“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 ac
tually 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.
Those blue eyes that had always made me feel like I was falling were still the same, except for the fact that the way they looked at me was mighty different from the way they had before he’d left his Alaska life behind. My hand flew up to my locket, which was tucked safely away beneath my shirt. I wondered what kind of thoughts were going on behind those beautiful eyes. I was wondering so many things that I couldn’t seem to land squarely on any single one of them. Instead, I stood there like a hollowed out person who’d lost her brain when she wasn’t looking.
“Fay. I didn’t know you would still be working here.”
“Yeah, well, nothing much changes around here,” I answered quietly, feeling whatever dignity I had left slipping away at his second mention of the fact that in almost a decade, I hadn’t gotten anything aside from my diner job. “But I guess you knew that.”
“Sure,” he answered amicably enough, maybe even a little bit embarrassed, which was something I wouldn’t have minded a bit. “I guess I did.”
“I saw a light in in your house earlier. I’m still living in the same house. I didn’t think it would be you, though. I mean, the thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t think it would be you.”
“I didn’t think it would be, either. I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I inherited the house, and there’s a whole lot more to getting things all figured out than I expected there to be. It seemed like coming back for a while made the most sense in the end.”
“I heard about your dad,” I said in a low voice, furious for myself with the sudden feeling that I might actually start to cry. I dug into my palms with my fingernails, to make sure that didn’t happen. “I’m very sorry. I thought about sending my condolences, but then I realized I wouldn’t have had the first idea of where to send them. So, you know. I didn’t.”
“That’s all right. It’s sweet of you, though, to think about it. Thanks, Fay. I appreciate it. Unfortunately, I should also be going.”
“Going? Didn’t you come in here for a meal? Or, why did you come in here?”
“Just a coffee to go will be fine, actually. I’ve got a lot of shit on my plate, and I’m not trying to stay in Ashville for the rest of my life.”
“Of course. Hold on.”
I poured him his cup of coffee with hands that were undeniably trembling. How many times had I done this exact same thing over the course of my life? Enough that when I’d first begun giving him drinks to go, they had been cups of coke or hot cocoa instead of coffee, back before he was grown up enough for a drink as mature as that.
Back in the day I had all but lived for the times when Neil would come in to see me. I had loved the way he had always made me feel like the most important, special person on the face of the earth. And now? Now he was like a stranger, only worse. A stranger wouldn’t have had this uncanny ability to hurt me the way that Neil was, to hurt me without even trying. And he wasn’t even doing anything! He was only acting like we were strangers or distant acquaintances, which was exactly what we were now. All I knew was that I wanted him to go. Out of all of the times I had imagined the two of us seeing each other again, it had never once played out like this.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked.