Only To Be Without, Book 1

Chapter 4

The words were out before he realized what he was saying, and he regretted it instantly.

This was it... this was usually the point where he would make one too many jokes about himself and his ingrained habit of self-deprecation would be taken for self-pity (it wasn't self-pity, that would have involved feeling sorry for himself, and Peter didn't feel sorry for himself, he hated himself, there was a key difference there, he thought) and his date would beat feet faster than he could blink. But he kept watching her face and waiting for that moment of dawning horror but it... it never came. He couldn't quite figure out why she simply seemed to take the statement at face value, and the more he thought about it, he couldn't quite figure out whether he needed to feel insulted by that fact or not.

The subject seemed closed to her, however, because when she opened her mouth in the next moment, it wasn't about him at all.

"Why are they closed?"

"What?" He asked in momentary confusion before he realized they were passing the bodega, Rhee Foods, that kept the neighborhood swimming in beer, wine, cigarettes, and other necessities, and while the security gate hadn't been rolled shut over the entrance yet, the sign had been turned to 'Closed'.

"Oh, them? Hell, Old Sam closes whenever he feels like it. See, I told him it was probably not the best customer service tactic to say you close at ten, then close anywhere from eight til midnight, but he told me to go fuck myself, so..." He shrugged.

"Well," she huffed through her nose primly, "They'll just have to open back up."

"Wh-" he started again, but she had already let go of his arm and stepped beneath the building's awning, her thin knuckles rapping out an insistent rhythm on the glass of the door.

He laughed in disbelief and slinked over to lean against the brick near the door.

"You really just always expect to get what you want, don't you? You're just gonna stand there and demand they open back up? You gonna ask to speak to the manager, should I start calling you Karen, maybe?"

All he could do was grin at her, because she had turned her head toward him with her eyes narrowed yet again, her hand suspended in the open air, and she had the most arresting expression on her face as though she were just two steps shy of going after him here and now. He had always had a somewhat twisted sense of what constituted a good time and goddamn if that didn't sound like fun.

She looked away from him suddenly as the bell hung over the door rattled as the Closed sign was lifted out of the way.

"The fuck do you want?" was barked out from behind the glass in an artificially deep voice but the woman beside him only smiled and waggled her gloved fingers beside her face in a wave in response.

"Good evening, Becca."

"Oh! Bianchi, what's up? Hold on, my Dad's got the keys... APPA!"

She was turning away from the door and Peter thought it was the only thing that kept his eardrums from bleeding as her voice reached what he was sure were glass-shattering decibals.

He'd said

"She is so damned loud," while wiggling his middle finger in his ear, face pulled into a grimace, and it was at the same time she said,