More than anything,” I said, “but not tonight. I feel like we’ve got something special, Wren. Let’s not rush it.”

She sat up, smoothing her hair. “Right,” she said. “Slow.” She didn’t look happy about it.

I pulled her into an embrace. “You’re amazing, Wren. I think I could fall in love with you. I think I
am
in love with you.”

I’d never spoken so boldly in my life. I was either saving it, or blowing it big-time.

She didn’t answer, but she rubbed my arms and back, and she didn’t pull away. We sat cuddled together, side-by-side on her couch.

Eventually, my nerves subsided and my mind started drifting. I couldn’t help but notice the painting on the wall across the room. “Is that an original Hartt?”

 “Mmm?”

“The painting,” I said. It looks like a Jerry Hartt.” I crossed the room and looked. “It is, Wren. Do you have any idea how valuable this is?”

“My Hartt?” She said it so quietly I wasn’t sure if she meant her actual heart, or the painting.

“It’s an investment piece, for sure,” I said, dropping to my knees before her. “You’ve got to treat something like that with care.”

She smiled. “Glad you like it.”

“I’m curious—did you know right away you had to have it, or did you research it? Was it an impulse buy or an investment piece?”

She smiled. “I saw it at a gallery. I knew it was mine the moment I laid eyes on it. Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. “I do.” When I leaned in to kiss her, I knew it even more.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Wren

We kissed and talked all night. Talking bled into kissing and kissing into talking and when I packed that man into his truck on Tuesday morning, I felt like my heart was going with him.

“This must be what love feels like,” I said to the mirror. “No wonder people are always looking for it.” I thought about Janice and Harold again, wondering if Laurie and I could be happy together like them.

After I called in sick to work, I intended to catch up on the sleep I didn’t get. About twenty minutes into feigning a nap, I found myself googling Laurence Byrd. I found a couple of photos of paintings. An obituary listing him as the fiancé of the girl he’d told me about over pizza. Snapshots of him supporting his friend’s alt-bluegrass band. A neglected Facebook page featuring his art—almost exclusively birds, nature, and other wild creatures.

That took me to a web store where he’d sold a few prints. He had a legion of followers and there were messages posted to his wall asking when he’d make new prints available. I wondered why he hadn’t.

So talented, so sweet. So unavailable to his public. He had all the ingredients set to start a fire under his business, and all he had to do was light the match.

I couldn’t help it, it was just that hard to shut off the business consultant part of my brain. Within minutes, I was daydreaming about opening a studio for Laurie, and living the life of an artist’s wife. Maybe he’d paint me in the nude. Maybe he’d become the next Thomas Kinkaid or something, with me as his business manager. Maybe…

Bleep. I glanced at the phone expecting it to be a text from Laurie.