The Pact(30)

For one heady moment, I swear I’m going to do it. I’m going to march right into that storeroom, kiss her madly, fuck her up against the wall and let her know how I really feel.

I take in a deep breath and ready myself.

I can do this.

She comes out of the storeroom, holding a large box and a sheepish smile on her face. The moment is gone. I won’t do anything.

I am a coward.

A horny, fucking coward.

“Here you go,” she says, placing the box on the counter with a thunk. “Your birthday present.”

I lift it up. It’s heavy. “You shouldn’t have,” I tell her, feeling both bad that she bothered and touched that she did.

She shrugs playfully. “Whatever. It came into the store a while ago and I just thought of you. Had it in the back waiting for your birthday to come around.” I stare at her and she quickly taps the top of the box. “Hurry up and open it, would you?”

I open the flaps and peer inside. It’s a black leather jacket.

“Holy shit,” I say, slowly taking it out of the box like it’s made of gold. I hold it up. It’s pretty fucking dope and I’m not that much of a fashion kind of guy. It’s moto-style with banded strips down the arms, just enough detail to make it interesting.

“Look at the back,” she says.

I turn it over. At the back of the neck in small silver stitching it says “L. McGregor.”

I eye her, feeling stunned at the personalization.

She blushes and looks away coyly. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” I whisper.

“Like this is a big deal. It’s not. I saw the jacket and thought it was suited for a macho helicopter pilot. So I had it stitched with your name. I dunno, I think I was going for a Top Gun kind of look. Maybe we could start calling you Iceman.”

She’s trying to play this off and maybe I should let her but damn if this didn’t mean a lot to me. My heart does a flip in my chest. This just made getting out of bed on this hellish day totally worth it.

How could I ever move away from this woman right here?

I swallow hard and try and think of something to say. But only the simple truth will do.

“Thank you. It means a lot.”

She reaches over and slowly punches my arm. “You’re welcome.”

I slip into the jacket, admiring the way it fits like a glove, and do a shot of Wild Turkey to put my mind back in the right place.

I hope it stays there.





CHAPTER EIGHT

30

STEPHANIE



You know your day can’t possibly go well when you wake up with water leaking on your forehead, like some form of Chinese water torture.

I open one eye just as another drop hits it.

“What the fuck?” I quickly wipe my face as I sit up and away from the droplets. I look up at the ceiling where a giant bulge has formed and water has started to run out from it, dropping straight down onto my bed.

Just fucking great. I bought the tiny apartment in the Mission district two months ago and already it’s falling apart. Before I would have been renting so I would have just called up the landlord and let them deal with it. Now the apartment is entirely my own, entirely my problem, and bearing the brunt of the fall storms we’ve been having.

Happy fucking thirtieth birthday to me. Here’s a new decade full of responsibility you didn’t remember signing up for.

I sigh and get out of bed, wishing Aaron had stayed the night so he could help me. Then I remember his tendency to disappear when shit gets hard (as in, anything more than posing in front of a camera) and know that calling Linden would actually be a better idea. At least that’s a man that gets shit done.

But I don’t call him. I know his girlfriend hates my guts and I can’t imagine my plea for help would go down well. Besides, it’s my apartment, my responsibility. I’m thirty now. I just need to put on my big girl panties and handle it.

The surprising thing about turning thirty, other than having such a rude awakening, is that it’s not as devastating as I thought it would be. I think twenty-nine was a lot worse, just as I think thirty-nine will be worse than forty. By the time that magical/terrible year approaches, you’ve already made peace with it.

I, however, can’t seem to make peace with the fact that I’ve bought a leaky condo. I suppose it was kind of my fault since I went for the smallest, cheapest option in a somewhat dodgy area of the district, but buying property in San Francisco is ridiculous. If it wasn’t for my mom co-signing the mortgage (apparently the banks don’t like the self-employed) and the fact that it was a private sale through my mom’s friend’s nephew, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

It’s home, though it’s not exactly the type of home I imagined I’d have at thirty. It’s 600 square feet, one bedroom with a box-sized den and an even tinier balcony that overlooks a pretty church and homeless people on park benches – a far cry from the historically revered, three-story Victorian done up in ice-cream shades, with backyard garden, that I hoped I’d end up in. I also hoped I’d have a bunch of kids running around the house and a husband and neighbors who would drop by all the time. Maybe my husband’s hot brother-in-law would rehearse his underground band with The Beach Boys in the garage.