Chapter Four #2
“Yeah, Lucy.” I stopped going by my full name by sophomore year, when I gave up fanciful things like silly crushes.
I stood and wiped my hands on my apron, palms brushing against the thick linen.
Jake watched, as if trying to decipher some kind of meaning out of the movement, or like he was looking for something. “Why does it matter?”
“You never used to go by Lucy. You always went by Luciana, y-you—” He stuttered for a second, a funny look on his face. “You said your name sounded like a melody.”
I did say that once upon a time, a few life lessons ago.
“Lu-sea-ahh-na,” eleven-year-old Jake repeated when we first met, the slight Texas twang stretching it out and making it sound musical on his tongue.
“It sounds like a melody,” I’d marveled.
“It does. It would fit a song.”
I shut the memory down, making it blink to black like a TV show turning off mid-scene.
“Well, life’s not a song,” I said.
Jake, international pop star, raised his eyebrow.
Okay, fine. Maybe it kind of was, for him. Living in a song was what he did onstage most nights.
The familiar, soft thump of a cat leaping down from the catwalk echoed from around the corner, but Jake must’ve forgotten the sound, because he looked alert as he glanced behind him. “Is your mom here?”
“No, just me.”
Jake nodded, looking at a loss for what to say. But those old Southern manners his mother used to lecture him about must’ve stayed lurking somewhere underneath five layers of leather and snark and larceny, because he asked, “How is she?”
Normally, the answer I gave people was Mom’s surgery went great. But that was for those who knew me. Jake didn’t even know Mom got into an accident. It seemed awkward to talk about it now and try to cover all that ground after we’d put miles between us.
“She’s fine,” I replied, voice clipped. I stood abruptly. “I need to close up the café.”
Jake blinked in mild surprise before standing too. He opened his mouth, about to say something, when Mittens walked in. Distracted, Jake stopped to watch her.
Well, he still loved cats. At least that hadn’t changed. It was what would hopefully make The Tiny Tiger popular again.
“Where are you staying?” I asked.
“The Jackson Motel, where my mom used to work,” he replied, eyes still on Mittens, who began sniffing his boots with deep interest.
“Do you think you’ll get recognized?”
“Nah—most adults don’t know who I am. But I requested a room under a fake name anyway.”
Inconspicuous. “What’s your alias?”
“Sylvester.”
Never mind. I stared at him, letting that fact sink in for a moment. Jake looked really good in that leather jacket. It was a shame I wanted to strangle him.
“Sylvester,” I echoed in a deadpan.
“Sylvester.”
I peered down at Mittens. Can you believe this?
No, she seemed to say. But his boots smell like really fancy Italian cow. You should take a whiff.
“Sylvester as in Stallone or the Looney Tunes cat?” I asked sarcastically.
“As in a musician, actually. He’s an old, famous guitarist.”
Well, that tracked; Jake always loved guitar. Though a musician using another musician’s name to go undercover seemed ironic, I decided not to argue Jake’s choice of aliases. His choice of disguises, however? That I would argue. Clothes were my domain.
“Is this supposed to be your incognito look?” I asked, giving him a once-over. “You literally just added a baseball cap to your normal outfit.”
“Hey, they’ve used this disguise in at least three Marvel movies,” Jake protested. To support this piece of trivia, he pulled the hat out from where he’d stuck it in his back pocket and put it on. Next, he reached inside his jacket and retrieved a pair of oversized black sunglasses.
It looked like the outfit Amber’s sister wore when she returned from spring break, hungover from drinking too many margaritas. She had on a giant hat that shaded her face and the biggest, darkest sunglasses I’d ever seen, yet she’d still puked in her front yard’s fuchsia bush.
Amber’s mom had made all three of us sit down for a forty-five-minute lecture on alcohol.
Jake took in my skeptical expression, then glanced down at his outfit. I didn’t know how he could see it in his sunglasses. “You don’t think this works to check into a motel?”
“They’re going to see your obviously fake name and think you spent the night partying and underage drinking.”
“I thought of that.”
“Of partying and underage drinking?”
“Ha, ha,” he said, the laugh coming out in a dry, unamused staccato. “I meant I thought about my name on my credit card. I went to one of the ATMs in LA and got some cash, so I have that in case anything goes wrong.”
My eyebrows went up. “You’re turning up out of nowhere, checking into a motel under a fake name while wearing shady sunglasses and a baseball cap, and carrying a duffel full of cash?”
“Okay, I’m beginning to realize I fit the criminal profile perfectly.”
“One might even say you’re a Usual Suspect.”
Jake took off his sunglasses to send me a flat look. I smirked.
Then, to my surprise, he asked, “Do you want to meet up tomorrow?”
“To discuss the café promo?”
“I don’t know what else we have to talk about.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t really have much in common with Teen’s Choice award winners who ‘accidentally’ set off fire crackers at their manager’s Beverly Hills pool party.”
He cocked his head. “But you have things in common with the winners who don’t?”
I ignored this. “I don’t have to be here until eleven tomorrow,” I told him, getting back on track. “I can meet you at your motel at nine. You know, if they let you check in.” Jake threw me another look. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I slid past him, his hand reached out but then pulled back at the last minute, fingers curling inward.
“Listen,” he said softly against the brick wall around me, and something in my chest caught. “Lucy . . .”
It was the first time he’d used my new name. “Yeah?”
I didn’t know what Jake wanted to say, didn’t know what I wanted him to tell me. I was scared he’d say he missed me, scared that he didn’t at all.
“I just wanted to say,” he continued, “I really—”
And then Mittens threw up a hair ball on his designer boots.