Page 3 of Virago

“Well, it will be a lot less interesting around here without you. But obviously, our work together can be done remotely, so it’s not a problem. Let’s sketch out some pacing.”

~oOo~

Bright sun beamed down on an early-May afternoon, making a promise that the winter truly was over. The day’s forecast called for a high near seventy degrees, and Gia could tell the temperature was approaching that mark. But the chilly breeze off Lake Michigan warned that such promises were fragile things, and the Chicagoland area not-infrequently saw snow in May. As she strode southward on Chicago Avenue toward her apartment, Gia zipped up her jacket and burrowed into the aged softness of the leather.

Born in a little Mid-Missouri town in the heart of the heartland, Gia had thought she understood crazy weather. Every Missourian she’d ever known (at least those over the age of thirty-five) coughed up the same tired joke about how if you don’t like weather in Missouri, wait around a couple hours and you’ll get something else, and tired as it was, there was truth to it. She was used to weather swinging wildly in a single day.

Three years in the Chicago area had reset the bar for crazy weather and instilled in her a great respect for the capricious power of the lake and its effects. She had only a t-shirt on under her jacket, but there was a hoodie in her pack, just in case. She also had a pair of knit gloves in her pack; ever since Christmas a few years back, when she’d wrecked her Camaro and been stranded in a snowstorm, she had a thing about her hands getting cold. Now she kept gloves with her if there was the slimmest chance the temperature would drop below about sixty.

Chicago was a magnificent city, and she’d loved living here, the only truly urban area she’d ever lived in. She’d miss the energy and the dynamic cultural bustle of this metropolis. Still, it would be nice to go back home and settle in for a while. Signal Bend hadn’t been her primary residence since she’d started her freshman year at Mizzou. Almost seven years. More than a quarter of her life. But no matter how long or often she was away, no matter how long she lived, it would always be home.

~oOo~

Gia let herself into her studio apartment and sighed at the mess that remained. Her parents had arranged for her to ship most of her stuff back home, and she’d worked out a deal with the landlord to comp her last two months of rent in exchange for leaving most of the furniture (all of it IKEA) so he could rent the apartment furnished. All that remained was what she could fit in Cammy, her 1972 Camaro SS, but the apartment was still a disorganized mess. She’d been focused on writing her prospectus and getting notes from Dr. Santana before she left town.

Focusing on her studies had been the defining feature of her personality throughout her years at Northwestern. She hadn’t even taken the time to make a friend. She had study partners, people she’d meet up with at Cupitol for coffee and discussion, or go into the city with for a museum exhibit, but those relationships were mostly incidental, like a buddy system during school field trips. Gia was in Chicago to study, not to find friends.

She’d dated a little during her time here—because, you know, she was a young human person, not a robot—but those had been duds, and it was mostly her fault. She did not make connections easily, neither friend nor lover. Her heart had a big, beefy bouncer stopping everybody at the door.

For the past three years, she’d lived alone in this big chunk of a building a few blocks off campus; most of the residents were grad students, with a few upper-class undergrads and a few adjunct faculty mixed in for spice. She knew some of them by name and to say ‘hi’ to at the mailboxes, but no more than that.

There were apartments here with actual bedrooms, too, but they were more expensive, and three grand for a studio was already bananas. A roommate would have defrayed those expenses, of course, but Gia had learned that she was better not having roommates. She and a good friend at Mizzou had moved in together their senior year, and they’d been full-on enemies by the time the lease was up.

She was still deeply connected in friendship to the three suitemates she’d been assigned her freshman year, with whom she’d lived through junior year, but that was different. Those friendships had been formed in the intimate spaces of private life. They’d known whether each other snored, or left their wet towels in a pile by the door, or used your makeup without asking, they’d held each other’s hair back over the toilet and made sure they got up in time for their morning classes, all as part of getting to know each other. All those quirks were factored into the friendship.

On the other hand, finding out your bestie of three years was a control freak who became homicidal at the sight of your dirty plate was a broadside out of nowhere.

Though her former suitemates were among her favorite people in the world, and provided evidence that having a stranger for a roommate could work well, Gia hadn’t even considered answering a roommate-wanted ad or posting one of her own. She wanted to try living alone for the first time in her life—and she’d discovered that she loved it. The chance to do so had shown her how perfectly it suited her personality to have her own space. She liked being able to live her life without worrying if her needs and wants got in the way of someone else’s.

Probably she should already have understood that about herself, because the same personality trait had kept her mostly single thus far. Well, it was one of the factors, anyway. Every time she started a relationship with a guy, things went fine for about three months—right about the time where talk about ‘the next step’ started cropping up. As soon as the guy wanted to stay over, like, all the time, or wanted her to stay with him, or started calling one or the other place ‘home’ for them both—or actually brought up the idea of moving in together—the bouncer in Gia’s heart clocked in for work. She didn’t want the constant dance of compromise. She just wanted to live her life.

Other factors in the multi-vehicle pileup that was her romantic life: all the guys who hadn’t made it past the first date or two. If she wasn’t bored by them, they were offended by her. They thought her arrogant, or bossy, or too tough, or too blunt. One guy had told her she was ‘super hot but needed to cool it with trying so hard to be a dude.’

In response, she’d grabbed his fresh pint of Guinness, chugged it down in a go, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, belched, and told him to suck her dick. Then she’d walked away.

In short, she’d broken up with every guy she’d ever been with. For the most part, she hadn’t looked back. But a few of those men she’d been falling in love with, and she’d broken two hearts rather than one. Even when she really liked a guy, the commitment had felt like a shackle. Worse, it felt like it would change her fundamentally, constrain her personality, nullify her dreams, abort her plans.

Maybe she simply hadn’t met the man with whom she would mesh, unaltered. Or maybe she was simply built to be alone.

Chapter One

“WATCH OUT!” came a loud but vague shout from above.

Zaxx Bello had been working construction for a decade, so it didn’t matter that he didn’t know who’d shouted or who was supposed to watch out. He jumped back against the framing that would eventually become a wall in this cookie-cutter suburban house and pulled all his parts in tight without taking the time to wonder.

A nanosecond after he heeded the warning, a nail gun dropped from the floor above, its electric cord following like a comet’s tail. It landed almost exactly where Zaxx had been standing. It was a construction-grade tool and sat there unharmed, but it likely would have knocked Zaxx out, at least, despite his hard hat, if his reflexes had been any slower.

“You okay?”

Now recognizing the voice above him as Thumper’s, Zaxx looked up and answered, “Yeah—but what the fuck, bruh?”

Thumper leaned over the gap where the joists were uncovered. Subfloor was on the schedule for next week, after all the wiring and ductwork was in, so the crew moved around on planks to do that wiring and ducting. Usually, most of the guts happened in the walls and the subfloor went down early, but all these models had heated flooring and some other fancy gizmos that needed to be wired along the joists, so they all had to be amateur acrobats as well as builders.

“Chill, Z,” Thumper shot back. “I dropped it, I didn’t throw it at you.”

“Watch out for your shit, then.”

“Fuck you, you’re fine. Hey—bring that back up for me?”

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