Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Nick’s days and nights had started to bleed together in a way they had never done before Cassie moved to town. He could call her. In fact he should call her, but then there was that whole “what would he say” thing, which always stumped him. And then a few more days went by, long days at the café becoming long nights alone.
Busy mornings helped. More and more tourists were stopping by in the morning as the summer heated up, and most of the banana bread and muffins had been sold. But like clockwork, he glanced up to the door around ten thirty. Sure, Cassie hadn’t come through that door for a while now, but he couldn’t help it. This late-morning dead time had become Cassie’s time. When she’d breeze in with her perpetually dead laptop and beg for a latte and an outlet.
Ramon had given him shit about it for a couple of days—the record amount of time it had taken for Nick to screw things up with her. But the longer Cassie’s absence went on, the less frequent the jokes became when it was apparent that it was no longer funny. Even Elmer had stopped bringing it up, and Elmer liked bothering Nick about everything . Nick’s life plodded on, and Cassie just became yet another person who didn’t stay in it.
But she hadn’t left yet. Buster’s truck had been in her driveway more often than not, so she was still fixing up her house. He hadn’t lost her for good. The trick is in how you apologize, wasn’t that what Jimmy had said? Nick thought again about those shiny glass buildings on the other side of the causeway, the life Cassie had left behind. An idea dropped fully formed into his head, and he knew. He just knew how he could show her that he knew her. That he listened. That he wasn’t that guy in her kitchen a couple weeks ago.
He had some errands to run after work. Get what he needed, then call her.
The bell above his door chimed, interrupting his gloomy thoughts, and at first all he could do was blink. It took a moment or two to realize that Cassie was really in his doorway. She wasn’t a mirage conjured by his lonely heart.
“Hey.” She hiked her bag up on her shoulder and glanced around.
“Hey.” His voice felt rusty, like he hadn’t used it in a while. He cleared his throat hard while Cassie cast cautious glances around the café. What was she looking for? Witnesses, in case he started berating her out of the blue again?
But then she took a sidestep toward the trash can by the door, furtively tossing in a blue take-out cup. Spooky Brew? She’d gotten coffee at Spooky Brew? Damn, she must really hate him; their coffee sucked.
They stared at each other for a few awkward moments until the door behind Cassie crashed open, the bell over it ringing frantically. Cassie jumped and whirled as Ramon came barreling through the door.
“Whoa!” He stopped himself with a hand on Cassie’s shoulder, and Nick had never been jealous of someone else’s clumsiness before. Ramon looked from Cassie over to where Nick stood behind the counter, then sagged with exaggerated relief.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said dramatically. “Look, I don’t know what my man here did, and I’m sure he deserves you being pissed at him. But please, I’m begging you. Tell him how to fix it. I’m so sick of the moping.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “I don’t mope.” He tried not to notice Cassie suppressing a smile.
“You mope.” Ramon grabbed a clean apron from under the counter and started into the kitchen.
“You’re fired!” Nick called after him.
“No, I’m not!” The swinging door bumped closed behind him, leaving Cassie and Nick alone again.
The awkward silence persisted. “Hey,” Cassie said again.
“Hey.” This was going great. But she was still here, so maybe this was an olive branch? Maybe she was here to bury the hatchet? Hopefully not in his face?
“You…ah.” Cassie’s stroll to the counter was overly casual. “You don’t have any banana bread left, do you?”
“Sure do. It’s just plain, though. I hope that’s okay.” He hadn’t been able to touch the cinnamon recently. “You want a latte to go with it? I know for a fact that Spooky Brew can’t pull a shot of espresso to save their life.”
A tentative laugh burst from her, and the sound released some of the tension in Nick’s shoulders. “Yeah.” She glanced over her shoulder to the trash can, and when she looked back at him there was a hint of a smile in her eyes. “Yeah, that would be great.”
Nick tried to act casual, but it was hard when just a small smile from her made him feel like he’d won the lottery. “You got it.” He glanced back at her while she fiddled with her bag. Silence settled between them again, broken up only by the hiss of the espresso machine.
