She nods, chewing her lip absently. My eyes stray after that motion, noting the soft curve of her mouth, the freckle at the corner of the left side. How her face is close set so when she smiles, it scrunches her nose a little. One side goes up, the other is tempered. All that, I get in a single snapshot.
“I used to when I lived here,” she says.
“Oh yeah? What’s your favorite place in Knifely?”
“Well,” she says. “You ever been to the diner on the corner? They have the best-worst coffee you’ve ever had. Just burnt to a crisp, but I get it every time because it tastes…like home, you know?”
My mind goes back to the coffee pot in our house growing up. It was a drip machine, originally white but yellowed from years of people touching it. Thousands of cups of coffee went through that machine over the years, every morning before we headed out to work nights in the factories or on Aiden’s handyman business. When we moved to Montana, everything was gathered up and thrown into a county dumpster.
A stack, a heap of little bits of my life, in a huge green can in the yard.
“Yeah,” I say. “Kinda do.”
“Well, when I was in high school, I had a job downtown,” she says. “Nothing much, but I would park in the city lot and walk through the diner. The owner gave me free pie.”
“Sounds nice,” I say. “Familiar, you know?”
“It's a very small town.”
“You like that? I thought you lived in the city now?”
She sobers, and I wonder if I said the wrong thing. A line appears between her brows, and then she shrugs.
“I think I’m a small town and a city person,” she says.
“Can be both.”
“You definitely can.”
She starts talking about Knifely again. Pretty soon, I’ve had an introduction to every business owner down the main drag, and I know who their families are down to their second cousins. I could probably sit and listen to her talk for a few more hours. Our plates are empty. I’m leaning on my elbows, nodding and adding a few words here and there. It’s nice not to feel the pressure to talk.
“Janie!”
We both startle. Leah’s standing on the far side of the room, a stack of tablecloths under her arm.
“Your mom’s looking for you,” she says. “Needs some help.”
Janie stands abruptly. “Sorry, I’m probably talking your ear off and you need to get back to work.”
I probably do need to get back to work, but I don’t care.
“No, I liked it,” I say sincerely. “A lot.”
We don’t speak for a moment, just staring through the distance between us. Her lips curve in a little smile. A zing runs through the air, right to my chest and down my spine.
“Well, see you Saturday night,” she says.
“You will,” I say.
She blushes, tucking her hair behind her ear, and goes to join Leah. They’re talking all the way to the door, probably about me, because they keep glancing back. I don’t think I’ve ever made anybody blush before, but I like it.
That night, I don’t think about anything but her and tomorrow night. It takes me through my evening routine and right to my bed, where I lay on my back and stare up into the dark.
It’s not so suffocating anymore. The ceiling is just a ceiling—I don’t see the hewn inside of a collapsed mine or the dirty, molding ceiling of my childhood home. No, it’s just sanded woodand the faint impression of her face, all soft and glimmering in the faint moonlight.
My eyes close, and I sleep hard.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
