Chapter 7 #2
I tried to say thank you, to say I know, and to say I will.
I nodded.
He nodded back.
We drank the coffee.
I went up to the room one more time. Mom was asleep in the chair. Theo had gone. Dad was asleep. The TV was on low. His face under the blue light from the TV was thin and far away, and I sat in Mom's chair, held his hand without waking him, put it back on the blanket, and left.
I stayed inside the car in the parking garage with the engine off.
The garage was cold. The light was the orange light of every parking garage. I had my hands on the steering wheel.
Dad is sick. I'm watching him die slowly.
The thought was in my own voice. It had been in my own voice for a week, and I hadn't let it land.
I built a foundation to fix this exact thing for other people, and I'm finding out, in real time, that fixing it for a stranger and fixing it for your own family aren't the same skill.
The thought arrived complete. I let it consume me.
I pulled out my phone and opened the conversation with Sabrina that didn't exist yet. I typed.
Me: I'm sorry I haven't
I deleted it.
Me: I know it's been
I deleted it.
Me: Are you
I deleted it.
I sat with the screen for a minute. I went back to the last thing she had said to me — If you don't leave in the next ten seconds, I'm going to do something we will both regret — and I typed.
Beau
For the record, I wouldn't mind recreating where we left off last time.
I sent it before I could back out of it.
The phone vibrated.
Sabrina
For the record, neither would I.
I read it twice and put the phone down on the passenger seat. I leaned back and closed my eyes.
I picked it back up.
Beau
Are you working tonight?
Sabrina
Until 1
I waited for a beat, then typed.
Beau
Can I see you when you finish?
The typing dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again, then disappeared.
I stared at the phone in the orange parking-garage light, and I thought, very clearly, that if she said no, I would deserve it.
The phone vibrated.
Sabrina
There is a 24-hour diner on the corner of 4th and Aldrin. Coffee. One hour. No more.
I drove home the long way, took a shower, and changed into the gray hoodie I'd been wearing the day at the pharmacy because she had spent half of that walk insulting me about it, and I wanted her to recognize it.
I drove to the diner.
I sat in a booth in the back, ordered coffee, and waited.
She came in — shoulders up, chin up, keys in her hand — and stopped for a half second when her eyes found me at the booth in the back.
I stood up.
She crossed the diner without slowing down and came up to the booth without sitting. She looked at my face. Whatever she saw, she didn't name it. She stepped into me, put her arms around me, and held me without saying anything.
I wasn't ready for the hug.
I hadn't been ready for any part of the day — not for the doctor, for Cade in the cafeteria, for Mom asleep in the chair, or for the orange light in the garage. And in some way beyond any of those, I hadn't been ready for Sabrina's arms around my back in a diner.
I leaned into her, closed my eyes, and let out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding.
She let me go, slid into the booth across from me, and put her keys on the table. She didn't look at me head-on yet.
"How are you doing?"
I shrugged. "I'm fine now. That's what matters."
She raised an eyebrow at the menu without picking it up. "So." She tilted her head. "You finally used the number you stole."
"I didn't steal it. You were right there when Bonnie gave it to me."
"Bonnie gave it to you over my objections."
"Your objections were noted at the time."
"My objections were ignored at the time."
I leaned forward on my elbows. "How is she? How is the cat?"
She finally looked at me head-on. "Pickles is as superficial as he has ever been. Bonnie is good." A beat. "She asked about you."
I grinned.
The waiter came to the table. Sabrina ordered the breakfast plate without consulting the menu — eggs, hash, and two strips of bacon. I ordered the same. Coffee for both of us, refills.
The waiter left.
I picked up the coffee. "Told you she likes me. Watch out, Sabrina. You might have competition."
"Ha." She let her head fall back a quarter inch. "You're no match for her."
I laughed — short and surprised. "Am I a match for you?"
The food came before she could answer.
It came embarrassingly fast — diners that ran twenty-four hours kept the food close to the heat. The waiter set the plates down, topped off the coffee, and left. Sabrina picked up her fork and put a piece of bacon in her mouth.
Then I asked it again, "Am I a match for you, Sabrina?"
She looked up.
The look went on for a beat longer than the question deserved. The booth was warm. The diner light was yellow. Her eyes were the color they had been on the stoop, dark and steady and not going anywhere.
She didn't answer.
"I imagine I am." I held the look. "Judging by what you said to me."
She set her fork down. "What did I say to you?"
"You said" — I lowered my voice — "Cross. If you don't leave in the next ten seconds, I'm going to do something we will both regret."
She tried not to laugh, but she lost. It came out of her in one bright burst, surprised, half-angry, and her hand came up to her mouth, as though the laugh had escaped without permission. She shook her head at me with the corners of her mouth still trying to settle.
I let her have it.
Then I let my face go serious. "Did you mean it?"
She stopped laughing.
"What you said you were going to do. Did you mean it?" I asked again.
I held her eyes. She held mine.
The diner sounds came in through the table and went again — a fork on a plate two booths over, the milk steamer, the bell over the door.
Whatever I was looking for in her face, I found it.
I reached into my back pocket, pulled out a fold of cash, and put it on the table. I held my hand out across the booth. "Let's get out of here."
She looked at the hand, then at me. Then she put her hand in mine.
We were five steps out the diner door when I stopped walking.
I turned, and she was already turning toward me. The parking lot was half empty, and the streetlight overhead was a different orange from the parking-garage orange. She was a foot in front of me with her hand still in mine, the strap of her purse on her shoulder.
I caught her by the waist and pulled her in.
I kissed her.
It wasn't gentle. I'd walked out of the diner with three weeks of every nothing-text I hadn't sent and my father's hand fumbling for the blanket, and the kiss had all of that in it.
Her mouth was warm. Her hand came up to the back of my neck and into my hair.
She pulled me down half an inch, and I gripped her waist and pulled her against me, and she didn't stop me.
I'd thought about this since the auction.
I'd thought about it without admitting I was thinking about it — standing at her counter with my arm passing hers by an inch, in the cab leaving her stoop, in the chair in my father's room while the family laughed at the Sebring trip that wasn't real.
I broke the kiss because I needed air.
She didn't step back. Her hand stayed in my hair, and my hand stayed on her waist.
We stared at each other for one second.
She came back in.
I hooked my hands under her thighs, and she came up off the ground and wrapped her legs around my waist without hesitating. I walked her two steps to my car and set her down on the hood.
Thank God. The parking lot was empty.
Her hand was in my hair, my mouth on hers, the hood of the car warm under her, and my hand at the back of her thigh, keeping her there.
When we finally broke for air, I rested my forehead on hers.
We were both breathing hard. Her hand came down off my hair and around the side of my face. Her thumb stroked my jaw slowly.
She pulled back, slid down off the hood, and came up onto her feet on the asphalt. Then she looked up at me.
She kissed my cheek softly, intentionally, and stepped back half a step.
"I don't know what this is," she murmured.
I shook my head.
"Neither do I."