Ice In His Veins by Chuck Zito

Author:Chuck Zito
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: midnight, ink, fiction, mystery, nicky, d'amico
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2011-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

The night was finally over. At the corner of 53rd Street and 9th Avenue, Marcus begged off a cab ride. Considering that the temperature had dropped again, his excuse of wanting to “walk a little off the night” seemed pretty lame to me. Anna gave me a warning look as she pulled her cab door shut.

We walked down 9th Avenue and turned onto 51st Street.

“So what are you up to?” he asked.

“I’m going home,” I said.

“To bed?” He smiled at me.

“Marcus, what are you doing?”

“What I’ve been doing for more than a year now, ever since I got sober. Regretting the way I treated you. Regretting the missed opportunity. I’m sorry, Nicky. I really am.”

We were standing in front of my building, a streetlight directly overhead. It was all too schmaltzy for me.

“You don’t have to apologize. And certainly not here. What’s next, a string background?” I laughed, but easily, showing no rancor.

“Then can I do this?” Marcus leaned in and kissed me.

He took me completely by surprise. The kiss lasted longer than casual but not long enough for compromising.

“Whoa.” I finally pulled back. “Wait. I’m not—” I stopped. I’m not what? I’d already noticed the appeal of a sober Marcus. But there was also Sean, with whom I’d made a date only two hours earlier. I’d always believed that stage managers should not get involved with anyone in the production. Now I’d kissed two members of Midsummer in one night. Of course, in this case they were both old friends. Did that make it better or worse?

“What about Alex?” I asked.

“Alex?” he asked back.

“Yes. What about you and Alex? I thought I saw, you know, on Saturday night …” Maybe it was more than a little hypocritical to question him about Alex while keeping Sean in reserve, but he was the one who’d broken my heart, not the other way around. I figured that gave me room to maneuver.

“No. And Alex would tell you the same.” Marcus kept his gloved hands on my upper arms.

“He did. He said nothing was going on.”

“See?” He tried to kiss me again. This time I backed up.

“Wait. Not tonight, OK?” There were questions. Were the bottles his or not? Did I want the nice guy or the bad boy? Did I want either?

“OK. I can live with ‘not tonight.’ That’s actually pretty encouraging, all things considered.”

After promising to meet at ten the next morning for Operation Movie Rescue, we said good night. Watching him walk away toward 8th Avenue and a subway, I realized that if I was going to survive Midsummer, I needed a stronger defense than “not tonight.”

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