Cassie didn’t look at him. She looked out the front window, down at the counter. She didn’t move to that back table. She didn’t get out her laptop and plug it in. “I should probably take it to go,” she finally said. “I’ve got a ton of work to catch up on.”
“Oh. Sure.” Nick told himself not to be disappointed even as his heart plunged down into his shoes. There was no reason for him to expect things to just snap back to how they’d been. Just because she came by for some decent coffee didn’t mean she was here to hang out in her satellite office in his café.
“No, I mean, I just…I didn’t bring my laptop.” Cassie shifted from one foot to the other. “I wasn’t planning to come by here.”
“And then you had the coffee at Spooky Brew and changed your mind?” Nick reached for a cardboard to-go cup and purposely didn’t look to see how his joke landed.
She didn’t respond at first, but when he turned around she looked rueful. “Their coffee really sucks,” she finally confessed, the laugh escaping her sounding more like a sigh as her shoulders relaxed.
“You gotta come here to get the good stuff.” He smiled down at the cup as he swirled in the milk. He didn’t bother with latte art since he was popping a lid over the top of it.
“Don’t I know it.” Cassie took the coffee and the slice of banana bread he’d wrapped up for her. She tucked the banana bread into her bag and came out with her wallet.
Nick waved off her gesture to pay. “No charge.” He took a deep breath. It was now or never. “Consider it a long overdue apology for the things I said. I was a dick that day. I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah.” Cassie watched him carefully as she put her wallet away. He wasn’t sure if she was agreeing to accept his apology, or simply agreeing that he’d been a dick. Or both; that was certainly an option.
“I don’t know what happened. Maybe Sarah was messing with me, I don’t know. I can’t explain away what I said, but I promise I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry for hurting you, Cassie. I swear I’m not that kind of guy.” He paused. “Which is, of course, exactly what someone who is that guy would say. But seriously, ask anyone. Ask Ramon back there—” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ask Sophie. Or Libby.”
“I know.” Cassie sighed. “They’ve already stuck up for you. Well, not Ramon. I haven’t asked him. But…” She seemed to think for a moment before nodding decisively. “I’m actually here to ask a favor.”
God, yes, anything . Nick clamped down on his back teeth to keep from sounding too desperate. “Anything you want.” Perfect. Great job of not sounding desperate.
Cassie raised an eyebrow. “Anything? What if it’s illegal?” A teasing smile played around her lips—the best thing he’d seen all day.
Nick leaned his elbows on the counter, staring right into her eyes. “Anything,” he repeated.
She broke the stare first, fiddling with the strap of her bag again. “You said Elmer died in the year 2000, right?” Nick nodded at the non sequitur, but Cassie wasn’t done. “Do you know how old he was when he died?”
Nick’s phone buzzed in his back pocket almost immediately, and he fought to keep his face impassive. Elmer chiming in already. But Cassie was finally talking to him again. Nick wasn’t interrupting this conversation for anything. “I’m not sure exactly, but at least eighty? Maybe eighty-five?”
Cassie appeared to do some quick math in her head, then her eyes lit up. “Okay, that might work.”
“Work for what?” His phone buzzed again, and Nick considered throwing it in the trash.
“Well, you know how you and Elmer text?”
“Painfully aware of it,” he said as his pocket buzzed again and again.
Another smile. Even a little bit of a laugh this time. “And it happens pretty regularly, right?”
Now he let himself chuckle with the irony. “Most days.”
“You can just text him whenever you feel like it?”
“Huh.” He’d never thought about that before. “Elmer usually texts me first. Does that matter?”
“Maybe not.” But the answer was more of a question. Cassie took a deep breath; Nick could tell that this was her gearing up for the actual favor. “Do you think he might have known Sarah Hawkins?”
Oh, wow. Something else he’d never considered. He knew that the ghosts in town had been real people with real lives, but he’d never thought about their lives before their deaths. Who they’d known. How far back their history went.
