I laugh. “Good lord, that would be a tragedy. No, I need Dex in there to balance me out. And anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.”
“So why haven’t you told him?”
“I’m just…waiting for the right time, I guess.”
She gives me a soft smile, her eyes twinkling. “He’s going to be so bloody happy. You have no idea. He wants to be a father so badly.”
My heart does a backflip at hearing that.
“He does? Really? He doesn’t talk to me about it all that much.”
I know he’s brought it up a few times, in a very light, almost joking way, but I’ve always brushed it off, refusing to let myself really think about it and what it means.
Still, to hear this from Rebecca, that he wants this badly enough to talk to her about it, well, fuck. I’m positively melting inside.
Rebecca scoffs. “Maybe he doesn’t talk to you about it because you’re always so squirrely around the subject!”
“I have my reasons,” I protest. And he knows that, too.
“Yes, well, I have to say I’m glad you’re ignoring all that shite and going for it. It’s not like you’re cursed, Perry.”
“I know,” I tell her.
Or do I?
“Please tell him soon,” she implores me. “I need to live vicariously through your romance.” She takes a big gulp of wine, her expression wistful as she looks down at Lucinda who is glued to her game. “You know, I wouldn’t trade Lucy for the world. She’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I just…” She closes her eyes for a moment, exhaling. “I wish I had what you and Dex have.”
“Things with Dean still weird?” I ask. Rebecca’s history is all sorts of complicated. For one thing, she’s a lesbian (though now she says she’s more pansexual, but doesn’t want to label things), had a girlfriend named Emily, and went through a bad breakup, which resulted in her sleeping with Dean and then getting pregnant. She and Dean have this Ross and Rachel baby mama drama thing where they live together but aren’t together, and the last I heard was they were screwing each other. I don’t know, it’s hard to keep up.
“Yeah,” she says, lowering her voice and glancing at an oblivious Lucinda. “Things were getting too much, too complicated. I love Dean, I really do, but I don’t…I don’t feel that fire. I want to be with someone I do feel the fire for. And the more I’m, you know, with him, the more I feel like I’m leading him on. He wants more, something I can’t give him.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, knowing what a tough spot she’s in. “Have you thought about moving out?”
“Well, honestly, now that I’ve got the show going, and he’s working, we don’t really see each other that often. We’re basically trading off shifts with Lucy Goose and that’s it.”
Rebecca used to have a show called Wine Babes (alongside she who shall not be named) with Shownet, the company that put EIT on the web. For a little while there, she was even a third member of our crew until we decided that shit got too real and we needed to walk away. After floundering for a bit, she finally got cast as a host on a Seattle house-flipping reality thingy. At least this one is a little different from the rest because it’s two (hot) women doing the flipping, Rebecca as the interior design expert.
“You’ll make it work,” I tell her while the waitress brings us our food. “I know you will.”
We all dig in, Lucinda putting her game away to devour the cake. I don’t talk much, the truffle pasta blowing my mind as it always does, and we comfortably sit in silence until I’m absolutely stuffed.
I push my plate away and pour the rest of the wine into our glasses. “So, how is your co-host anyway? Claire?” I ask her. “She’s…” I glance at Lucinda, who is staring at me with big eyes, cake on her face. “Very pretty.”
Rebecca can pick up on what I’m getting at because she gives me a flirty kind of smirk, which tells me she thinks she’s quite pretty indeed.
“Claire’s great,” she says emphatically while she takes her napkin and wipes the cake off her daughter’s face. “Someone I’m eager to get to know better.”
Just as I thought.
I gulp some wine, smiling at her when suddenly the hair on the back of my neck starts to raise and the air around me goes shockingly cold.
I stiffen, quickly swallowing, trying to get my bearings on why I’m feeling creeped out all of a sudden, when my gaze goes to Lucinda.
While Rebecca dabs her napkin on Lucinda’s sleeve to get a smear of frosting off, Lucinda’s eyes go as round as saucers, staring across the restaurant.
I blink at her and then slowly turn my head, following her gaze.
The nearest table has a single woman sitting at it, her back to us.
Her hair is long, all the way to her ass, and black. Wet, even. Actually, the more I look at her, the more I realize she’s soaked to the bone, dressed in an almost translucent, white lacey gown that sticks to her skin.
Her hand is pale, smeared with blood, and it’s holding on to a chain leash that disappears into the blackness under the table.
Everything inside me goes absolutely still.
Holy fuck.
I’m looking at a ghost, aren’t I?
More than that, it’s the leash that’s getting me, the way it leads to something that I can’t see, that I don’t want to see.
I’ve seen something like that before.
So has Rebecca.
“What is it?” Rebecca whispers harshly. “Lucinda? Perry!”
I pull my eyes away from the dead woman and glance at them.
Rebecca is looking between the two of us, frowning, while Lucinda’s eyes are still fixed on the woman in a look of both fear and curiosity.
“What are you looking at, Lucy?” Rebecca asks, her voice growing higher.
Lucinda doesn’t answer.
I look back toward the woman, expecting her to be gone.
But she’s still fucking right there.
And now…now there’s a hint of a leathery tail sticking out from underneath the table.
My mouth goes completely dry, the room starting to spin. I press my hands down on the table to steady myself.
“You don’t see her?” I manage to ask Rebecca, not taking my eyes away from the tail that’s twitching ever so slightly.
“See who?”
“The lady,” Lucinda says quietly. “The lady with the monster.”
“What?” Rebecca hisses. “Lucy, please love, what are you talking about?”
I try to swallow and look at her, hearing the fear in her voice. “I’m seeing what Lucinda is seeing.”
“A ghost?” she whispers, her arm going around her daughter, pulling her close. “Please don’t tell me she’s like you.”
I frown, feeling a pinch in my heart just for a moment. Then I shake my head. “Kids can see things until a certain age. Doesn’t mean she’s like me.”
I look back at the woman, only this time she’s in the middle of slowly turning her head to look at me.
I don’t want to see her face.
BAM!
Something hits one of the large windows looking out onto the street, making everyone in the restaurant jump and cry out in alarm.