Chapter Five #2
Logan goes ahead and orders the ridiculous Meat-splosion, because of course he does. It doesn’t even sound ridiculous when
he says it out loud. I decide ordering food from this gorgeous, angry man who clearly hates me on sight is overrated when
I can pick off Logan’s plate and pretend I’m not doing exactly that.
I look up at the waiter with the patented Lexi Darling smile that always works. It even worked on an impressively scathing bouncer or two back in my clubbing days.
He stares back at me impassively. Or what would be impassively if I couldn’t see that darker green in his gaze.
Maybe he’s allergic to overheated brown-haired girls with bags under their eyes that no amount of expensive makeup can cover.
Or maybe he saw me scuttling down an alley last night like it was trying to kill me, assuming his was that face I saw. Hard
to tell.
“I know it’s not on the menu, but do you—”
“We don’t have any milk that doesn’t come directly from a cow,” he says, and there’s an edge in that low voice of his that
rubs all over me. It makes me even hotter in my sweater, and I don’t like it. Especially since I was just going to ask about
an egg white omelet, not the paltry dairy offerings for coffee.
But he seems to be on a roll with no intent of actually listening to me.
“And we don’t make anything but coffee, in a pot. If it sounds Italian, you’ll have to go get it at Starbucks.”
I give that some consideration. “There’s a Starbucks here?”
“Give or take a few hours in the car.” He says that in a way that suggests I should get in that car right now and drive far,
far away.
I want to do something truly wild to warrant his contempt for me, but that’s as mentally questionable as sleepwalking or being haunted by clock towers, so I don’t.
“We don’t do substitutions,” he growls at me. “If you’re allergic to it, don’t eat it. We do real here. Real food, made by
real people, for real customers. Either order something off the menu or don’t order.”
His name tag says Jack. Because of course, he’s a Jack.
How my brother is sitting here, witnessing this and not intervening, is beyond me.
“I don’t recall asking you for a lot of substitutions,” I say quietly. “Or any. You, in fact, did not let me finish a sentence.”
His gaze gets even darker. I swear he’s this close to a sneer. Maybe an actual curled lip.
Though I can’t really imagine that chiseled face of his allowing such a desecration, so maybe I’m exaggerating.
But the truth is, there’s something about this that’s exhilarating, because I can’t think of a single time in my entire life
that a man has ever reacted like this to me. Even the ones who approach me and try to play their little reverse psychology
mind games on me because they listen to way too many “alpha male” podcasts usually wilt at the first sight of my smile. It
is the one piece of sunshine Logan and I share.
“I can come back if you aren’t ready,” the man says after what seems like a tense moment to me, though Logan is blissfully
unaware, his face in his phone. Fully missing the way Jack is speaking to me.
I can feel my temper brewing into a full-on tantrum. I open my mouth, ready to eviscerate him. “Listen, Jack—”
“Where’s your restroom?” Logan interrupts.
The waiter jabs a thumb behind him at a large sign on the wall that reads Restroom with an arrow pointing down a narrow hall.
“There you go, Lex,” Logan says, smiling broadly at me. Paying attention to all the wrong things, which, I know without having to ask, is in this moment my tone. “You can go take care of that problem.”
I do not have many problems beside him, but he says that so meaningfully. As in go away so I can eat without you causing your usual brand of drama.
His smile is annoying and not for my benefit. “I’ll order for you,” he says.
I want to argue. I want to spar with Jack and maybe punch my brother in the face, but I push myself up to my feet instead.
Because I am starving, and I need caffeine, and Logan will smooth it over with Jack so that no food will be spit on.
The two of them will likely be best friends in five seconds flat.
He’ll probably even get me a dairy alternative, and, if all goes well, join Jack in assorted windows tonight to creep around
and stare.
That thought brings another shiver, and I am sure that I feel Jack’s hard green gaze follow me as I head down the hallway.
But my self-righteous march only takes me so far before I start to get that prickly back-of-the-neck feeling, to be distinguished
from a shiver. A shiver is a reaction. This is a warning.
I whirl around, half expecting Jack to be lurking behind me, butcher knife in hand like Psycho minus the shower, but there’s nothing but the hallway. I turn back again and then stop dead still at the sight of a window
beside me.
That seems to frame the clock tower perfectly.
A scream wants to burst free of my lungs, but I manage to swallow it back. I am not going to stand here and be haunted by a clock tower so that every stranger in this small-town diner can stare and whisper
and wonder.
Somewhat blindly, I keep going until I find a door. Assuming it’s the one I’m looking for, I push my way through and then suddenly I’m . . . in an antique shop.
Just like it said on the sign, when I’d started to think maybe the decor was the antique in question.
Since I don’t actually have to go to the bathroom, I decide I can poke around here for about ten minutes and then return to the table to eat, avoiding
Jack entirely.
I think of the way his head jerked back and take a surreptitious sniff of myself but can’t detect any odor. Apparently, I
alone have that effect on him.
Midas wins again.
I look around the first little area. It’s a lot of dirty, splintering window frames stacked together and randomly hung up
on the wall to frame nothing. Not exactly the kind of antiques I’m interested in. I peer into a box that houses broken picture
frames for a nickel a piece. I try to remember the last time I actually saw a nickel. In a corner there is a pile of . . . spurs, maybe? All I know for sure is it looks like a heap of rusted metal.
“Garbage, garbage, and more garbage,” I mutter irritably.
Then I hear a squeak. I turn to find an elderly man getting up out of a chair behind a counter I didn’t even notice was there. His glasses have
slipped down his nose. He seems a little shaky as he gets to his feet, but he has to be the proprietor.
And I’ve just been muttering about his garbage.
“One man’s garbage is another’s treasure. I believe that’s how the saying goes anyway.” He says this with a kindness that
immediately makes me feel ashamed. An emotion usually only my father can manage to elicit from me.
“I . . .” But the best I can do is a sheepish smile.
He gestures me deeper into the store. “I think I’ve got something you might like.” He grabs a cane, then walks around the
counter and starts hobbling deeper into the store.
Part of me is intrigued that he thinks he knows what I would like.
Part of me—the part with the neck that won’t stop prickling—knows the start of a Dateline special when I see one.
But I’m being ridiculous. This guy can’t be a day under ninety. He can’t even walk on his own without a cane—
Then again, maybe that’s his schtick. How he lures women into his antique shop to murder them with rusted metal and old window
frames.
You’ve really lost it, I tell myself.
Hesitantly, I follow the old man. But I reach into my purse and close my hand around my pepper spray, just in case.
We take a turn in a narrow hallway covered in old movie posters. The kind of artistic movies Logan pretends to love and I’ve never been able to stay awake through. We move through a room that’s nothing but bookshelves.
Then, with a shaky hand, he sticks a key into the lock of a door and pushes it open.
Here it is. The torture chamber. I’m about to meet my grizzly end—
“You go on and poke around. I’ve got books to alphabetize.” The old man points to a stack of books on the far side of the
room. Then he purposefully sets the key chain on a bookshelf inside the room he wants me to go in.
I see it for what it is: Reassurance he isn’t going to lock me in the room and feast on my bones. Or maybe he can’t be bothered
to shuffle all the way back here.
Either way, I peek my head into the room.
And my breath comes out on a sigh.
The room is full of beautiful things. Truly beautiful things. Real antiques, I would say. Logan probably knows all about brands and eras, but I’m transfixed by a display of framed needlepoint
on the wall.
Delicate. Beautiful. I can’t stop myself from walking inside and taking them all in.
I want to inhale each work, study every centimeter, admire every inch. They would look so good hanging on a wall in my apartment