for two months while his folks’ basement stood empty. He didn’t have money to burn.
The problem was, the place reminded him way too much of his longtime crush on she-who-must-not-be-named. He’d spent years in this hole, listening to tapes of her playing her sax. Watching video montages of her. Wanking off to wishful, erotic scenarios where Cindy had an epiphany from God, and started seeing him as something other than a convenient adjunct brain. An external hard drive she could program to do her coursework while she went out partying with other guys. And he shouldn’t even go there. God knows, enough guys had already been there before him. A path had been blazed, by God.
A flash on the screen. A response to his query. He shot across the room on the rattling swivel chair. Excellent. Mindmeld himself.
R U still there witchywoman Bware
He dove for the keyboard, typed. Yes hi how R U
Good tnx did U like my abstract
Jared had sent Mina an abstract he’d written on using roex filters to represent the magnitude response of auditory filters. Miles intuited that it was either a love offering or a sort of test, so he’d ripped the sucker apart. He grabbed his notes, and began to type. Yesbut I have problems wt roex filters—fits 2 notched-noise masking data R unstable unless filter is reduced 2 a physically unrealizable form & there’s no time domain version of roex (p,w,t,) 2 support…
His hands clattered away. His reasoning was that if Jared was a garden variety boy dweeb trolling for sex and validation, he would be scared away by a girl who showed him up, and Miles wouldn’t waste any more time on him. But if Jared was the Geek Eater, he would lick his slobbering lips and make another move. And Miles might start earning the money Connor was paying him. He wanted some results.
It was embarrassing, but he felt a constant need to prove himself to those McCloud guys. They were so good at every freaking thing they did. Hanging out with them was a sure recipe for a bitching inferiority complex. He gritted his teeth and coped, partly because he wanted to learn the crazy stuff they knew. Mostly because he really liked them.
Still. Every one of those guys, Seth included, was a super-solvent, successful sex god and ninja maniac. Fucking unreal. It would give him a lot of satisfaction to make a contribution to Con’s investigation. Helping nail the Geek Eater would be a coup. A big self-esteem fluffer.
“Hi, Miles.”
The soft voice from behind him made him levitate about five inches out of his chair. He spun around, heart pounding. Geek Eater, Jared, Mina, McClouds, utterly wiped out of his mind in an instant.
“Fuck,” he gasped out. “Cindy? What are you doing here?”
Cindy stood there, smiling uncertainly, backlit by the light that spilled down the stairs from the kitchen, front lit by the eerie blue glow of the computers. She was wearing a lace-up red thing that clearly demonstrated that the wearer had no need for a bra.
“Your mom told me you were down here,” she said. “Erin told me about the car bomb, and the cops, and Sean, all that stuff. Totally wild.”
“Yeah.” His voice was thick. He coughed. “It was, uh, intense.”
Cindy rolled her eyes. “Those McCloud guys can’t do the simplest thing without it turning into a life or death drama.”
Miles let out a noncommittal grunt.
Cindy perched her taut ass on the edge of his worktable. Faded jeans showed off her smooth, tanned belly. A silver ring gleamed in her navel. If she turned around, the waistband would be just low enough to show off the Celtic knotwork tattoo. It pointed at the crack of those pert buttocks. As if any more attention needed to be drawn to them. He shifted in his chair. Crossed his legs, to hide his inevitable reaction.
“You lost the specs,” she commented. “Are you using contacts?”
“Nah. Got laser surgery a few months ago.”
“Oh. Wow.” Cindy twisted her hands together, at a loss. She looked different. Her face was spattered with freckles, hair yanked into a ponytail. Her eyes looked shadowed. Too much partying, probably. No makeup. She was ten times cuter without all that crap on her face.
“So?” she said brightly, throwing up her hands. “What’s up? What are you doing up here? I thought you were sick of this town.”
“I thought you already knew everything worth knowing.”
“Oh, come on, Miles,” she said softly. “Don’t.”
He shrugged, with bad grace. “I’m teaching a karate class at the dojo up near the Arts Center,” he said.
“Oh!” Her eyes widened, impressed. “That’s cool!”
“And I’m doing some sound gigs. Got one tonight for the Howling Furballs, up at the Rock Bottom,” he went on grimly.
“Yeah? I know those guys. Maybe I’ll come. And oh. The Rumors have a gig next week, and our sound guy just bagged. Could you—”
“No,” he said curtly. “I don’t want to do sound for the Rumors.”
He’d done free sound for years for the Vicious Rumors, the band in which Cindy played sax. Just to stare at her, to be near her. Chump.
Cindy wrapped her arms across her belly, a thing she did when she was tense. “OK. Uh…maybe I’d better not see if I can make it to the Furballs’s gig tonight, then.”
She waited for him to tell her to please, please come. He sat like a lump, and let her wait. Let her see how it felt. He’d waited for years.
“OK,” she said. “I have a good imagination. I’ll just pretend that we’re having a polite conversation, being as how we’ve been friends for years. Let’s see. You would start with, hey, Cin, great to see you, how’s life? Oh, yeah, Miles. Same old same old. Band camp is crazy, plus I’m working at the Coffee Shack in my free time, so if you get the urge for a Mexican Iced Mocha, come on down, and I’ll frappé one up for free. For sure, Cin, you bet I’ll be there for that iced mocha, with bells on. Great, Miles, I’ll be waiting for ya. Other than that, just gigs with the Rumors, pick-up bands, weddings. And I’m getting my own place, in September.”
“Yeah?” He broke his own vow of silence. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
Cindy touched her tongue to her upper lip, a trick that drove him crazy with lust. “Um…there’s no guy. I’m not seeing anybody.”
“Wow, sounds like a state of emergency,” he muttered sourly.
“It’s a group house. With Melissa and Trish. In Greenwood.”
“And your mom can manage her mortgage plus your rent?”
Cindy looked hurt. “Nobody’s going to pay my rent. What do you think I’m doing, busting my ass with three million jobs? Jeez, Miles.”
“I just figured you’d hook up with some guy with a Maserati and a baggie full of coke, and be his happy little concubine,” Miles said.
Splotches of color bloomed on Cindy’s face. “Ouch,” she whispered. “That was really cold
