“I’m trying to find this guy. My girlfriend and I met him when we were here that time… a lifetime ago. He lived in Austin, probably still does. And my friend had this huge crush on him.”
He looks at me, intrigued. “Okay…”
“Anyway, she’s going through a crappy divorce and he’s stuck in her head. That sounds ridiculous, but since I’m back in town, I thought I’d try to find him. It would be a nice thing to be able to do for her. They had a connection. A million years ago, but connections are hard to find so…”
“Do you have a name?” he says. “Not that I’m great with names.”
“How about faces?” I say.
“I’m pretty good with faces,” he says.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, click through to the photograph of Owen. It’s the photograph that we showed Professor Cookman—the one on Bailey’s phone, the one I asked her to text me. Bailey’s face covered with flowers, Owen smiling, happy.
Charlie looks down at the photograph.
And it happens so quickly. He throws my phone down, cracking it against the countertop. He is over the bar and in my face. He isn’t touching me, but he is so close that he could.
“Do you think this is funny?” he says. “Who are you?”
I shake my head, frightened.
“Who sent you?” he says.
“No one.”
I back up against the wall, and he moves closer to me—his face in my face, his shoulder almost touching my shoulder.
“This is my family you’re messing with,” he says. “Who sent you here?”
“Get away from her!”
I look in the doorway to see Bailey standing there. She is holding the class roster in one of her hands, a cup of coffee in the other.
She looks scared. But more than that, she looks angry, like she is going to hurl a barstool at him, if she needs to.
Charlie looks like he has seen a ghost.
“Holy shit,” he says.
He moves away from me slowly. I take in a deep breath and then another, my heartbeat slowing down.
We are in a weird standstill. Bailey and Charlie stare at each other as I pull myself off the wall. There are no more than two feet between any of us, but no one is moving. Not toward each other or away. Charlie, all of a sudden, in tears.
“Kristin?” he says.
At the sound of him calling her by a name, even a name I don’t recognize, I stop breathing.
“I’m not Kristin,” she says.
Bailey shakes her head, her voice catching.
I reach down and pick my cell phone up from the floor, the screen cracked. But it’s working. It’s still working. I could dial 911. I could get help. I inch backward, toward Bailey.
Protect her.
Charlie puts his hands up in surrender as I reach Bailey, the blue door right behind us. The stairs and the outside world just beyond that.
“Look, I’m sorry about that. I can explain. If you just sit down,” he says. “Take a minute. Can you both do that? Have a seat. I’d like to talk, if you’ll let me.”