“You’re good over there.”
“No. I need to face the door.”
“So do I.”
“Quest, I’m not sitting with my back to the entrance.”
“And I’m not moving. I don’t sit with my back to doors, windows, or anything else somebody could come through unexpectedly. That’s not negotiable.”
“I’m not a damsel in distress. I don’t need you playing bodyguard. I need to see what’s coming.”
The way she said it—I need to see what’s coming—told me everything. That wasn’t a preference. That was survival. That was a woman who’d been blindsided by men enough times that sitting with her back to a door probably made her chest tight and her hands shake. I recognized it because I had my own version of it, just for different reasons.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Slide in next to me. We can both see the door and neither one of us has to pretend we’re normal.”
She looked at me like I’d suggested we rob the place together. “I’m not sitting next to you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“You just cut me and pulled a knife on me twice. I think we’re past personal space concerns.”
She stood there for another three seconds, running the math in her head, trying to find an option that let her face the door without sitting next to me. There wasn’t one. The booth was against the wall with only two sides.
She slid in next to me. Left a solid two feet of space between us. Sat rigid, shoulders tight, eyes already scanning the room likeshe was cataloging every person in it and assigning them a threat level.
“Happy?” she said.
“Thrilled.”
The waitress came over and I ordered the jerk chicken with rice and peas, a side of plantains, and a ginger beer. Mehar stared at the menu like it had personally offended her.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You agreed to come eat with me. That typically involves eating.”
“I agreed to come so you’d stop talking. There’s a difference.”
“Get the oxtail,” I said. “It’s the best thing on the menu.”
“I don’t need you to order for me.”
“I’m not ordering for you. I’m making a suggestion.”
She looked at the waitress. “I’ll have the oxtail.”
I kept my face completely neutral, but internally I was doing a victory lap.
The food came quick, which was good because the silence between us was the kind that had weight to it. She wasn’t giving me anything—no small talk, no eye contact, no acknowledgment that we were two people sharing a meal like regular human beings. She sat there with her arms folded, scanning the room every thirty seconds, radiating hostility like it was a fragrance she’d put on that morning.
But she was here. That counted for something.
When the plates hit the table, she unfolded her arms and picked up her fork, and I noticed two things. First, she held it in her right hand with her left hand flat on the table near her knife—not the butter knife, her actual knife, the second switchblade she’d set down next to her napkin like it was a normal utensil. Second, she took a bite of the oxtail and her whole face changed for about half a second. Her eyes softened, her shouldersdropped a fraction of an inch, and her lips did something that was almost, if I was being generous, approaching a reaction that wasn’t hostility.
Then she caught me looking and the wall went right back up.
