Chapter 35 A Cry for Help
Thirty-Five
A Cry for Help
Forest
March
“I got this,” Davie, my newest employee, says. “Seriously. I know how to make a French 75.”
“Okay, cool. Sorry.” I back away, and he reaches for the gin while simultaneously shimmying his hips to the music.
It’s a damp Wednesday in early March, and there’s an engagement party in full swing at the game-room end of the bar. Two of our regulars decided to get hitched, and they’re celebrating here. The cocktail orders are rolling in.
Luckily, we’re fully staffed for the first time in forever. I should be ecstatic, but after months of unlucky breaks, I’m conditioned to believe the next crisis will pop up any minute.
“Maybe go home?” Scully says, nodding toward the hockey game on the screen above the bar. “You’ve worked more shifts than the Cougars’ captain during the run-up to the playoffs.”
“Home?” I echo. That’s a dramatic idea. Especially when there’s a box of tax documents in our office that’s yelling my name.
“Yeah, remember that place? Where your bed is?” He winks. “Maybe call your guy and see if he’s free.”
I pat my pocket absently, where my phone lives. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard from Beck in a couple of days. Have I? My heart does a weird little flop, and I duck under the bar and wander toward the office, where I pull out my phone.
I find my text thread with Beck and plop down in the shoddy office chair that’s held together with duct tape. The last message is from three whole days ago.
What is happening?
Forest
Hey man. You okay? It’s been a minute since we talked.
I hit Send, and then immediately feel three or four different kinds of uneasy. I get unhelpful flashbacks to our past conversations when I’ve told Beck I’m not long-term relationship material. Hell, I once told him he ought to meet someone closer to his age—someone with more time and less baggage.
My gut gives a twist that I don’t want to analyze.
Glancing at the computer on the desk in front of me, I shake the mouse to wake it up. When the screen lights up, I google the Ice Cats game schedule. Their next away game is Saturday night. Which means Beck has been home all week.
And not texting me.
I stare at our text thread again. There’s nothing much to go on, here. No smoking gun. Our last exchange involved Beck sending me a picture of a massive cheeseburger and asking if I thought it looked “elite or just desperate.”
I hadn’t replied. And that was it. Nothing since. No dumb jokes. No unsolicited opinions about sandwich structure or condiments or cat cafés.
Which means either his phone’s at the bottom of a lake, or I said something that scared him off and didn’t notice doing it.
Or he met someone.
He’d tell me, though.
Wouldn’t he?
For reasons I don’t wish to examine, I send him one more text.
Hey, I might clock out early tonight. You around?
I set the phone down on the desk and open the box of receipts. Rifling through it, I attempt to impose some order on them, while keeping one eye on the phone.
It lights up five minutes later.
Beck
Hey
Busy
I blink. The chilly response is so unlike Beck.
My first thought is to worry. Maybe he’s been kidnapped, and the one-word responses are a cry for help.
But that’s dumb. There’s another explanation that’s far more likely.
Maybe he’s finally giving me a taste of what it’s like to communicate with me.