Page 31 of What Happened Last Night

FOURTEEN

Will

The weather had cooled, and a drizzle had started. A Portland fall was beginning. Cursing the fact that I hadn’t brought a jacket, I jogged from the parking lot into the rented hall.

It was Sunday. Luna and I had been home from the tour for two weeks. This morning, she’d surprised me by taking me up on my long-ago offer and texting to invite me estate sale shopping with her. I’d been playing Diablo, but when her text came in, I dropped my controller and said yes. Then I’d sprinted for the shower.

This was not a date. We were two coworkers spending a leisurely Sunday afternoon together, that was all. Since she’d sweated through two rock concerts with me, losing sleep and probably needing to wash the smell from her clothes, I could spend a day at her hobby, which was more civilized and less deafening than mine. Luna wanted a shopping companion, and her female friends wouldn’t go. Hence, she’d called on me.

I immediately spotted her inside the doors, waiting in the line of people to go through to the main room. She waved me over and held up her phone, which had a ticket on the screen. “I’m on a special mailing list,” she explained. “Not everyone gets to go to these, you know.”

“At last,” I said. “I’ve joined an exclusive club.”

“Ha.” She smiled, and we shuffled forward. Her concession to fall was to wear black tights under her navy blue skirt and an open cardigan over her top. Her hair was down over her shoulders, and I resisted the urge to run a finger over one of the glossy curls. I had that urge more and more often these days.

She caught me looking at her hair, so I had to say something. “Your hair looks nice,” I said lamely.

“It’s the worst,” Luna said. “I’ll look like the Bride of Frankenstein soon. My hair frizzes in wet weather.”

I suppressed a smile. “If you don’t like wet weather, perhaps Portland isn’t the ideal place to live.”

“I should probably move to Arizona,” she agreed. “But I burn easily, so it’s either frizzy hair or a peeling nose. I went with the hair.”

“All right.” I put my hands in my pockets as the line shuffled forward. “I had no idea estate sales were so popular.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly a Road Kings show,” she replied as she showed her phone at the door and we passed through, “but I’ve seen people throw hands.”

“We’re the only people here under fifty.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re looking for treasure, and we take it seriously. Don’t make aggressive eye contact or you’ll regret it.”

The rented hall was filled with rows of folding tables, each table packed with items. Furniture lined the perimeter of the room. At one end, two cash registers were set up, and a couple of attendants circulated. I followed Luna’s lead as she started at one corner and we slowly perused the items on display. There were figurines, jewelry in a glass case, dish sets, silverware. I glanced at the wall, on which hung a painting of an English landscape in a gilded frame.

“What are we looking for?” I asked her.

“Something exciting,” was her vague reply. “Something unique. My budget is pretty much zero, so I’d have to be really excited by something to buy it.”

I watched her assess a porcelain bowl. “Why should your budget be zero? I know how much you make.” I paid my assistants generously. It was the best way I knew to keep them from quitting. I wasn’t retaining them with my abundant charm.

Luna gave me a look. “Will, I have to be practical. I can’t just spend everything I earn. Also, my apartment is small, and I don’t have room for clutter. I just like old things. I like to imagine who owned them, who bought them originally. Like this.” She pointed to a set of crystal glasses. “See, this was definitely a wedding gift. The tag says it’s from 1975. Who were these people who got married in 1975? Were they happy? It’s an estate sale, so they must be gone now. Did they get these glasses when they married, and then left them in the box until they died?”

“They’re the good glasses,” I said, getting into it. “For company only. Not for everyday use.”

“But in half a century, no company ever came over that was good enough to bring the glasses out. So no one got to enjoy them at all.”

“One of them died first,” I said, “and then the other one couldn’t bear to even look at the box. Because it reminded them of the wedding. So the box stayed closed.”

She turned and looked at me. “You get it.”

Our gazes caught, and I smiled at her, my pulse speeding up in my throat. An older woman gave us a grin as she walked past us, and I realized that to everyone here, Luna and I looked like a couple. They all assumed we were shopping for things to furnish our place together, like any other young people in love. They assumed we’d buy whatever my girlfriend picked out, and then we’d go home and spend the rest of our lazy Sunday afternoon and evening in bed.

Jesus, that sounded good. Really, really fucking good.

I swallowed, hoping I wasn’t looking at Luna like a lusty goat. “Everyone has a story, I guess,” I said.

“Right,” she replied. She bit her lip and turned away. “I always look at the clothes,” she said, her tone bright. “The jewelry, too.”

I followed her down the length of the room. Luna took her time. Some of the items were beautiful, and a few were ugly—a hideous painting, a throne-like chair with bronze-painted claw feet, a chaise that looked so uncomfortable it could be used for torture. Luna exclaimed over a ceramic garden planter in the shape of a unicorn, his eyes turquoise stones, one hoof lifted as if he was about to prance away. “Is it ugly, or is it gorgeous?” was her delighted comment. “I truly can’t decide.”

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