AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Dinner's on the house if you ever want to come by the restaurant again!"
There was already some distance between us when he said that, and I waved at him. "Thank you!" I yelled.
Chapter 3
Isaac Alexander
***
The following week
It was lunchtime on Thursday when Jill, the author, came into the restaurant. Isaac was working the counter, and he saw her come in.
"How's it going, Miss Jill?" Isaac said. "I thought you were done with your book."
"I'm done interviewing," she answered. "I'm meeting Sherman and Linda for coffee to give them the notes I have on their story. I wanted them to read over some things."
"Isaac called every woman in the phone book with that same name," Cal said.
Cal's elderly parents owned the appliance store next door, and Cal came into the restaurant most days for lunch. He was an older gentleman, but he had a lot of childlike qualities. He always brought colorful, brutally honest conversations to the counter at Jimmy's.
"All I did was search one time on the internet," Isaac said.
"What'd you search for?" Jill asked as she sat down.
Isaac made a face at Cal, asking him to please not spill his guts about everything. Isaac honestly wasn't sure how much Cal had heard. He had been looking for Ari for nearly a week.
"I searched for a woman one time," Isaac said, explaining to Jill.
Her eyebrows shot up excitedly, and Isaac gave her a shake of the head that was meant to shut down her hope.
"It didn't turn out to be anything. All I knew was her first name. It's impossible."
"Why did you want to reach this woman?"
"Oh, because he fell in love, and then she dropped off a shirt for him that day when he wasn't working," Cal said.
"Thanks, Cal. I hardly fell in love, but otherwise, he's right. I met a woman, and there was this whole misunderstanding with her shirt, and then she brought the shirt here to give it to me. I told her I would buy her dinner, but she came on a Sunday and I wasn't here. She told Robert she was heading to the airport. So, I assume she lives out of town."
"And all you have to go on is her first name?" Jill asked.
"And he has her shirt," Cal said. "And it smells like perfume, so he sleeps with it every night."
Isaac leveled Cal with a stare. "Now you're just repeating Uncle Jim and giving me a hard time about it. I definitely don't sleep with anything every night." Isaac didn't sleep with the shirt, but he did pick it up now and then and take a big whiff of it. It smelled like Ari. He imagined her dancing. He wished he could see her do it. He searched 'Ari hip hop dancer' on the internet, but there was nothing that seemed to pertain to her. There was so much he didn't learn about her. He had nothing—other than the fact that she went to the airport, which seemed like bad news.
He knew her friend went to the University of Washington and studied dance, but he could not let himself take such extreme measures to track her down that way. Besides, he couldn't even remember what she said her friend's name was. It all happened too fast.
"What did I do?" Jim asked, calling from the kitchen.
"You were teasing Isaac about his love life," Jill said, calling to Jim and hoping to get them talking.
"There's nothing to tell, unfortunately," Isaac said. He wiped the counter and a few of the menus.
"How did you get her shirt, again?" Jill asked. "Tell me what happened."
"She dropped it off up here at the restaurant, but it was when I wasn't working," Isaac said.
"And all he has is a note and a shirt, so it's impossible to find her again," Cal added, informing Jill.
