Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Two weeks after messing up my second stock order, I almost kill somebody.
At The Lair, all our menus include allergy disclaimers for every dish. Since customers are able to check them, I have never bothered asking if anyone was allergic to something. People can always communicate their needs, right?
Wrong.
“She’s trying to kill me!” our customer bellows.
Before today, I’d never seen this woman in my life, but even if I had, I can guarantee I wouldn’t try to kill her. Not that she knows my intentions, but come on.
“Ma’am—” Charlie starts, having come to my rescue after hearing her loud screeches from across the bar.
“I don’t want to hear it.” The woman, who doesn’t look much older than us, sends my co-worker a cutting glare before sliding it toward me. “I am allergic to onions, and look what this burger comes with— onions . See? It’s here between the meat and the bun. This is unacceptable . I want to speak to the manager.”
I breathe in and out, willing my inner peace to come back. This is Travis’s business, and I don’t want to ruin its hard-earned good reputation.
“I am so sorry this happened,” I start because, at the end of the day, I want to keep my job. I show her the menu. “As you can see, every dish includes allergy disclaimers, as well as every ingredient. In the description of the burger you ordered, onions are the third ingredient listed. If you had warned me about your food restrictions, we would have taken care of it appropriately. Still, I apologize for not checking beforehand.”
I know I’m not imagining the way my fingers tremble as I hold the menu in her direction, but I keep my shoulders straight and my chin high.
This was an unfortunate mistake. Maybe I should have double-checked, but I have never had this problem before, and I sure as hell wasn’t trying to kill anybody.
“Oh, so now it’s my fault?” When she raises her voice, the man next to her grabs her arm, trying to calm her down, but it’s like she can’t even hear him. “I told you I was allergic to onions, and I asked for them to be removed.”
I blink. “No, you didn’t.”
She didn’t . I wouldn’t forget something like that.
She looks at me as if I had just verbally slapped her. “Excuse me?”
“Mindy,” the man next to her tries once again. “It’s okay. It wasn’t her fault.” When he looks at me, his mortified expression makes me feel bad for him. “Could she get another burger without onions, please?”
I’m quick to nod. “Of course.”
“I don’t want another burger.” Mindy grabs her purse and stands from their booth. Charlie shifts closer to me. “And I’m also not paying for that shit that almost killed me. Where’s your manager?”
What’s with people refusing to pay for their food and drinks lately?
“He isn’t here right now,” Charlie says, which isn’t a lie. Travis was here this morning when my shift started, but I haven’t seen him since. “If you would like to file a complaint form, I will get one for you, but we can’t let you leave the restaurant without paying the tab, ma’am.”
Her companion stands after her and gives Charlie a tight smile. “That won’t be necessary. And of course we’ll pay.”
“Like hell we will.” Mindy shakes off his grip and drills those hard, cruel eyes into me.
But then something shifts.
It happens in slow motion. First, the confused frown. Then the change in her gaze from furious to unsure. And finally, she asks the question.
A question I’ve only been asked once before in the past six years.
A question that made me flee Nashville months before planned.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” And then she makes it worse. “You look so familiar.”
Sweat collects at the back of my neck.
My pulse throbs, turning my vision into a blur. My lungs cinch tighter, not letting air in, as adrenaline surges through me.
Three things happen all at once.
One—I panic.
Two—I get a strong urge to cry.
Three—I need to throw up.
Now .
But Mindy’s eyes are on me, and I need to think of something before recognition dawns on her. Anything .
She looks the part. Maybe I’m being too judgmental, or maybe it’s the way she’s dressed in the latest trends or how tightly she grips her phone, not putting it down for one second. When I took their order, she was browsing through a popular app, so it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that she…
Leave. Leave. Leave.
I smile and hope she doesn’t notice how the corners of my mouth are also trembling. “I’m here all the time, so you may have seen me around.”
“It’s not that.” She peruses my face again. “I’m not from here, but I swear you remind me of?—”
“Mindy,” the man beside her interrupts. “Let’s go, please. They have work to do.”
“I’m sorry about our misunderstanding,” I’m quick to say. “I need to see to other tables. Charlie?”
His eyes pinball between the couple and me. “Sure thing.”
I don’t stay long enough to check if Mindy says anything else or agrees to pay the tab without making a fuss.
I don’t stay long enough to spot Travis walking back into the bar and pulling Charlie aside before taking care of Mindy and her poor companion himself.
I don’t see any of that because, not even a minute later, I’m shutting the bathroom door behind me and throwing up in the toilet.
