AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I gave her a mocking shocked glare. “What?” I teased. “You don't eat Indian that often, do you?”
She allowed herself a smile. “Not too often, I confess.”
“Samosas are awesome. They're like these little pastry triangles filled with potato curry. But they’re like a hard, crispy kind of pastry. Deep-fried. I guess they're not that healthy, but as a once-in-a-while thing, they're a real treat.”
“I'm sold. Let's get some of those. And, I guess I'll go with the veggie korma. It looks pretty amazing on the menu, at least.”
“You won't be disappointed. Everything they bring to the table looks just like the pics in the menu and tastes just as good as you imagine, too.”
“Cool. Let's do it then.”
I called the waiter over and ordered our meals. I knew there would be a good twenty-minute wait before the food arrived. They were fast, but not that fast. The question running through my head was how I might pass the time if Brooke was avoiding eye contact and I was avoiding spooking her even more than I seemed to have already.
That’s when fate stepped in.
A couple around our age walked in. I didn't recognize either of them, but Brooke clearly did. Her eyes grew deer-in-headlights wide.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped.
I cocked my head to the side and looked over at her. “What is it? Everything okay?”
“No. Ben and Jess.”
“Uh, who?
She held the menu up to hide her face as they walked past us. “Did they see me?” she whispered from behind the menu.
“Umm, not that I could tell,” I replied. “They walked past without even looking. Looks like they're going to sit at a table at the back. You can come out now, they can't see you from there.”
She slowly lowered the menu and peered over the top then sighed with relief. “Whew. Thank goodness. So anyway, what about dessert? Is there anything go-”
“Whoa, hold up, hold up, missy! You can't act like you’re hiding from the cops and not tell me what that was about!” I cocked an eyebrow at her curiously and narrowed my gaze. Waiting. I halfway expected her to try to weasel her way out of explaining, but to my surprise, she obliged my request.
“That's Ben Smout and his girlfriend Jessica Avery. They were…” She stopped as if trying to get her thoughts together before she continued. “Well, that guy, Ben, he's the best friend of my ex, Andrew. I haven't seen him—Ben, I mean… Well, or Andrew—so, I haven't seen either of them since the breakup. And, I don't want to see them. Ever.”
“Oh, I see,” I said uneasily.
The waiter walked by our table just in time to keep me from having to think of something to say. Which was great because I didn’t have a clue what to say in the situation. When the waiter continued to walk away, he left us to the awkward silence.
“You know, uh,” I began, “you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. We can just forget those two are even here. Eat quick and leave quick and they won't ever see you.”
She was silent for a moment. I imagined she was struggling with whether she wanted to shut this whole thing down or not. After a few moments, she looked me dead in the eyes and did exactly the opposite of what I had expected her to do. She opened up.
“Andrew was my first love. We started dating in high school. I fell head-over-heels for him and he had me convinced he felt the same way about me. I thought—and I know this is gonna sound stupid, but it’s how I felt—I thought he was going to be the guy I married, the guy I’d spend the rest of my life with. He’s the reason I’m even here. I could've gone to a better college. I'm talking Ivy League. I could have… but I didn't. I chose to stay here, in this town, because of him. I couldn't bear the thought of being away from him for weeks at a time.”
All I could do was nod sympathetically in response. I was already certain this story wasn't going to end well. After all, she’d been hiding behind a menu.
“So, I made a big sacrifice for him, for us. I gave up my chance to attend Dartmouth so I could be with the guy I thought was my soulmate. I really thought that he was The One.”
“And then, you found out he wasn't,” I stated softly.
Tears began to well up in her eyes. The sight of her hurting gripped my heart and squeezed. “You don't have to tell me about this,” I assured her. “Seriously, if it's painful to talk about, we can talk about something else.”
“No,” she replied, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with the edge of a sleeve from her sweater. “It’s okay. Les keeps telling me I need to stop avoiding it, so, this is me not avoiding it.”
I nodded. “Alright.”
“So, last year, Andrew and that guy over there, Ben, went on a fishing trip one weekend. Andrew picked up my tablet by mistake thinking it was his, which meant he left his tablet in its place. And, he left it unlocked. Normally, he was super strict about privacy and had everything protected with passwords, so that was highly unusual. I guess that fact alone should have clued me in that something was going on.”
