“Uh, yeah.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Cass to bits. She was my best friend. But she was also the most unorganized person I knew.”
“I have to agree there, but what you don’t realize, Skye, is while there were differences between the two of you, trust me, after living with you both, there’s definitely similarities.”
“Like what?” I challenged.
“Your pie choice for one.”
“Pie choice?”
“Cass could never decide which flavor she wanted, so she’d order them all.”
He watched me cut off a piece of cherry pie and shove it in my mouth, the tartness of the cherries exploding on my tongue.
“She never used to, you know.”
“She never used to what?”
“Order pie. Eat pie. It was only after she met you and started coming here.”
“You’re kidding me.” Hayden shook his head but he couldn’t shake the grin. “I never would’ve known.”
“That first night when you met her, you changed her.”
“How? All I did was run into her. Literally. We didn’t even speak!” he protested, disbelief in his voice.
Signaling to the waitress, I asked her for another plate and fork and when she returned, I indicated she should hand it to Hayden.
Toying with the fork, he flicked it around and around his fingers, before I nudged the apple pie in his direction and pointed. “Eat. Before the ice cream melts.”
“Are you—”
“Just eat, Hayden,” I told him before focusing on the cherry in front of me.
For a few minutes we just sat there quietly eating together. For the first time in days, the stilted, stifling discomfort was gone and I felt like I could breathe again. I hadn’t realized how much I hated it until now that it was gone.
“It’s not great pie,” I admitted as I switched plates, leaving a half-eaten slice of cherry to the side and taking a bite of the pecan.
“Nah, it’s not.”
“But I know why Cass was so excited about this place,” I offered.
“Can’t be the atmosphere,” Hayden suggested and I looked around before bursting out laughing. He wasn’t wrong. A morgue had more life in it than this dump.
The paint was peeling from the walls, the staff looked bored, and the customers, well they looked like they’d just been kicked out of their mom’s basements where they spent all day playing video games and chugging energy drinks.
Tilting my head to the side, I waited until Hayden was looking at me before I explained. I needed him to hear what I was saying. And not just hear it, but really listen.
“It was you.”
“What was me?”
“You were the reason she kept coming back here each night.”
“That’s ridiculous”
“Why?”