That woman recognized me.
She knows who I am.
She knows where I am.
All these years covering my tracks, for nothing.
All my attempts at leaving my past behind, ruined.
An image of Mindy scrolling through her phone flashes in my mind, and another wave of nausea hits me. I brace myself on the toilet and empty my stomach as the tears fall.
If she tells anybody…
They can’t force me to go back or to do anything I don’t want to do. I’m an adult now.
The thought doesn’t make me feel better. Maybe because being yelled at and demanded I go back wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.
I flush the toilet and lean my weight on the cold wall behind me, waiting until my legs stop shaking to exit the bathroom. Everything in me is willing my anxiety to go away, but it remains, fiercely gripping my chest.
Logically, I know what my next step should be. If someone has found out where I live, I have to leave. I need to make myself scarce once again, go somewhere else. Maine has enough small towns to start over a few times.
So what if the thought of leaving this life behind makes me nauseous again? A job I love, my co-workers, the nice people of Bannport, my freedom…
Am I ready to give it up because someone might have recognized me?
I don’t get to answer my own question because the bathroom door opens, and my boss walks in. The space isn’t too big—it’s just one stall and a sink—so there’s no place for me to hide, no way for him to miss me. To miss how much of a mess I am.
Travis doesn’t say a word as he opens the tap, the sound of water filling the silence between us. I keep my face down, wiping away my tears with my sleeve and hoping there isn’t vomit on the corners of my mouth. Oh hell.
Could this be worse than the period stain?
My brain doesn’t register what he’s doing until he nudges my hands with a wet towel. It looks comically small between his fingers, and it takes me a moment to peel my gaze off them. I only do so because he pushes the towel into my hands again, his silent way of telling me to grab it.
We don’t speak.
I hate that he’s seeing me like this, but at least it’s only him watching me in my most vulnerable state. It wasn’t always like that.
When the towel meets my skin, its warmth soothes me a little. Once I make sure my face is as clean as it’s going to get, I give him a tiny smile.
“Thank you.” My voice doesn’t sound much louder than a whisper, but he’s close enough to hear me, close enough for the woodsy scent of his cologne to wrap around my lungs.
The only response I get is a grunt.
Or, at least, that’s what I think until he asks in that deep voice, “Are you sick?”
I think I might be, but not in the way he thinks.
“I’m fine. It’s probably just a bug.”
It’s not. I threw up because I panicked, but I can’t tell him that. I don’t want to answer the million questions that will come after that. Although this is Travis I’m talking about, so more like two.
But after fourteen months of being around him, I should know better than to think I can fool an ex-military man who seems to read minds.
“I know what happened with those people,” he says.
I’m sure you don’t. “It’s fine.”
I fold the towel into a perfect square and give it back to him. He accepts it wordlessly, his gaze trained on my face as if he were looking for something I’m sure he won’t find.
“It’s really okay,” I assure him. “It’s not the first time a customer’s been rude to me. I’ll get over it. Thanks for checking on me, boss man.”
I fight the urge to overthink why he followed me here in the first place. Travis isn’t the caring type. At work, he keeps conversations strictly business—at least with me. Maybe he has in-depth talks with Jude and Sandra after hours, but I wouldn’t know or care.
Liar.
But he’s here now, and maybe it means something.
That he wants me to go back to work, possibly.
I’m about to leave when my eyes land on a box of tampons and pads on the bathroom counter.
“Did you get those?” I ask him, my throat dry.
The stiff nods he gives me makes my heart leap. “Just in case customers need them.”
He bought tampons for the bathroom. For the remainder of my shift, I’m unable to think about anything else, forgetting about my breakdown.
I can’t stop thinking about how his actions speak for him more than he knows, how he’s the best boss I’ve ever had, how his grumpiness is endearing, how I always feel safe when he’s around.
And then I force myself to draft my two-week notice when I get home.
One thing I’m not going to miss about Bannport is my apartment, that’s for sure.
I was lucky to find something within my limited budget, but Apartment B isn’t the best. It isn’t even great or good . My landlord, the mechanic I took my car to when it broke down the day I arrived in Bannport, conveniently forgot to tell me about the humidity problem in the building—which makes black mold grow on my walls. I clean it up as soon as it appears, but…mold.
Finding an apartment in this small town is a pain, I’ve come to learn. It’s full of vacation rentals, which I would have to move out of every few months. I’m not about that at all.
