“Ugh,” I moan. Maybe I can leave the country.
The girl next to me turns and stares at me.
I make my mouth form a smile.
I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Nothing to see here.
After I treat myself to a Cuban iced coffee from next door, I keep myself busy with errands. Groceries at Trader Joe’s, new windshield wipers for my held-together-with-duct-tape Kia.
At home, I blast music and sing along as I arrange the dyed daisies I bought for the kitchen bar. Fluorescent pink, blue and purple. Fake, just like my good mood right now.
But fake it ‘til you make it, right?And keep moving.
I clean like the good daughter of a housekeeper I am. Two hours later you could eat off my bathroom floor.
I take a long, cold shower. There’s still a burning, aching energy in my chest I haven’t managed to purge, so I try to put it out with a bowl of tortilla chips and guacamole.
By the time I head to the Metro Diner for my Saturday night shift I’m hot, exhausted and stuffed full of junk food.
It’s going to be a long night.
***
I push through the door, the familiar tinkling bells against the glass and then the familiar voice of Bernie McKenney greeting me. “Ah, Lennon, right on time like clockwork.”
He’s been saying the same thing for the last nine months of Saturdays I’ve worked this shift for him. I needed the extra money, and he needed someone to close up so he could have a date night once a week with his wife of forty years. She threatened to divorce him. Sometimes that’s what it takes to get a point across in marriage, I guess. Not that I would know. My longest relationship lasted four months, and I spent most of that time avoiding him.
“Hey, Bernie.” I shove my purse beneath the counter and kiss his wrinkled cheek. “Go on, get out of here. Don’t keep Mel waiting.” I slip an apron over my Metro Diner T-shirt and jean shorts, tossing a pen and an order pad into the pocket. “Where are you taking her tonight?”
He opens the cash register drawer to pull out the big bills, which he always stashes in the safe before he leaves. “Cantina’s. She saysshe’s craving Mexican. It sets my stomach on fire, but the lady gets what she wants,” he chuckles.
“You’re a good man, Bernie.” I smile for real for the first time since last night. Then he fills me in on the four booths currently occupied by our regulars, and I get to work as he heads out.
It’s a small diner, so there’s only me and Rodrigo, the cook in the back. The clientele tonight is mostly our usual customers. I carry the coffee pot around for refills and end up having a conversation with the table in the corner about how everyone’s allergic to gluten nowadays. I smile as I listen to their conspiracy theory, but it’s forced. I’m just tired now. Fighting thoughts of Sandro all day has worn me down.
But I know it will get easier. It did it before, right?
Chapter 8
Alessandro
I’m in my home office, finishing up some emails before getting ready to go change for our excursion tonight, when an email comes in from Caelian.
The subject is “Putting You Out of Your Misery.” The attachment is “Lennon Kelly.”
Funny, asshole.
I sit up, click it open and begin to read.
She returned to Tampa to attend the fall semester at the University of South Florida’s School of Social Work. An unfamiliar warmth fills my chest. I rub it.
Maybe it’s heartburn.
She did it. Got her master’s in social work. But that means she only stayed with her aunt in Chicago for three months. She’s been here in Tampa this whole time?
I keep reading. And apparently, she’s also been living in the same apartment. Her address is the same. If I would’ve just looked, she would’ve been easy to find. I still have a key to that apartment for fuck’s sake.
Then what? Force her to be a part of the bloody world she hates? The world that took her mother?
