“Shane.”
“Yeah, him. How do you two know each other?”
This was obviously the wrong thing to ask. Gone in an instant are her cute mannerisms. In their place are slumped shoulders and a deep sigh.
“What did he do to you?”
She looks at me like I’m Sherlock Holmes. But it doesn’t take a world-class (albeit fictional) detective to figure this much out. An asshole cop doesn't sprout out of nowhere. They grow from younger assholes. And assuming that the two of them grew up together, there’s no doubt their paths crossed. It’s only a matter of how.
“Shane’s a cop now,” she says, trying to brush off my question. Her breaths have become shallower. Her voice lower. The food in front of us may well have ceased to exist for neither of us pays any attention to it. “And the past is the past.”
“That’s not the way I see it. We don’t get to the here and now without the then. So what is it?”
She’s looking over her shoulders. Afraid she’ll be overheard. This isn’t how I expected this date to go. But, then again, nothing about this day has gone the way I planned. But she’s obviously not going to go into more details here. And this isn't something I can just let go. So I toss two twenties on the table and lead her by the arm outside. Straight to my rental car, where I open the door for her to slide in, which she does without a word. But not until I’ve got us driving, out on the highway, without a single idea where we’re going, does she she finally open up.
She doesn’t say much. But she doesn’t have to.
“It was back in high school. There was this party. I got too drunk. And he….”
She doesn't have to finish.
I may barely know this girl. And I may have been planning to ravage her for one night only and then promptly forget her name, but it’s stuck in my brain now.
Hailey.
And her story is there too. A story that I’m determined to change the ending of.
“I hope you don’t have plans today, because I could really use your help,” I say in a chipper voice that has a definite edge to it. “I’ll be sure to make it worth your while.”
Chapter 7
Hailey
What Robert needed help with is little more than directions. First to an office building I’d never had a need to visit. I wait in a lounge that hasn’t been updated since the 80s while he talks in an office for half an hour. Then it’s off to a café where he could “make a few calls” as he describes it. Only those calls are made outside while I wait at our table, sipping at a caramel macchiato that’s far too sweet.
After the café is another trip to a different bank, where this time he isn’t falsely accused of being a bank robber. He says he would have gone back to mine, but he didn’t want me guilted into going back on shift. After another mysterious stop at an empty plot of land just outside the university, Robert asks if I’d be willing to accompany him to the airport.
“The regional one?”
“No, the international one. It’s in Birmingham, I think.”
“That’s quite a drive,” I reply. “I’m happy to help, but I don’t know how I’ll manage to get back after dropping you off.”
With an actual wink (that somehow doesn’t come off as creepy), he says, “Let me worry about that.”
Then before I know it, we’re on the highway again.
“So,” Robert says. “You still live in your hometown.”
It was a statement, not a question. So all I do is nod. It’s embarrassing to admit this.
“What’s the farthest you’ve ever gone from home?”
Another embarrassing question. “I suppose Florida isn’t too far is it?”
“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?”
I dream about this very question most every night before I drift off. “I’ve always wanted to see the Pacific Ocean. So Hawaii would be cool. But I’d like to go to another country too. France, I guess, though Sam is always saying I should come meet him in Tokyo. Sam’s my oldest brother. I haven’t actually seen him for, like, three years.”