But hey, at least I have a place to stay, mold and all. My apartment has a small kitchen and living room area, and my bedroom and bathroom are decent sized. I’ve had it much, much worse while living in the lap of luxury.
If nothing else, I’m thankful for my independence. I have a roof over my head I can afford all on my own, food in my fridge, a car that still runs, and money in my bank account to buy as much hair dye as I need.
And up until today, I had a job I loved and co-workers I felt comfortable around. I haven’t resigned yet, but my mind is set.
I think.
“Honey,” Jada greets me from the other end of the line when I call her later that day. She sounds way more enthusiastic than I’m feeling. “Do you know what you’ll be doing for Christmas?”
Jada and Paul invite me over to their home every year, but I haven’t been back to Los Angeles in six years. Much to their disappointment, I won’t start now.
I plop down on my thrifted couch I got the same day I signed my lease and stare up at the popcorn ceiling. “I’ll be staying here, I think.”
“You think?”
I let out a deep sigh and decide I don’t have the mental strength to beat around the bush today. “I’m considering turning in my two-week notice.”
“Okay,” she concedes. But she says it in that voice she’d use when one of us gave her an incorrect answer in math class that she didn’t want us to feel bad about. “Aren’t you happy at work? Is it your boss?”
When I first started working at The Lair, I told Jada about Travis’s grumpiness. I always made a point to remark how he was never rude to me, just a bit stoic in general. But I haven’t complained about him in a while—haven’t even mentioned his name—so her assumption is surprising.
“It’s not Travis.” In a way, I wish Travis were the reason I was considering leaving this town. It would make things much easier. “Someone…” God . I can’t believe this is happening right now. “At the bar, someone recognized me today. A customer. At least I think she did.”
“That’s impossible,” my former teacher blurts out, as if the mere thought is insane. “It’s been what? Five, six years? And you look so different now, Allie. Did she say something to you?”
“She said she knew me from somewhere. That I looked familiar.”
I don’t tell her about my date with the toilet. The less I upset her, the better.
“All right. Let’s slow down,” she instructs, using that teacher voice again. “I thought you were happy at The Lair. In Bannport. Did something else happen?”
“No.” It’s the truth.
“And you want to run away because someone might have recognized you?”
I don’t miss the way she says “run away” and not “leave.” Not “move.”
“I saw it in her eyes, Jada. She knew who I was. She was young, too, so she might know who my family is. Might know… everything.”
The thought of that stranger, of any stranger, having a front-row seat to my private life makes my stomach turn again. I haven’t felt this in a while, haven’t allowed myself to remember that my life will never belong to me again.
“Allie.” She sighs, sounding a little tired. “Listen to me—it’s very unlikely that anyone would recognize you after all these years. You’ve grown up, not to mention changed your appearance.”
“My face was all over the news. Jada, it was bad. I don’t need to remind you.” The more logical part of me wants to believe her, but… “Someone already recognized me not that long ago. Remember Nashville?”
“All right. It happened once,” she concedes.
“So, not that unlikely,” I mutter.
“Do you really want to uproot your entire life because of a woman who probably won’t do anything about it even if she actually recognized you?”
“I did it once. I could do it again.”
I could do it a thousand times if I had to. If I could leave behind everything I knew for a chance at a life worth living, I know I have the strength to resign from The Lair and never set foot in Bannport again.
But do I want to?
“That isn’t the point, honey.” She sighs again after she says it, which lets me know I’m in trouble. Well, as much trouble as I can get in with the absolute angel that is Jada. “Tell me something—do you feel at peace in Bannport with the life you are creating for yourself?”
The answer comes easily. “Yes.”
“Then here’s what we’re going to do,” she starts, always the beacon during my storms. “I’ll search in every corner of the internet, and if I find something about this, I’ll tell you. Once we know how serious this is or isn’t, you can decide what to do. But don’t overreact for now.”
What she’s saying sounds reasonable, but…
“What if it’s already out there?”
“I’ll start searching right now. I’m putting Paul on the task too,” she says. Her husband hates being online as much as I do, so the fact that he’s doing this for me means more than he will ever know. “We’ll keep looking every day this week in case she decides to post something later. Don’t worry about it, okay? Stay offline.”
She doesn’t have to tell me twice.
I let out a shaky breath. “Thank you, Jada. I love you so much.”
“We love you too, Allie. Don’t make any impulsive decisions you might regret later. Think about how precious the life you’re building for yourself is, and don’t let anybody ruin it. Not even yourself.”
Not even yourself.
That has always been the hardest part.