“Looks like it might storm,” Nate said when he came out to join me, pulling a cigarette from the pack in his pocket.
I nodded. There seemed to be no lingering repercussions from my turning down my boss for a date, though I noticed him looking me up and down more often than I was comfortable with. And he tended to join me on my breaks, like now. “I guess it might,” I said.
“About time the heat broke.” He lit a cigarette and offered me the pack. “Want one?”
“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”
“I noticed that. Why do you come out here on your breaks, then?”
To be alone for twenty freaking minutes without having to talk to anyone. But that sounded bitchy, so I just shrugged my shoulders. “I need some fresh air.”
“I get that,” he said, taking a drag of his cigarette at the same time and obviously not getting the irony. “Are you still seeing that guy?”
I looked at him.
“When I asked you out, you said you were sort of seeing someone,” he said. “Are you still seeing him?”
Was he for real? That was only days ago. I was glad now that I’d said no. “Yes, I am.”
I thought of the moment when I’d put my cheek to Andrew’s, felt his warmth, smelled his skin. It didn’t matter that he’d told me to go home. I was still seeing someone.
“Yeah?” Nate said. “What does he do for a living?”
What did it matter? “He’s an illustrator and a programmer.”
Nate’s expression went hard, and I realized because it was some kind of comparison game, a dick-measuring contest. “Yeah, he sounds like a real winner,” he said. “Some guys have all the luck.”
I stared at him, shocked. I thought of Andrew getting in that car seven years ago, cocky and gorgeous and drunk. I thought of the photo I’d seen of the car smashed into the guardrail, the sickening way the metal was twisted. For the first time I let myself think of what it was like, really like, for him to live through that. Of how it would damage every part of a normal person. Of the kind of strength it took for him to get through it. “He isn’t lucky,” I said to Nate. “I have to go in now.”
I went back to my shift, but something was bothering me. Something that crawled through the back of my mind as I wiped counters and washed glasses, my feet sore and my back aching. It circled my thoughts as I ate dinner, finally putting some food in my stomach after skipping lunch and working a long day. When I finished at one in the morning, I was exhausted and out of sorts.
It was raining. I drove home as huge, warm drops fell from the sky, making loud smacks on my windshield. By the time I pulled into my driveway the rain was coming down so hard I could barely see. I turned off the ignition and looked across the street.
Andrew’s house was dark. Of cour
se it was; he was probably asleep. And still I got out of my car, letting the rain hit me as I walked across the road to his front porch, pulling out my phone.
He answered on the first ring, so he must not have been asleep after all. “Tessa, what are you doing on my porch?” he said.
I stepped in front of his door, in full view of his security camera. “Can you let me in?” I asked, looking up into the lens.
“Why?”
“I want to ask you a question.”
He must have heard something in my voice, because his own voice grew tense. “Tessa, I’m going to bed.”
“What does it was better than dying mean?”
Now he was defensive, on full alert. “What?”
“You said that doing the Lightning Man comics was better than dying. What did that mean?”
The briefest pause—barely a second, but I caught it. “It means I was in an accident that almost killed me.”
“But you started doing the comics after the accident. And you said that doing them was better than dying.”
He sounded harsh and more tired than anyone could possibly be. “Tessa, go home.”