Chapter 2
2
One week later…
Kit
I turned forty today. Which is fine. Forty is young, everyone keeps telling me. Well, everyone except for that one reproductive endocrinologist who referred to my eggs as geriatric.
His exact words were that they were in great shape for geriatric eggs, so I guess it’s a positive.
Was a positive. Was.
I’m done with the IVF. No babies. No family.
So, I’m celebrating forty or, I guess grieving, here at my bar at the end of a very long shift, with a birthday bourbon.
Two, actually. This is my second.
I pick up my phone again, open the group chat and smile at the Happy Birthdays from Trina and Beth, now married in New Zealand, Jules with her new guy in Paris, and my other friends who left town and scattered to the four corners of the globe, with their smiling, happy, complicated families.
Their kids.
My eyes blur as I look at the photos of babies and toddlers and tweens, grinning out from the warm safety of these wild, sweet families my friends have created. I’m so proud of them. And so painfully jealous.
Dammit, I’m being morose. I promised myself—and Frank when he called—not to get down in the dumps today.
Before I let a second thought stop me, I grab my phone and take a quick, sloppy, smirking selfie, bourbon glass in hand. With the lighting and the filter and the booze flowing through my veins, I look happy, which is good. The last thing I need is for any of them to worry.
Love you guys , I send with the picture, followed by a dozen hearts, before setting the phone back down with a final smack.
Looking up as I reach for the bottle again, my eyes land on the mirror behind the bar, where my image is aged, fractured through the cubist lens of antique mercury glass.
That’s more like it. The real me. Weird and off-center and looking absolutely my age.
I take another long sip, barely feeling the burn now, and groan at how boring I’ve become.
Next year, I’ve got to do something for my birthday. No way am I allowed to drink and brood and let this dark, sloppy emotional sludge out into the world. My god is it pathetic. Especially because of the voicemail burning a hole in my phone.
Masochist that I am, I pick it up again and hit play, shocked for a half second when the music playing over the bluetooth speakers abruptly stops, to be replaced by the voice mail person, then the first few notes of Billy and Renee shout-singing Happy Birthday, little Erin doing her best to keep up.
I cut them off and move on to the next message, this one from the ex-husband. “Hey, Kitty. Uh, happy fortieth! Listen, I know you’re probably out partying, but I need to talk to you about the restaurant. We need to re-evaluate the terms. Figured we could do this without getting the lawyers involved.” My blood boils, but I force myself to listen to his bullshit a second time. “Kids are expensive.” His laugh is so forced, I cringe. “Lily’s tired and needs to?—”
I stab at the delete button with a muttered, “ Prick .”
Yeah. Yeah, sure, take more of my hard-won money so the twenty-year-old you knocked up doesn’t have to work through her pregnancy.
The pain I’ve managed to keep banked these past few months bubbles up and, instead of cutting off voicemail entirely, I move on to the next message, like a bruise I’m compelled to press on.
Maybe because I’ve always been someone who picks at her wounds, I leave the audio on bluetooth.
“Hi there, Ms. Esteban. This is Teri from Dr. Haims’ office.” The sound’s loud, piped everywhere in the restaurant. I picture diners hearing this, imagine the kitchen crew listening in. Thank god they’ve all left for the night. “Calling to let you know that, sadly, your most recent cycle failed. I’m so sorry about that.” Yeah. Me, too, Teri. Me, too. “However we can get you on the schedule later this month. So give us a call to set up a time and we’ll?—”
A wounded sound leaves my body as I hit the end call button.
Something rattles in the back of the restaurant.
I go utterly still.
Nina Simone blares out from the speakers as the bluetooth switches back to music. Fumbling with my phone, I turn it off and listen with growing horror as the rattling becomes a repetitive scraping.
Oh my god. Is someone trying to get in the back door?
Scared sober, I slide off the stool, and stand here, completely paralyzed by indecision for the few seconds it takes my brain to catch up. Finally, I race around behind the bar and grab the metal baseball bat I keep there more as a deterrent than anything else.
