Page 125 of What We Become

The bell jingles and I look up and it’s Amy.

She’s in jeans and a cropped sweater and sneakers that are too white to have walked far. Her hair is different—shorter, layered. She looks good. Brighter than the other day when I saw her at Dean’s.

“New haircut?” I ask as she slides onto a stool at the counter.

“Yeah.” She ruffles her fingers through the layers. “I literally just got done at the salon. Thought I could use a change.”

“Looks gorgeous,” I say. “Coffee?”

“Obviously. And one of those disgusting cream cheese Danishes that I’m pretending are a health food since it’s dairy.”

I pour her cup and plate the Danish. Then I lean my elbows on the counter because Amy is the one person in my life who existed before any of this. Before the beach, before the Hangmen, before the wall. She knew me when I was just a waitress with bad luck, starting fresh in a new town. She gave me a home. She gave me friendship. And even after all of it went to shit and she ended up having to murder her ex-boyfriend to save my life—she’s still here.

“So,” she says, biting into the Danish and getting cream cheese on her chin. “How’s the first day back?”

“Weird. Fine. Weird and fine.”

“Scale of one to ten, how many times have you thought you saw Jamie?”

I look at her. “How did you⁠—”

“Because I did the same thing. After you went missing. I was a mess until Dean told me you’d been found. But once I knew who Jamie really was—what he was capable of—I kept seeing him everywhere. The coffee shop, on the bus, in the grocery store, outside the school. Every tall guy with brown hair and a friendly face was him. It took about three weeks before it started easing.”

“Three weeks?”

“Give or take. And even now, sometimes.” She shrugs. “You learn to live with the echo.”

Neither of us mentions the other ghost in the room—Tyler. The one who went down on our living room carpet with a knife from our own kitchen drawer in him, and Amy standing over him looking at her hands.

I top off her coffee. “I’m not sure I’ll ever learn.”

She gives me a half smile. “Did you ever think about just . . . not coming back?”

I meet her eyes. “To town?”

“Yeah. Or at least here.” She looks around the diner, licking cream cheese off her thumb. “To one of the places you used to see him most.”

“All the time,” I admit with a sigh.

“So what made you decide to stay? You testing whether you can do it?”

“Something like that.”

“Sage.” She sets the Danish down. “You know you could do literally anything else, right? You’ve got five guys who’d buy you a business or build you a studio or whatever. You don’t have to stand behind the same counter where he sat and pretend it doesn’t hurt.”

“It’s not about pretending it doesn’t hurt.” I wipe a nonexistent spot from the counter. “It’s about this place still being mine. He already took so much from me. I’m not letting Stephen have my job, my routines, and half the fucking town too. He wanted to erase me. I’m not helping him finish it.”

Amy picks the Danish back up and takes a bite, chewing slowly.

“That’s either the bravest thing I’ve ever heard,” she says, “or the most stubborn.”

“Can’t it be both?”

“With you? It’s always both.”

Amy is still there when my shift ends, sitting on the customer side of the counter grading a stack of papers, tapping her pen every time she finds an error. She looks up when I untie my apron and stretch, cracking my neck. “You made it,” she says, a little proud, a little surprised.

I did. Two false alarms, one hide in the kitchen, nine hundred coffee refills. Nobody died. Nobody even noticed I was holding my breath.