Chapter 6 #2
“Thanks, man.” Luke hands it to Johnny and then gives me a quick, closed-mouth smile, one of those looks that says, This interaction is over now, thank you.
My heart is racing as he turns away. He didn’t recognize me. The scary, extremely unlikely thing happened, but I’m still safe.
Everything is still okay. Johnny makes a knowing face at me as we turn to head back down to the kitchen. “Yeah, all right,
I see it, whatever.”
“What?” I can’t focus on a word Johnny is saying.
“You gonna make me spell it out? I see why you froze up. Kid’s handsome.”
“Excuse me! Sorry, can you wait a sec?” The voice comes from behind us. Johnny and I are at the top of the stairs, about to
go down. I turn around. It’s Luke again, but this time, he’s looking straight at me. He searches my face, up and down, as
if he’s trying to puzzle something out. I watch as his eyes flick to my left collarbone, to the little birthmark I have there.
I go to cover it with my hand, but I’m too late. He looks back up at me, his eyes triumphant.
“You need something else?” Johnny asks him.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Luke says. “I wasn’t sure before, but now—”
“You can go,” I tell Johnny, basically pushing him down a step into the stairwell. He stumbles and makes a what the hell face at me. But I don’t want him to overhear this, and short of running away, I have no other options but to have this conversation.
I close the door behind Johnny before I turn back to Luke.
“Hey,” I say.
A carousel of emotions crosses his face—confusion, disbelief, shock. He takes a step toward me. “Cee,” he breathes. “It really
is you, isn’t it?”
It’s strange hearing him call me by my old nickname, but it’s not like he knows me as Claire Hopper. Luke’s never known that version of me. He knew me as CeCe, although he only ever called me Cee.
“In the flesh.” Immediately I want to die that those were the first words I chose to say. We walk toward each other and I
get the sense he means to come pull me into a hug, but I must be giving off weird body language because he stops short.
“I go by Claire now, though,” I add. “Not CeCe.”
“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Why didn’t you say anything? When I asked you for oat milk like some asshole?”
I motion at my black apron with Nina’s Catering stitched on it. “I’m working. And . . . I don’t know. I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me? Cee, don’t be silly.” He’s looking at me in a funny way. “Man. I can’t believe it’s you. You look so different.”
I can tell he means it as a compliment, but I bristle. I know I look different. Better. Much better, even. But that awkward little girl was still me. And I still want to protect her.
“Thanks.” It comes out clipped.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Luke says. “You look good. Older. But it’s still you.”
We’re both quiet, not quite sure what to say. “So . . . how have you been?” I ask.
He rubs his hands together. “Good! Busy, but good. How about you?”
“Good,” I agree. “Same.”
The energy between us is all wrong. It’s nothing like it used to be, back when we were close.
At one point, Brett joked it was a waste of money for us to have our own trailers because we were always in each other’s.
But that was then, and five years is a long time.
Long enough for him to grow into a different person, same as me.
At this point in our lives, we’re truly strangers. My younger self would have flat-out rejected this as a possibility. And
yet, here we are.
Someone pokes his head out of the meeting room. If I had to guess by his vibe, a PA. “Excuse me, Lucas? Are you coming?”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” Luke says.
“Oat milk, coming right up,” I say loudly, for the benefit of the PA. “Freshly milked!”
“Uh, sure,” the PA says. “Thanks.”
He disappears back into the room.
“Well,” Luke says, motioning at the door. “I gotta . . .”
“Yeah, no, of course,” I say, glad I’ll soon be out of my misery. “It was good to see you.”
“You too. Really good. Will you be around in a bit?” he asks. “I’d love to catch up, like, for real.”
“Maybe,” I say. “My shift is over soon, so I might have to head out.”
“Okay. I’ll try to be fast in there, then,” he says. “And hopefully I can still catch you.”
Before he turns to go, I say, “Hey, by the way, please . . . don’t mention me.
To anyone.” I nod at the meeting room. “Not that you would, but no one here knows. I mean, no one in Connecticut knows that I’m me.
I don’t know if some of your crew is local or what, but . . . please keep this between us.”
Luke makes a face at me like he couldn’t possibly have heard me right. “Sorry, what do you mean? Knows what?”
I wave my hands to encompass the whole building, the whole town, the whole state. “No one—and I mean no one, not even my best friend—knows who I am. That I’m CeCe Lafayette. I’m Claire Hopper here.”
“Wait,” Luke says. “Are you serious?”
I nod.
“You changed your name? You changed your identity?”
“I didn’t just randomly change it. Hopper is my mom’s maiden name. Both Nicky and I changed from Lafayette after our parents
split. And my name’s always been Claire, as you know; I just dropped the stage nickname. The rest just . . . happened.”
“Wow. That’s hardcore.” Luke mimes zipping his lips shut. “You got it.”
The PA pokes his head back out. “Lucas, I’m sorry, but we’re ten minutes behind—”
“Coming,” Luke says. He turns to me. “See you soon?”
“Sure,” I say, although I plan to be far, far away as soon as possible.
When the door clicks shut behind him, I press my hands hard against my face. Then I turn and head back down to the kitchen.