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Obediently, I walk over.
“You’re looking good. Real good. All grown up and everything. Leka know you’re here?”
Just by the way Beefer says it, I feel like he knows that Leka’s in the dark and I’m a giant surprise. Guilt spirals up my spine. I should’ve called Leka again, but I’d been mad that he hadn’t texted me back. My pettiness better not hurt Leka. I need to do better.
“It’s been in the works for a while,” I hedge. “I graduated early.”
“I didn’t know that was a thing. Congratulations. You got a job or you going to college? What’s your plan?”
It feels like he’s fishing. “I’ve got a deferred placement,” I reply.
The three men I don’t know leave Beefer’s side to come around and crowd behind me. I move forward to avoid them but find Beefer unmoving in front of me. There’s a strange glint in his eye that sends a wisp of unease down my spine. Unlike the kitchen crew, these men radiate menace. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and my fight or flight response is being triggered. I rise on the balls of my feet when the back door opens again.
Beefer twists to see who it is.
“Bitsy.” It’s Leka and he’s not happy, but…he also doesn’t seem surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“Surprise.” I clasp my hands together and smile. “I’m done with school.”
“But you, we just…” He trails off as he realizes that everyone in the room is watching us raptly.
Please, please, please, I plead silently. Don’t send me away. Not in front of everyone here.
A thousand emotions flicker through his eyes, but in the end, he holds out his hand.
I grab my coat from the hook on the wall, yell my thanks over my shoulder and run to Leka. He folds one arm around my shoulders, keeping his right arm free. He’s always done this, and I’ve finally realized why. It’s so he can keep his gun arm free. I let him go immediately and move to the side.
“I’m parked out front. A block down the street,” I say quietly.
“I know,” he murmurs. He dips his head toward Beefer. “I’m gonna settle Bit at home. I’ll text when I’m available.” He doesn’t wait for a response. He steers me past three bulky men who came in behind Beefer.
Leka gives them all a silent nod but doesn’t introduce us. Instead, he hurries me through the front of the restaurant and out the door. On the sidewalk, just out of earshot of the young man who held the door open for me when I arrived, Leka asks “How long have you been planning this?”
I lift my chin. “Since the day you left me.”
25
Leka
Sheer panic. That’s what’s in my veins. Dread started replacing my blood a couple of hours ago when I pulled out my phone and saw that the green dot wasn’t in Vermont anymore. Instead, it was on the outskirts of the city. Beefer asked me to drive upstate about four hours away to retrieve a lost shipment. I found it right away, but I had to deal with a couple stupid people who thought that they could steal from Cesaro. That took time and I didn’t get an opportunity to look at my phone until I was on my way home. By the time I pulled into town, Bitsy’s car was parked a block away from the restaurant.
I broke a dozen traffic laws to get to the restaurant. Fear rode me hard. Bitsy was at Marjory’s. People saw her. People talked to her. I reach inside my jacket and rub the metal butt of my gun for reassurance. I need to get her back to Vermont, immediately.
“Did you get kicked out?” It’s the only reason she would have come home. While I didn’t go to school like she did, after nearly four years of paying tuition, I know that she’s got a semester left.
I had this all planned out. Vermont and then a summer in Europe or some fancy shit like that. In the fall, she’d go to college south or west. I sent her a bunch of admissions brochures I’d picked up from a life coach who was trying to move his mother’s jewelry to cover funds he’d embezzled from his firm. Thinking back, she never told me which one she was interested in. Or whether she even applied.
“No. I graduated.”
“You what?” I almost trip on the sidewalk in surprise. “How? You got a semester left.”
“I graduated early. Aren’t you proud of me?” She opens her arms wide. Snow’s starting to fall. It catches on her curls, twinkling like diamonds against a dark velvet backdrop. A few tendrils of her hair rest at the base of her neck. Her zipper is undone and above the collar of her plain striped shirt, I can see the delicate rise of her collarbone, the tender hollow of her throat.
