“But I want you to. I like it when you reassure me.” He gave me a look.
“You want to walk home? Or take a cab?”
“Walk all the way home?” It was quite a trek. I’d never done it before, but I’d probably never been sober when I’d left the bar before either.
“We could try. But you might have to carry me.” I was used to wearing heels, but walking a long distance on uneven sidewalks was different than walking on tile floors and carpeting at the office.
“The things we do for love,” he said and picked me up. I squealed.
“You didn’t have to do it right now! I don’t want you to hurt your back.”
He just shook his head and carried me a few more feet before setting me down.
“Rory, you would never break my back. There’s not enough of you. Shit, sometimes I wonder how it is that women have such warped perceptions of themselves.”
“Well, we could get into media and how it brainwashes us with an ideal that doesn’t even exist outside of Photoshop, but let’s not go there.” He smiled and we just kept walking.
“Are you sure they’re going to like me?”
5
“It looks pretty like that,” Lucah said the next morning when I took my hair down. I’d left it in the braid all night, and now it was beach-wavy. Lucah ran his fingers through it and separated some of the waves. It did look pretty good. I should do it like that more often.
I was fussing about my appearance. I didn’t want to look too formal, but I also wanted to make a good impression. I finally settled on dark jeans, a pair of my red heels (for confidence) and a black and white nautical-looking t-shirt with a pair of silver hoops for my ears. Lucah was also casual in another pair of distressed jeans and a Jimi Hendrix shirt.
“You’re so cool, Lucah. You’re like, way too cool for me.” That earned me another slap on the ass. I definitely wasn’t going to let him make us late by getting me naked again.
“Should we bring anything? Oh my God. I should bring something, right? Can we stop somewhere so I can get something?” My mind started racing, trying to think of what little girls would want, and remembering what I had loved when I was little. Ponies? Mermaids?
Lucah put both hands on my shoulders. I was being much more neurotic than usual, and I was afraid I was going to lose it one time too many and he would realize I was too much work . . .
There I went again. Freaking out about freaking out.
“I’m okay,” I said, putting my hands up. “I’m good. Had a moment of weakness. Resorted to my old ways, but I am going to change and try to be less of a worrywart.” That was the nice way to put it.
“I’m proud of you. That is a very worthy goal. And no. You don’t have to bring anything, but if you want to stop, we can stop.” I got a kiss on the forehead for that one.
A little while later we walked to the parking garage where Lucah was keeping his car. I didn’t even know he had one until he told me about it.
“In addition to my stuff, my pictures and everything,” he said as he led me up the stairs of the garage to almost the top level, “this car has been with me through everything. Until you, there was very little, other than my family and my job, that I loved as much as this car.” He paused next to a vehicle covered in a white cloth. I thought it was a sedan, by the shape.
“Are you ready?” I had rarely seen him this excited. Like a kid on Christmas morning who knew he was getting a pony. With a flourish, he whipped the cloth off the car and let it fall onto the concrete. Very dramatic.
Okay, so I didn’t know much about cars. But I knew that this was something special. It was electric blue and looked like a bad boy in an 80s movie would drive it to pick up the young, innocent girl and do wicked things with her in the backseat. I wanted to do wicked things in the backseat. One quick look showed me that they were black leather. Nice.
“It’s a 1985 Chevy Camaro. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it’s a sweet ride.” He put his hand on the hood, like he was petting a dog. Or an old friend. It was both cute and a little disturbing. But I could appreciate getting attached to something like this. I looked down at my red shoes and clicked my heels together. Yeah, I could understand getting attached to an inanimate object.
“Does it have a name?” I said, leaning on the back.
“No, I don’t have a name for my car,” Lucah said, giving me a look.
“What? A lot of guys name their cars. Especially when they’re very important cars.” He just shook his head and came around to the passenger side to open my door for me.
“Ooohh, I like this. We should go driving more often,” I said, and got in. The interior of the car was spotless. I was afraid to touch anything for fear of getting fingerprints on it that he would have to wipe off later.
Lucah got in and smiled at me.
“What do you think?”
“This is a fine piece of machinery you have here. What’s her name?” I asked him again, because I knew, without a doubt, that this car had a name and I was going to get it out of him. It was my experience that whether it was cars or ships, they were almost always female.
He shook his head and then mumbled something under his breath.
“What? I didn’t quite catch that.” I put my hand at my ear.
“Bluebird. Her name is Bluebird.” He blushed as he said it, which made me laugh.
“Well, nice to meet you, Bluebird,” I said to the dashboard. “May you drive fast and true.”
Lucah started her up and she roared to life. He revved the engine and the sound shattered the quiet of the parking garage. Stealthy, we were not. Lucah revved the engine again, and backed out of the space as I buckled my seatbelt. Then he hit the gas and we screeched around the corner. I held onto the door and tried not to scream.
“You’re not scared, are you?” he said as we rounded another corner and burned some rubber.
“Nope,” I squeaked. “I trust you.” It was the car I didn’t trust. And other drivers. And things falling from buildings and rogue construction cranes and cinderblocks and a million other things that could hurt us while we were in this car.
“You ride in cabs all the time, and you trust those guys?” Well, I never really thought of it that way.
“Great, now I have to be nervous about cabbies,” I said as we left the garage and merged onto the busy street. Lucah’s brother and his family lived outside the city in Lexington, one of the nicer suburbs. He and his family had grown up poor, but it seemed as if Lucah and his older brother, Tate, had managed to turn it around and be successful. And then there was Ryder.