Breathing hard, I raise it over my shoulder and set off, past the kitchen, down the hall, and the restrooms’ bleachy fog, around the corner, where the light’s not working, and smack straight into a wall that…shouldn’t be here? I don’t think I’ve ever made the kind of weird squeal I let out when I realize it’s actually a chest, attached to a person.
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, there, girl. Shit.” The voice is low and familiar. “Gimme that.”
Every nerve in my body’s gone haywire, shorting out as I stare up at Jake, whose massive body fills the hallway. He takes a hold of the bat and gently pries it from my hands while I stand staring up at him, open-mouthed.
“Jake? What are you…”
“Fixing the store room shelves. Told you I’d stay late and get started.”
“Now? Tonight?” I shake my head, squinting up at the cold blue eyes staring out from the man’s face. “I thought you meant at some point in the future. Not right this minute.”
Despite having worked with him every day for the past week, I don’t feel like I know the man at all. He’s perfectly polite, exceptionally competent in the kitchen, more than helpful with other things around the place. But he’s also intimidating and a little…off, although I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s the sharp eyes, so often on me whenever I look his way, or the hard edge to his expression, his body, the way he holds himself, which I attribute to the time he spent in prison or the job spent working in some of the most dangerous places on earth.
He’s been an exemplary employee. Everyone loves him—including Frida, the sous-chef who hates everyone—the restaurant’s booming, and, oddly, given everything else, I feel safe when he’s around.
But then, there’s this tension .
Which I’m probably imagining.
Like now. He’s holding a bat, staring down at me with this serious, almost angry look while I stand here and pretend that my nipples haven’t gone inexplicably hard.
The back door rattles again, sending a sizzle of adrenaline-fueled fear over my skin. Maybe the nipple thing is fear.
Jake shoves the bat back into my hands. “Lock yourself in the office. Call 911,” he mutters, low, before striding empty-handed down the hall to the back door.
I don’t move. All I can do is stare at his wide back, the T-shirt stretched tight over places I didn’t know muscles grew. His stride is long and heavy and fearless, his spine straight. He turns the lock, then works at what looks like a second one, then flings open the door and I don’t have time to wish he’d kept the bat for his own protection. All I can do is watch as he jerks someone inside, one-handed and without apparent effort, then pins him to the wall, his meaty forearm pressed to the intruder’s throat.
“What the fu?—”
The words cut off sharply when Jake leans in.
“Who’re you?”
“Keith?” I come up behind Jake and stare at the man I employed for four years, currently hovering a good six inches above the ground, his hands struggling to release the bar of human muscle that’s got him in a headlock. “What are you?—”
“This the guy?” Jake’s blank-eyed stare meets mine over his shoulder. “The one who stole from you?”
I nod, dumbfounded.
Jake turns to look at Keith, head tilted at a curious angle. “You here to ask for your job back?” I’d almost think he was joking if his low voice wasn’t so deadpan. “Position’s been filled, asshole.”
“Bitch owes me money,” Keith says, tearing off another little chunk of my heart.
How many days did we work together? How many hours? Exhausting double-shifts that felt like triumphs when the last person left and the door closed and we’d served every one of them above and beyond. Working together in a place that gets packed every weekend is like putting on an amazing show or, I don’t know, fighting a fire. Anyone who’s worked in food service knows that the right staff, thrown together under pressure, bonds as tightly as a family. I’d trusted Keith, gotten close to him, cared about him.
“You call the cops?” Jake’s deep rumble cuts through the pain of betrayal.
I shake my head.
“Good. Give me a minute.” With brutal efficiency, Keith is dragged outside. The door closes behind them.
I’m left standing stunned in the silent back hall, wondering what, exactly, I’m agreeing to by leaving Jake alone with my ex-employee.
Will he hurt him? Dispose of the body, mob-style? I don’t even know what Jake went to prison for. I figure it couldn’t have been worse than my brother, since Frank’s spent the last decade inside.
Crap. I’ve got to stop him. I throw open the door in time to watch Keith, bent double, stagger down the alley and disappear into the street beyond.
When I face Jake, he’s looking my way, his eyes in shadow.
“What did you do?” I ask, filled with a weird, light-headed trepidation.