Ella is at the airport by now. Flying west soon. She doesn’t know I’m here, thinking of her while the agony of losing her tears through every fiber of my being. She doesn’t know any of this.
I close my eyes. I hold the silk scarf tighter in my fist while I listen for the sirens.
And I wait.
CHAPTER 28
ELLA
The pass window bell rings and I grab the plates before Tony has to call the number twice.
Two fried eggs, side of bacon, whole wheat toast. Short stack in a sidecar. Table five. I balance the plates on my forearm and weave through the morning floor with the muscle memory of countless shifts at the Red Rock Diner. Between the four-top and the counter stools, left at the window booth, slight pivot at the register to avoid the sticky spot on the tile that Tony has been meaning to fix since before I started working here.
My body knows this route. The rest of me is still standing in a hallway in Brooklyn Heights, hearing Alec say “I love you” while I walked toward the door.
I picked up the 6 AM shift at the diner because the thought of staying in my apartment was unbearable. The flight from JFK landed at Sky Harbor just past midnight. I didn’t sleep on the plane. I didn’t sleep in the Uber from Phoenix to Sedona. I got home, showered, changed into my uniform then headed in to work because I need to keep moving. Being still means thinking, and thinking means replaying the look on Alec’s face when I pulled my suitcase across his floor.
I left. I told him that saying he loved me only made it worse. Then, without even looking at him again, I left.
“Here you go.” I set the plates down at table five. “Be right back with more coffee in a sec.”
The man nods without looking up from his newspaper. Good. Normal. I can do normal. I’m excellent at it, and I hate that I need the skill again this morning.
I return to top off his mug, then I move to the next table and the one after that, and the whole time there’s a weight in the center of my chest that the apron strings can’t hold down. Not anger. The anger burned off somewhere over Texas, thirty thousand feet up, staring out a dark window at nothing. What’s left is worse. It’s the quiet, sick certainty that I might have made the biggest mistake of my life because my pride got to the door before my heart did.
What if I was wrong?
The thought has been circling since I boarded the plane home. What if I wasn’t being strong when I zipped that suitcase and called the Uber and cried in the back seat all the way to JFK? What if I was being scared? What if I ran before I could be left—blew everything up before it could break on its own?
I don’t know. I don’t know if I walked away from a man who was going to hurt me again, or from the only man who ever loved me exactly right. I don’t know which possibility is worse.
I make it forty minutes before I crack.
My tables are manageable, the breakfast rush still building, when I tell Tony I need two minutes and push through the kitchen door. My purse is on the shelf by the lockers where I left it when I arrived earlier. I dig the phone out, tap the screen to wake it up, swipe it open.
Nothing. No calls. No texts. No Alec at all.
With a sigh that feels as heavy as my heart, I slip the phone back into my purse. I walk back out to the dining room. Refill the coffee station. Smile at the couple in the window booth.
Twenty minutes later I’m back at the shelf. Screen up. Nothing.
The third time, I don’t bother putting down the coffee pot. Just check. Nothing.
I stop going back after that, partly because the rush hits and six tables need me at once, and partly because each trip to that blank screen is its own small wound and I’ve run out of places to carry the hurt. The diner takes over the way it always does, filling in the cracks where the pain would settle if I let it.
Lisa arrives at nine-thirty.
She comes out from the kitchen tying her apron, her hair in the messy bun she wears when she’s been at the hospital. I know without asking that she came from Jenny’s. I know from the looseness in her shoulders that the news is good.
“She’s doing great,” Lisa says before I can ask. “Baby’s good. Blood pressure’s down. They’re talking about pulling her off bed rest next week.” She grabs a pen from the cup by the register and looks at me. Really looks.
“You look awful.”
“Redeye. No sleep.”
She frowns. “Ella. Tony says you’re working a double shift today. What the heck are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be home unwinding and pampering yourself after your amazing getaway?”
She wiggles her brows at me, and I know she’s not only thinking about my recent status as a lottery winner, but also the vacation she’s been hearing about via my infrequent and admittedly cryptic texts. “I wanted to work. I’m fine.”
