She glances at the nude lipstick stain she’s left on her lid. “Are you going to take my coffee back because I have a boyfriend?”
“After you’ve put your mouth on it?”
She half-gapes. “I . . . I’m going to be late to work.”
“I have a confession to make,” I say.
“I don’t think I should hear it.” She puts her purse over her shoulder and goes to stand.
“I found your journal.”
She freezes, then slowly lowers back onto the windowsill. “M-my . . .”
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“It wasn’t . . . what I expected.”
“It’s yours, isn’t it?” I ask. “I found it here, on the floor. Well, nothere,” I point toward the window, “there, under that table.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“I’ve been reading it. Shitty of me, I know, but I opened it to see if I could find someone to return it to, and your words just fucking gripped me. You write like—”
“It’s not mine,” she says. “I think you’re confused.”
I hear her, but the words don’t compute. Since the night of the opening, I’ve grown more and more certain the journal belongs to her. There are some things that don’t add up or coincide with how I pictured her, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m just as captivated by this complex version of my journal girl.
I memorized some things, so I recite a line for her, one of the many that spoke to me during my past few nights of reading. “‘Hot like ice, you melt me down into clean, razor-sharp need.’”
“What?”
“You’re telling me you didn’t write that?”
She’s white as a sheet.
“Because I’ve been wanting to tell you—I know that feeling. Holding an ice cube against your skin until it burns, but it also kind of numbs . . . which can be nice.” I sound like a dumbass. “Sorry. Unlike you, I’m not so great with the words—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says under her breath. “People can hear you, you know.”
“So?” I continue to push. “If you can be melted, does that mean you’re the ice?”
She stands quickly, nearly upending her coffee. “This isn’t me. That. That isn’t me. It’s not my journal or whatever it is you found. I need to go.”
And I need to let her. She’s spoken for. She’s not the girl I thought I’d find, but she wrote those words, I feel it in my gut. She’s hurting somewhere, somehow, damaged. Any sane person would walk away. I’ve done damaged. It didn’t work out well. But for fuck’s sake, I’ve never been so baffled by someone I feel might understand me.
She rummages through her bag and pulls out a fiver. “This is for the coffee.”
“I told you, it’s on me.”
Her hand trembles. “Take it.”
I shake my head. “Halston—”
She sets the bill on the windowsill and hurries for the exit. She’s gone with even less fanfare than she appeared, my hand grazing the weighty leather binding of her concealed thoughts and desires.
I fight the urge to go after her the only way I can, by remembering the look on Sadie’s face when she told me she’d chosen him, not me. But the sting isn’t as fresh as it was a week ago.
I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
