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“Please!” Courtney laughed, pulling on the old sweatshirt that indicated to me she was about to head
into the walk-in so that she could take some inventory. “I was about to throw you a parade. I’m pretty sure you haven’t ever done even one slightly irresponsible thing since we’ve known each other. If you’d skipped work, it would have shown me that there’s still help for you yet. Besides, it’s not exactly like this place is hopping, you know?”
Courtney looked around the diner with a sour, bored expression on her face, and I followed suit. Busy definitely wasn’t a word you would use to describe the place, that was for sure. As was more often the case than not, there wasn’t a single soul inside of those four walls aside from us.
I laughed, not because I was trying to be mean, but because it was just another example of how completely different the two of us really were. She looked at the empty diner and saw it as proof of how boring Ashville was. Although, I had a sneaking suspicion that if the opportunity to leave ever actually presented itself, it was one she would decline. I looked at the empty diner and saw an opportunity. I saw an opportunity to regain some of my mental footing, an opportunity to get my bearings again, once and for all, after the stupid funk the news about Neil’s father had put me into. It was just an example of life going on as it normally did, and who didn’t need a thing like that from time to time?
“I’m going to the back.” Courtney broke into my thoughts with a tone so dramatically morose it started me laughing all over again. “You’ll be okay up here on your own?”
“Of course, I will.” I smiled, pulling my much-hated romance novel out of my purse. “Just like always, right?”
“Oh, brother!” she groaned, shaking her head as she made her way to the walk-in, shaking her head until I couldn’t see her anymore, and probably continuing to do so even once she was out of sight.
I smiled to myself again and opened to the place where I’d left off in my book, ready to lose myself in the love affair of people who felt just as real to me as Courtney did. I loved that feeling of getting lost in the lives of others, loved it so much that I almost didn’t hear the sound of an engine idling outside.
Once the sound penetrated my thoughts, I hardly looked up. Our business wasn’t the only one in the immediate vicinity, and I was almost positive that whatever car was outside was not intended for us. It was only once I saw the truck that the panic began to set in. Because I knew that truck.
It had been years since I’d seen it pulling up to the front of the diner, but I would know it anywhere. I knew its occupant without ever having to catch a glimpse of him. For a moment that seemed to stretch out into forever, I froze, completely unsure of what the hell I was supposed to do now. Then my body just sort of took over. Without giving it any kind of conscious thought, I hit the ground, book and all.
I did so before I ever saw anyone step out of the truck’s cab, giving me a marginal amount of hope that I hadn’t been seen, and well before the little bell above the entrance gave its merry clang. I could have murdered that bell for sounding so happy when I felt pretty close to certain that I was going to either throw up, have a panic attack, or possibly do both at the same time.
“Hello?”
The sound of the voice shot through the diner like a bullet might have done, sounding so loud in my ears that I had to fight the urge to clamp my hands over them. I wasn’t actually a child, all evidence to the contrary, and if I’d allowed myself the luxury of covering my ears, I wouldn’t have been able to hear what came next. I needed to do that in order to know when I was safe. It was either that, or never leave the safety of the floor behind the front counter again.
“Hello?” the voice called again, a bit of uncertainty and maybe some annoyance as well detectable now. “Is there anyone here? The front door is open. You know, normally a sign that a place is open for business? Any chance that’s true here?”
I cringed and waited for it to be over. It was amazing how quickly things could go from one way to another. Only minutes ago, I had just been dipping into my book, ready for what would most likely be a day of reading without a whole lot else. Now, I was on the floor hiding for my life. Or at least, it felt like I was hiding for my life, which to me was pretty much the same thing.
“What the hell, dude? Why are you yelling? There’s somebody right—”
Courtney, who had come storming out of the walk-in with a look of total murder in her eyes, stopped and surveyed the scene she found in front of her. I could only imagine what it must have looked like to her, and I felt my face grow hot with what was surely the worst blush I’d ever blushed in all of my life.
She then looked from me to the disgruntled looking man waiting to be served and then back at me again. I shook my head vehemently, desperate for her to help me maintain my anonymity, all the while sure that I was sunk. When Courtney smiled, I felt my heart leap into my throat and would probably have tried to crawl away if I’d been able to move quickly enough. Except that I was not only not able to move quickly enough, but in the end, found that I could hardly move at all. Courtney reached down and grabbed the collar of my flannel shirt with one freakishly strong arm, and I was powerless to resist.
I was brought back up from underneath the counter like a fish being reeled in from underneath the water, my face still so hot I was sure it would burst into flames. She’d brought me up so that I was facing our customer, too, taking away any last chance I had of somehow hiding my identity. I closed my eyes briefly, willing my heart to slow its beating and my mouth not to say anything ridiculous. Then, I looked straight into the eyes of the one and only Neil Driscoll.
“Holy crap. Fay. I had no idea you were still working here.”
“I was going to ask you if you knew her,” Courtney said in an amused voice, making a point of not looking at me so that she didn’t have to see my glare of death. “But it looks like you saved me the trouble.”
“It looks like I did,” he said.
“And now you see that there was somebody up here all along. She just wasn’t where you could see her.”
“I can see that. Or rather I can see her. Now. You know what I mean, I think.”
“I do,” she laughed. A laugh that made me wonder if she could feel how painfully awkward everything had gotten in the last thirty seconds. “I really do. Now, do you two think you can manage without me, or is somebody else likely to go missing? Because I’m like, right in the middle of inventory. But if you guys need a translator, I can stay.”
“No, that’s all right,” he said. “Go back to what you were doing.”
Courtney raised one eyebrow, and I could see exactly what she was thinking. She remembered Neil from when we were growing up. I knew she did. I also knew she had never been his biggest fan. She had always thought he was “too stuck up to live,” and the way he was now giving her permission to do what she was going to do already was definitely not helping her to change her opinion.
For a minute, I was sure she was going to say something in retaliation. I was so sure she would, in fact, that I was actually relieved when she headed to the back again, leaving me alone with the elusive Neil.
For a second, I just looked at my hands, one of which was somehow still holding onto my book. I wondered what in God’s name I was supposed to do. Just an hour ago, I had done a decent job of convincing myself that Neil would never be back in Ashville. Now, here he was, standing in front of me like he’d never left at all.
There were differences, of course, the same way there would have been with any person I hadn’t seen in going on nine years. He had a fancier haircut, and the way he was dressed made me think he could have just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers’ ad. But the eyes were the same.
