And on the screen, he comes with me.
27
BEAU
I stand outside the diner the next day at noon, staring in through the window. It’s busy. Too busy for me. Only half the tables are taken, but still too busy. I glance left and right, to the free tables outside on the sidewalk of the quiet backstreet.
“You can do this, Beau.” I whisper to myself, taking a deep breath and pushing my way through the door, batting down my climbing heartbeats. I hurry to a table at the back and sit, pulling out the brochures of apartments for sale and setting them in front of me. Distraction. Focus on the brochures. I start flicking through the one on top, a two-bed, top-floor apartment overlooking the ocean.
“Good afternoon, can I get you a drink?” the waitress asks, setting a menu on the table. I look up at her on a smile I’m forcing to within an inch of my life. “Just a sparkling water, please,” I say, rolling my shoulders, so uncomfortable. “And a Coke with ice.”
“No problem.” She leaves to fetch my order, and I return my attention to the details of the apartment. It’s too perfect. I need something that requires a full redecoration. I discard it to the bottom of the pile and begin on the next, a converted factory on the west side of town. My cell rings. It’s Nath.
“Hi,” I say, looking past all the people to the sidewalk outside. As I expected, he’s standing there looking up and down the street for me.
“You going to be long?” he asks.
“I’m here.”
“Where?”
“Inside,” I reply, and he turns and looks through the window, confusion rife on his face. I wave, and he cocks his head, going to the door. “Don’t make a big deal of it,” I warn as he approaches the table, doing exactly what I did. Counting the amount of people in here. There’s thirty. Too many. One person for every beat of my heart per second.
“I won’t,” he says, taking his jacket off and hanging it on the back of the chair. “But . . . well done.”
I give him a tired look, vehemently ignoring the fact that this isn’t about sitting in a semi-busy diner. It’s a step in the right direction, yes, but a backstreet diner isn’t quite the same caliber as an opera house.
The waitress sets our drinks on the table and tells us she’ll be back to take our order. Nath clocks the piles of brochures before me. The poor man must be wondering what the hell is going on. I’m wondering myself. “Just looking at my options,” I tell him, pushing them aside. “Lawrence and Dexter’s place was supposed to be a temporary solution.”
He smiles. “I bumped into Lawrence yesterday.”
“Did you get an earache too?”
“A bit. He just worries about you. As do I.” He takes a sip of his Coke. “And Ollie.”
“Ollie needs to move on.”
“And you?”
I show the ceiling my palms, taking a quick look at our surroundings. It shuts Nath up. Good. The waitress returns, and I pick up the menu and scan the options. “Cajun salad, please.”
“And a BLT on white for me,” Nath says, collecting my menu and handing it to the waitress. “So who’s this guy you’ve been seeing?”
I sag in my chair. “Lawrence needs to stop gossiping.” I fiddle with the straw in my water, wondering if the gossiping stopped there or if he went into explicit details. My gaze inadvertently goes to my wrists, and I reach to pull the sleeve of my shirt down a little more, checking to see where Nath’s attention is. He’s staring at my wrist too. I clear my throat to say something, anything to break the uncomfortable quiet, but no words come to me.
“So, who is he?”
“No one you know,” I quip, looking at Nath in a way that suggests I’m not game for this conversation.”
“Name?”
“You going to run checks on him?”
“I don’t know. Do I need to?”
Nath’s question oddly spikes a few goosebumps, and I rub over the sleeve of my arm. I don’t know. Does he? Regardless, I’m not giving him his name, because he absolutely will run checks on James. Why does that bother me?
Because he might find something.
I fall into thought, staring at the silver fork on the napkin. The police database could shed light that Google can’t.
My other name.
My heart beats a little faster.
“Beau?”
I blink and look up, and Nath smiles, though it’s hesitant. “What?” I ask.
“Will you?” he asks, his smile turning into a grimace.
“Will I what?”
“Take me to the dealership.”
I’m lost. “Why do I need to take you to the dealership?”
“My car’s in for a service. I need you to drop me back at the dealership to collect it.”
The dealership.
It hits me like a brick. A memory. I stare at Nath across the table, my face blank, as I dig deep for every scrap of the moment in history I can find. My heart’s pounding now, it is way beyond my control, and my eyes dart across the table. “Her car was at the repair shop,” I murmur, the conversation coming back to me, all of it, every word spoken between Mom and me. Where has this memory been? Why is it only coming back to me now?