Chapter 1 #2
I look up as my coffee cup taps down on my table. She’s already walking away when I call out, “Um, excuse me?”
She turns back with such a dead-eyed stare I feel guilty for bothering her. But this is important. So, of course, I get straight to it.
“Can I get some toast, please?” You don’t want toast. You’re poor!
That same stare. “With what?”
“With um… uh…” What’s cheap? “Just… butter?”
I’ve ordered the cheapest food on the menu. She hates me for ordering the cheapest food on the menu.
I need to order something more expensive.
No!
Stop it!
Silence stretches until she asks, “Anything else?”
Say it! “Um. Not food, but… the guy who was in here this morning…”
Her face turns prettier when a smile appears. The first one she’s ever given me. “August?”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah. Him. Um… Was he…” My hand settles on my chest. “Was he dressed like me? Similar?” How far is he taking the impersonation thing?
Her hip juts out, head tilting. She looks at my shirt, and I’m well aware of how crumpled it is. This is literally the shirt I wore to bed. Why the hell did I take my hoodie off?
The fierce fire of the heaters turns my cheeks even pinker than my embarrassment has, and I remember why.
She says, “No.” But then her eyebrows do a little waggle thing. She looks back at the line, as if my stalker might be standing there, then follows up with the harrowing, “No, he was dressed well.”
Great. My identity-stealing stalker dresses better than me. No surprise, I guess, given it’s his fault I look like shit today.
“That’s so weird,” she muses, looking me over again. “I could have sworn it was you. But you did say your name is August?”
At this point, I have no idea if I said that or not. I must have, so I agree, weakly. “Yeah. It is.”
Like it’s her closing argument in a courtroom drama, “How else would I have known that?”
That’s exactly what I need to know. But I have no idea what to say to her now. What to even ask her. My face must have dropped like my heart has, because she surprises me with an empathetic tsk before sliding into the seat opposite. “Is something wrong?”
I stare into her face, her pretence of tired and annoyed customer service having slipped away to something real. I want to tell her. I want to say, ‘Please, if he comes again, let me know. Call the police. Keep him here. Do something. Help me.’
But how mad am I going to sound when I tell her I have a stalker who seems to be my double, who I’ve never actually seen beyond a glimpse, who’s taking my things, right down to my name?
Then she stretches her hand across the table, resting it flat on the wood, not quite touching my arm, her green eyes all sympathy beneath her lilac fringe. “He’s doing great, okay?”
I’m so thrown by her words, all I can ask is, “What do you mean?”
“I know families fracture. For all sorts of reasons. I’ve been there. But you don’t need to worry about him. He’s well dressed, he’s washed, and he smelled good. Really nice shoes. If you want, I can pass him your number if he comes in again?”
Pass him my number?
I’m almost tempted, actually. Do I want this psychopath having my number? Almost definitely not. But what if I could ask him what he’s after? Would he tell me? Would he back off if I had a solid way to track his identity? Can you do that with mobile numbers?
“No,” I say at last. I can just hear him heavy breathing into my phone at two a.m. The very last thing I need. I’d have to switch it off overnight to stop him waking me, then he’d have me at his mercy.
“No, it’s fine. We’re good. Um. In touch,” I lie. “I’m in touch with him. I was just… I was just surprised to hear he was in here. He’s—”
“Brother?” she spits out. Then before I can react, “No, not with the same name.” I open my mouth, but, “Cousin!” she shouts. It ricochets off the raw-concrete walls hanging over us, but she doesn’t seem to care at all. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
And she looks so pleased with herself, I smile and nod. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s not from around here, so I was surprised—”
“Ah, I knew it was something like that!” She’s pink now, her eyes lit with excitement, and I think/hope that’s the end of it, that she’ll go now and get the toast I feel too sick to eat. But she only leans back in her chair, fingernails tapping across the table as she thinks through the situation.
A new anxiety claws its way into my chest. Am I going to have to make small talk with her? Here, while I look like shit, pre-coffee, when I’ve just been chased out of my apartment by a killer? Doesn’t she have work to do? And where can I find a job like hers?
I tap a button on my keyboard pointedly, as though an important message has just popped up.
She glances over at it, then leans forward, clearly having decided to ignore my none-too-subtle suggestion.
“Listen, I know this is weird, but… if you’re in touch with him…
do you think…” It’s like my soul slightly leaves my body.
I know what she’s going to say. It’s in the way she pulls at her lower lip with her teeth.
“Do you think you could pass him my number?”
I don’t know whether to scream or vomit. I don’t do either—I don’t do anything—so she talks faster to fill the gap while my mind folds in on itself at the ridiculousness of my life right now.
She thinks they ‘kind of had a moment.’ He was ‘almost definitely flirting.’ And she very expressly reminds me about how ‘nicely dressed and put together’ he was, looking my shirt over again as she says it.
I’m not jealous, because she’s not my type, what with not being a hot man and all that, but…
How does this guy pretending to be me wrap the angry barista around his finger in the space of one coffee order, when I’ve been in here weekly for months and inspire nothing but a scowl? What is it with this guy?
I laugh on the outside, screaming on the inside. “Sure,” I say, just to end the soul-crushing conversation. Because I need to get back to worrying and moping. “Sure. I don’t know when I’ll see him. Like I said, I hadn’t realised he was back in town. But I can pass your number on when I do see him.”
“Oh, thank you!” She laughs awkwardly, watching me slowly pull my phone out to take her number. “I hope that’s not weird.”
I laugh too. But this time it’s genuine.
‘Weird.’
She has no idea how weird this is.