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“While I live and breathe. Ellie Rey. What a coincidence.”
“I guess the world’s like that sometimes,” I say, feeling like there’s a ball of fluff in my mouth, making it difficult to speak.
“I guess it is.” Cillian looks at his date. “Ellie and I want to high school together, but she transferred…”
“Senior year,” I say.
“How unusual,” the woman mutters.
I shrug. “Yes, well… Would you like some drinks?”
Cillian drums his fingers against the table. “I hope you’re not offering me alcohol, Ellie Rey. I’m underage.”
The woman laughs like this is the funniest thing in the world. Right then—and this is cruel—I wish I could scratch Cillian’s face over and over. I wish I could make him bloody, gruesome, and not attractive to this woman. Then she’d see he’s not funny, and he’s not cool, and he’s not interesting. He just has the right bone structure, making people think he is attractive.
“You’re too upstanding for that, aren’t you, Ellie Rey?”
“Were you friends?” the woman asks like she can’t see how subtly intimidating and rude he’s being, but that’s one of his specialties. He can seem charming and disarming to everybody except the person he’s making fun of.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“Best friends, really,” Cillian says a moment later.
The woman scowls. I get it. She thinks the hitch in Cillian’s voice is because of some past relationship. It’s hilarious. By reading her face, it’s really what she thinks. She waves a hand at me like I’m a pesky fly.
“Then yes, we’d like some soda. Thank you.” She rolls her eyes at Cillian as if I’ve already left. “Did you two date?”
I turn away, not asking what kind of soda they want. This night sucks.
“Is something wrong?” Lacy asks when I walk to the counter.
“I thought you were speaking to your husband.”
“He didn’t answer. You look upset.”
I shake my head. How annoying. I’m close to crying, to breaking down, which is an involuntary response. It’s not something I want to happen or even approve of. When Lacy tries to touch my arm, I step away. “I’m fine. I can’t think about it right now. It’s no big deal compared to the stuff you’re going through. Don’t worry about me.”
“Honestly, I could do with a distraction.”
I shrug. “I know that guy from high school. That’s all.”
“Did he bully you?”
“Something like that.”
I won’t—can’t—say anything else. Otherwise, I’ll lose it. As I serve other tables, I realize I’ve only dealt with this by shoving it deep inside me and pretending that the East and West Coasts don’t exist in the same universe.
Crazily, I wish Max was here.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Max
“Jesus, Ben,” I say, sitting behind the wheel of my car.
Ben sits next to me. I’ve known him since before I became a professor. He’s inked up, wearing a tank to show off the various tattoos, with no rhyme or reason, colorful displays right next to Viking runes or tribal swirls. Ben gets tattoos impulsively, and somehow, it suits him.
We became friends when I briefly worked at a studio. He’d come in often, and we’d shoot the shit. When I left, he couldn’t believe I was becoming a professor. He joked I’d get bored and return to inking folks like him.
“I know.” He leans against the dashboard, looking across the street at the crack den with boarded-up windows and the door hanging off the hinges. There’s graffiti, cinderblock, and needles strewn across the concrete. “My little girl could be in there.”
Ben rubs his tatted hands together, groaning. “A goddamn gymnast, Max. She tore her ACL. So what do they give her? Nirvana, oblivion. She never has to think. Not about her injury. Not about her mom’s death. And then, just like that…” He snaps his fingers. “They take it away. Now the streets have her. A man said that to me at a bar. The streets have her. I knocked his goddamn teeth out.”
“You’ll get her back,” I say.
“She promised me she’d go to rehab.”
I close my eyes momentarily, hating the pain in my friend’s voice. Weirdly—or maybe it would only seem weird to other people—I think of my and Ellie’s future children. I imagine what it would feel like if our daughter was there, but I have to remember Vanessa and Jane. I can’t get involved in that mess again.
“Let’s go check,” I say, pushing the door open.
“Are you sure? Maybe we should call her boyfriend. He’s the one who gave me this address.”
“We can handle it. If he’s a junkie too, you want to keep him away from her.”
Ben sighs. “Fair point, but do you think we can?”
“You can wait here if you want,” I tell him. “I honestly don’t mind.”
“We’re not all ten feet tall,” Ben grins shakily, “but we’ll go together.”
We step from the car and walk across the dark street. The lamps are broken around here. Again, as I approach the open doorway, I imagine my and Ellie’s daughter, the evil images I’d conjure if she were my blood. Music pumps from inside, pounding from deeper within the house.
