Chapter 40 Adela #2
I wipe down the counter and think about honesty.
Whether it's serving me. Whether telling the truth — I found the laptop, I watched the videos, the masked men took it, I don't know where it is now — whether any of that helps or whether it just hands Cody a roadmap of everything I know while I'm standing in his father's house tomorrow night.
I stack cups and decide on nothing.
The shift ends at six.
The early dark had fallen while I was inside. I step out into it and feel it immediately. The parking lot. My car across it. The distance between here and there is not actually a long distance, but feels, in this moment, with Cody's voice still in my head, like something I need to cross quickly.
I walk fast.
I am almost to the Range Rover when footsteps behind me—
"Adela."
I spin.
Jordan. Just Jordan, coat on, holding a folder. I press my hand against my chest and breathe.
"Sorry," he says immediately, reading my face. "Didn't mean to startle you." He holds out the folder. "Paperwork. I kept forgetting to give it to you."
I take it. "Thank you."
He looks at me for a moment. "Everything okay?"
"Yes," I say. "Long day."
"You did good today." He says it simply, the way he says everything. "You're fast, and you don't complain. That's rarer than it sounds."
Something in my chest loosens slightly. "Thank you, Jordan."
"See you tomorrow?"
"What time?"
"Morning. Seven."
I nod. "I'll be there."
He goes back inside. I get in my car and sit with the folder on my lap and the dark outside the windows and breathe until my hands stop feeling like they belong to someone else.
Seven in the morning is early.
I'm there at six fifty-five because I don't sleep well, and the alternative is lying in the dark thinking about tomorrow night, and I would rather be moving.
The café is different in the morning. Quieter at first and then suddenly not — the commuter rush hitting like a wave, orders stacking up, the machine running at full speed before I've fully woken up.
Jordan put me on the espresso bar today, which means learning the grinder, the tamper, and the specific timing of a proper pull.
I learn it in twenty minutes.
My coworker appears beside me at eight — the girl from yesterday, dark ponytail, the particular warm energy of someone who likes people and makes no apologies for it. She looks at my cups and raises her eyebrows.
"You're good at that."
"I watched a lot of tutorial videos last night," I say, which is true and also the most normal sentence I have said in several weeks.
She laughs.
Her name is Priya, and she has been working here for a year. She knows every regular and their order, and she tells me all of this in the compressed, efficient way of someone used to communicating in the narrow windows between rushes.
At nine-fifteen, the door opens, and I look up from the grinder.
Beckett.
His eyes find me immediately. He looks around the café — one sweep, automatic, the habit of someone who always clocks a room — and then back at me.
"Hi," I say, blinking. Did he know that I work here, and that’s why he’s here?
"Hi." He looks at the apron. At the espresso bar. Something moves across his face that isn't quite a smile. "You work here now?"
"I do." I keep my voice professional. "What can I get for you?"
He tells me his order.
I make it while he pays with his card and moves to the end of the bar to wait. Our hands don't touch when I set the cup down. We don't acknowledge anything. It's the most normal sixty seconds we've ever had, and it feels like its own kind of intimacy.
"When do you get off?" he says.
"An hour."
"I'll wait."
"Beck," I warn.
He lifts the cup. "Tastes good."
He moves to the corner table by the window. I watch him go, and then Priya is beside me, close enough that only I can hear.
"Who is that?"
"Someone from campus."
"He's hot." She leans on the counter. "He comes in sometimes. I've never had the guts to say anything to him."
Something in me releases slightly. "Really?"
She nudges my elbow. "I haven't had the guts. But you're clearly already there, so I'm hands off."
I look at Beckett in the corner, coffee in hand, staring out the window at the street. The way he takes up exactly as much space as he occupies and no more.
I bump Priya's shoulder back and look at him one more time.
Then I go back to work.
When my shift ends, I walk over to his table, drop into the chair across from him, and put my bag of leftover baked goods — Jordan's policy, end of shift, anything remaining goes home with staff — on the table between us.
Beckett looks at the bag. Then at me.
"Don't you have a game?" I ask.
"Pre-game coffee." He lifts the cup.
I nod. We sit in silence for a moment. The café is moving around us.
"Are you coming tonight?" he asks.
My heart does something I ignore. "I'll be at Cody's tonight."
Something changes in his face. Controlled. Contained. He looks at his coffee cup. "Tonight's the night."
"Yes." I play with the baked goods in my hand, breaking them apart with no intention of taking a bite. I whisper, “He asked me for his laptop.”
Beckett goes completely still.
I inhale, scared to admit this, but I have no one else to turn to. "He was upset that I didn't have it."
"Tell him you never did."
"His dad knows I had it." I shake my head. "And I don't know who took it, so it’s not like I could get it back.” I pause, considering how much time I have left until I have to meet him tonight. There’s not enough time. “To be honest, I completely forgot about it. I was happy when it was gone."
"Just tell him you don't have it," he says carefully. "And leave it at that."
I look into his eyes.
He's warning me.
Not as a friend. Not as someone who owes me anything. As someone who knows exactly what is on that laptop and exactly what happens if I say the wrong thing.
"Okay," I say softly, considering this as my only option.
"Just that. Nothing else."
"Okay."
He looks at me for another moment. Then he stands, picking up his cup. He leans in slightly and whispers, "He's a ticking time bomb, Adela."
I hold very still.
"Don't be there when he explodes."
He straightens and walks out.
I sit at the table with the bag of baked goods and the empty coffee cup.
Don't be there when he explodes.
I pick up my bag.
I need to go home.
I walk out into the early evening, and the cold hits me hard. I shiver as I think about Beckett's warning, Theo's mouth, the laptop, and the date with Cody tonight.
I think about Sunday.
Barnes and Noble. When they open.
I hold onto that.
I get in the car and drive home. I don't let myself feel any of it until I'm in the shower with the water running hot, and then I feel all of it at once — the fear, the want, the guilt.
I turn the water hotter and mentally play out the conversation I will have with Cody tonight.
Then I stand in front of the mirror, naked, and repeat the words out loud, watching my face, practicing what it means to be the perfect girlfriend.
I wear my best outfit, put on my favorite perfume, apply my best makeup, and pull myself together. I look in the mirror and put on the face.
It's time.