And Elmer…of course Nick had known him when he was a kid. But Elmer had always been that old man who ran the café. Boneyard Key was a small town, though, and the history didn’t span very many generations. So it stood to reason…
“If he was in his eighties when he died,” Nick spoke while he thought, working out the math in his head, “he would have been born, what, before 1920? So yeah, that sounds like they might have overlapped. When did she die again?”
“Sometime in the 1940s.” Enthusiasm lit up her eyes; he’d obviously answered correctly. “So the favor…Do you think you could ask Elmer about her? And that maybe he’d answer? I’m trying to piece together more information about her life, but it’s hard to come by, and her vocabulary is pretty limited. You know, the words on the fridge.”
“I’m aware.” His voice was brittle; he remembered the words on her fridge. get him out . Yeah, he remembered those words all too well. Nan might think that Sarah Hawkins was a gentle spirit, but she’d manifested as Mean Mrs. Hawkins to Nick; she was obviously not a fan of his. What had he done to offend her? Had his grandpa pissed her off a few decades back or something?
Cassie’s expression softened; she remembered the words too. “What I mean is, there’s only so much she can tell me. I get it; Sarah isn’t your favorite person right now, but do you think…?”
“Sure,” Nick answered immediately. He wasn’t going to hold a grudge against a ghost. That would just be petty. “Believe me, if there’s one thing Elmer likes to do, it’s talk. If he knows anything about Mrs. Hawkins, it’ll be harder to get him to shut up.” The phone buzzed in his pocket again as if to illustrate his point, but Elmer could wait. This conversation was a hell of a lot more important. “I’ll ask him about Sarah under one condition.”
The enthusiasm drained from Cassie’s eyes, replaced by suspicion. Oh, no. That wasn’t the look he wanted to put on her face. “What’s the condition?”
His heart pounded as he took the leap. “Have dinner with me. Let me prove to you that I’m not that guy.” Nick held his breath. This was his chance. If she said no, he wasn’t going to ask again. He wasn’t that guy, either. If a girl said no, she said no.
Cassie took a cautious sip of her latte, considering. “Sophie and Libby really like you. You’ve got some good friends there.”
That wasn’t a yes. But it also wasn’t a no. “I really do.” He cocked an eyebrow. “So…?”
She studied him carefully. Nick wasn’t sure what she was looking for in his face, but she must have found it, because her sigh ended with a cautious smile. “Okay.”
Relief swept through him. He was going to get a chance to make this right. “Okay. Meet me here at eight.”
“We’re eating here?” She raised her eyebrows, and her flirty smile was the best thing he’d seen in weeks. “Nick Royer, are you gonna cook for me?”
He shook his head. “I’m a shitty cook, believe me. You don’t want that.”
“You don’t want that!” Ramon called from the back, and Nick hung his head. Of course he’d heard everything. He should be annoyed, but he was in too good a mood now. She’d said yes. The whole café could catch on fire for all he cared.
“See?” Nick gestured behind him.
She held up a placating hand, that smile still lighting up her face. “Okay, I believe you. See you tonight.”
The bell over the door chimed as she left, and Ramon came out, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen as they both watched her head up the street. Then he turned back to Nick with a grin. “Niiiiiice.”
Nick rolled his eyes. If it wasn’t Elmer bothering him about his love life, it was Ramon. “Shut the hell up.”
“I’m just saying, that was smooth. Help her out, get her to agree to a date in return.” He held out a hand for a fist bump. “Good job, man.”
Nick did not fist bump back.
It wasn’t until lunch was almost over that he remembered his phone and pulled it out of his pocket. His home screen was entirely covered with texts. What a surprise.
Almost eighty-five. I died the day before my birthday. How’s that for a kick in the ass?
Ask her out! I know you fucked it up before, but try try again!
ASK HER OUT YOU DUMBASS
Of course I remember Mrs. Hawkins. Ask me anything. Isn’t that what the kids say? Hahahahaha
ASK HER
Oh you asked her out. Good job!
Please don’t cook for her
Nick cleared away all the notifications with a chuckle. Thanks, he typed. I’ll get back to you about Mrs. H after tonight.
Tonight. The word had never felt so good.