Page 50 of True Colors

“At least a couple of times a week since I moved here…but I’ve been coming here for the past decade.” He pushes the menus to the side of the table.

“A decade?”

“My sister Ria goes to school here, and my best friend lives here, so…I came around a lot even when I lived in New York,” he explains.

He’s telling me personal things, nothing groundbreaking, but it’s nice that he talks to me like this and not just about work.

Martha returns with coffee for Luther and a glass of water with a wedge of lime for me. I drink some of the water and set the red translucent plastic cup down.

“How are you feeling today?” he asks softly.

“O-okay.”

He studies me carefully. “You sure?”

“I am.” Then I straighten. “Th-thank you. For st-staying with me.”

He tilts his head. “Dot said Finn is your brother. But he said he was your date.”

I meet his eyes, biting back a grin. “He…he’s like a br-brother. We grew up together.”

“Where? Here in SF?” He picks up his coffee and blows on it.

“Oakland.”

“Were you neighbors?”

“Yes.”

I never talk about my private life at work. Only Dot knows—and even she doesn’t know all of it. Mila, whom I genuinely like, knows almost nothing about me beyond what’s professionally necessary.

There are reasons for that.

First, I don’t want to talk about my life. When a few people learned about my past at Stanford, their reactions always fell into one of two categories: pity, which makes my skin crawl, or judgment, which I’m even worse at handling.

Second, I live with a constant, low-grade fear that someone will connect the dots and realize my mother is in prison. That single fact has a way of collapsing everything else about me. I stop being a competent, quiet analyst with a stutter and become a tragic figure with a damaged family.

I don’t have the energy to survive a transformation again—from a lost child from a broken home to a competent adult. Regardless, I want to tell Luther, give him a part of me, because he was there for me yesterday.

“We…grew up in a st-state home.”

His expression doesn’t change from normal to “oh, you poor thing,” instead he asks, “How long have you known each other?”

“We met when I was ten…so e-eighteen years.”

He cocks an eyebrow, smiling. “That’s a long time to be friends.”

I lean back against the leather backrest. “We are family.”

He narrows his eyes, but there’s a twinkle in them. “So, why did he call you his date?”

I give a slow, uncertain shrug. “He likes to play pranks.”

Our food arrives then, rescuing me from twisting myself into a verbal pretzel trying to explain that Finn was testing whether Luther had a crush on me—as I did on him. The thought alone makes my face burn, and I’m grateful for the distraction.

The tomato soup is nourishing, and the grilled cheese is terrific. There’s a reason the Pinecrest Diner has been a San Francisco staple since 1969.

“You like the food?” he asks.