They’d only said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we really can’t give you any information.”
And I’d begged, “Please, I just need to know she’s alive, that’s all.” I’d added, “Our family is so worried, we haven’t heard anything yet and we just need to know that she’s still ... with us.”
I’d known nothing about the young woman or her family, but I’d been desperate to know she survived. “Please,” I’d said again, this time my voice raspy.
“I shouldn’t say anything,” the woman finally said in a low voice, “but she is alive. She was discharged with her father an hour or so ago. Hope she makes it.” Then the line had gone dead. With a quick click, that had been the last I’d heard or known about Bess.
And here she was—waiting tables in a fine resort in the middle of absolutely nowhere, working for what happened to be a potential client of mine.
Not able to dwell anymore, I grabbed the phone and dialed the spa.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wrigley. How can I assist you today?”
“I would like a massage in my room. Can you accommodate me on such short notice?”
“Certainly. Let’s see, how is half past two? I can send someone up then.”
“Good. That works. A female, please.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Wrigley.”
“Thanks,” I said before slipping the handset back into the cradle.
With only twenty-two minutes left to waste before my brief respite arrived, I texted my brother.
ME: Hey, what’s up? I’m in PA. Saw Grandma and Grandpa’s graves before heading to the mountains for a meeting. You good?
It took about five minutes before my phone beeped with a response.
JAKE: Hey there, you responsible little fuck. Good for you, you visited. I don’t do fucking cemeteries. They don’t know you visited. You could have seen me instead.
ME: Yeah, I know. My bad. Listen, I’ll call you from home and we’ll set something up. OK?
JAKE: OK, fuckface.
On that endnote, I powered the phone down and waited for the masseuse to arrive with her table and, hopefully, her magic hands. Hands that would help me stop obsessing over the past and the unknown future for at least an hour.
Which they somewhat did—until it was time for me to jump in the shower and clean up for dinner.
I was a man obsessed, a completely new brand of Lane Wrigley. All because a girl I had never formally met, whose name I only knew from hearing her friend screaming it, had broken through my shell and touched my soul. In my head, I knew it was all wrong, and that I should get in my rental and leave the state of Pennsylvania faster than I came, but I couldn’t.
In a pair of jeans and a freshly pressed designer long-sleeved T-shirt, I made my way to the quiet tavern for dinner at a quarter after five. Management had insisted dinner be early, and I didn’t want to argue. But it did feel a bit strange to eat hours before I normally even finished working.
None of it mattered because there she sat, hands in her lap, semi-watching the television behind the bar, her hair down, drifting around her shoulders, hiding her long lashes and profile. I took a moment to watch, trying to convince myself to turn and walk away. To run, like I originally had to Florida. I should just hurry back home to the beach and my lonely diet of work and women—women who needed nothing from me.
Bess. The girl I’d harbored an ongoing fascination for since the night we met, and since then had carried a borderline mental obsession with the exact episode that led to meeting her.
The girl who so obviously was a mess and needed help, the young woman I left in the care of a belligerent EMT who was annoyed to be called out on a Friday night to help a strung-out, presumably spoiled college girl. While I went home and screwed my brother’s flavor of the week.
Bess, the girl I had abandoned, was my one chance at redeeming myself. No longer a girl, she was now a grown-up woman who clearly had no recollection of ever meeting me, now waited tables in Pennsylvania for a living, and had just lifted her head and caught me staring at her.
I moved toward her with purpose and authority; after all, I’d called this business dinner. Approaching the table with my hand out, offering to shake hers, I said, “Hi, I’m Lane Wrigley.”
Clearly apprehensive, she stood and warily brought her small palm to meet mine, and shook my hand while saying, “Bess. Bess Williams.”
A small tingle ran between her hand and mine. Not love at first sight or any of that crap, not a burning desire that ran straight to my dick. It was more an electric current, a familiar one—at least for me. I remembered checking her for a pulse with her girlfriend screaming in my ear, her small palm limp and lifeless in my hand.
Now her hand was warm and once again tucked inside my own. Irrationally, I felt as if she held my heart within her hand, the heart that beat life into my body, and that I might arrest if I let her hand go.
