Living Out Loud (The Austen Series Book 3)

by Staci Hart

Her eyes lit up. “I’ve always wanted to try one of those.”

  “You’ve never had a Monte Cristo?” I shook my head. “Man, you’re missing out.”

  “You know what it is? The idea of putting jelly on meat. I just couldn’t ever bring myself to do it. It’s like mixing peanut butter and banana or bacon and syrup. Something about mixing sweet and salty frays the fabric of my universe.”

  I laughed. “I’ll tell you what. How about I order something else? And if you don’t like the Monte, we’ll switch.”

  “Deal. Meatball or Reuben?” She asked the question as if the answer would determine my future.

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Either. You just named my second and third favorites.”

  Her smile said I’d answered correctly. “Meatball it is, extra cheese.”

  Ruby called her name, and she turned.

  “Ask Ruby what she wants, would you?” I called after.

  “You’ve got it,” she answered over her shoulder.

  I watched her for a second too long, turning to find Harrison still gazing after her.

  “A pretty little thing like that, mowing down a sloppy meatball sub with extra cheese? Fucking dream girl.”

  My jaw flexed. “She’s eighteen.”

  The shock and disappointment on his face made him look like he’d just dropped his lollipop. “Aw, man. That sucks.” He dragged the last word out, and I found I could relate.

  Upside: he’d been effectively scared off.

  When our sandwiches walked through the door an hour later, Harrison and I were too busy for both of us to take a break, so we agreed I’d eat first and then take over for him. I waved Annie over, meeting her at a booth just behind where I’d interviewed her.

  “I’m starving,” she said as she slid in.

  When her eyes met mine, they were alight, bright and green as Emerald City, her pupil ringed with a brilliant burst of gold like sun rays.

  “Well, don’t let me keep you waiting,” I said, turning my gaze to my hands so I wouldn’t get lost in fascination. I handed her sandwich over and took a seat across from her.

  Annie unwrapped it with enthusiasm, her tongue darting out to wet her bottom lip and eyes bugging when she saw the massive deep-fried sandwich covered in powdered sugar.

  “Oh my God, that looks incredible,” she said, reaching for her bag with her eyes still on the sandwich.

  I angled closer and lowered my voice. “Wait until you taste it.”

  Her eyes met mine for a split second of amusement before shifting to her hands, which held a pink Polaroid camera. She turned the sandwich forty-five degrees and took a picture, the flash blinding. A little undeveloped photo slowly ejected from the slot in the top.

  I watched her, smirking.

  When she met my eyes again, she looked a little sheepish. “Sorry, I know it’s weird. My dad gave me this old camera when I was little, and I was obsessed with taking pictures of everything. And it just kinda…stuck. I have about a million tiny photo albums; I especially like to document my firsts.”

  “I like it. I feel like I forget everything. Here,” I said, extending my hand. “Let me take one of you eating it.”

  She brightened, handing it over before turning back to her sandwich. She picked up the gigantic thing and turned it in her hands, opening her mouth but closing it again with a discouraged look on her face. “How in the world am I supposed to eat this?” she asked.

  “One bite at a time.” I held up the camera.

  She laughed before taking a deep breath, opening her mouth comically wide. And by God, she took the best bite she could, which was something to be proud of. I snapped just as she got it in her mouth, and when she set it down, a little half-moon was missing from the sandwich. Her mouth bulged, and powdered sugar dusted the tip of her nose and chin, but she didn’t seem to notice or care, not even when I snapped another photo.

  Her lids fluttered closed. “Oh my God,” she whispered reverently around the bite. “How have I lived my whole life without this?”

  A chuckle rumbled through me. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Mmm.” She swallowed and took another magnificent bite. “Mmm,” she hummed again with enthusiasm. “Dish ish sho good.”

  “You’ve got a little something right here.” I wiggled my finger at my nose.

  Annie set her sandwich down and picked up a napkin, swiping at her nose. “Did I get it?”

  “Almost. Here.” I grabbed my own napkin, and with delicate care that sprang from somewhere deep in my chest, I brushed it against the tip of her nose, then her chin. “There you go.”

  She laughed. “This sandwich might be too big for my face.”

  I unwrapped my sub, too amused to be appropriate or healthy.

  “I have a confession to make. I’m totally not supposed to eat any of this. I’m destined for a life of chicken and broccoli, but I sneak every chance I get. Don’t tell my mom.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “I have this thing about trying things I’ve never done before,” she said. “Back home was…I don’t know. Safe and quiet and small. My world was small, but now I’m here, and here is just so big. I want to take advantage of that, you know?”

  “I do,” was all I said before I picked up half of mine and took a bite, echoing her moan with my much deeper one. “Goddamn, that’s good.”

  “Wanna split?” she asked hopefully.

  “Absolutely.”

  She dropped her half on the paper and dusted off her hands, swapping our halves. “It’s not as weird as I thought. The sweet and salty. Like, it still freaks me out if I think about it, so I’m just not gonna think about it.”

  “Does it make your world feel a little edgier? Jelly on meat. Next stop, street drugs.”

  That earned me a laugh that made me feel far too proud of myself.

  “I wonder why they call it a Monte Cristo,” she said, looking at the layers of ham and Gruyére and jam exposed by her bite.

  “Because it tastes like revenge.”

  She let out a single Ha! “Sweet, sweet revenge. And to answer your question, yes, I really do feel like a bonafide risk-taker. Not that they didn’t have Monte Cristos in Boerne.”

  My brow quirked. “Bernie? Like…Bernie Sanders?” It was the only Bernie I could think of on the fly.

  “No, B-o-e-r-n-e. It’s named after a German poet. Six square miles of Texas Hill Country just outside San Antonio, population eleven thousand.”

  I blinked at her. “I think there are eleven thousand people within ten blocks of here.”

  “I know.” She smiled and took another bite that would have been rude if she wasn’t so goddamn cute.

  “I can’t even imagine living somewhere so small. You’ve gotta feel claustrophobic here with all these people. Do you miss it?”

  Her face fell just a touch as she swallowed. “Not really. I feel like maybe I should, or maybe it’s just too soon to miss it. I’ve only been here a week after all.”

  “Why’d you move to New York?” I asked innocently, but judging by her reaction, it wasn’t a question that had an easy answer.

  She stilled, almost shrinking before my eyes as she resituated her sandwich, eyes on her hands. “My father died.”

  I lowered my sandwich, stunned. “I’m sorry,” I said softly, knowing intimately how poorly those words explained the core of my feelings while conversely encompassing everything I could possibly say or feel.

  Annie tried to smile and almost succeeded. “He wasn’t even sick. That’s the hardest part, I think. If he’d been sick or old, if we’d had any idea it was coming, it might have been easier. I keep telling myself that at least.” She took a breath. “It was a car accident. Mama survived, but she lost use of her legs.”

  “Jesus,” I whispered under my breath, my mouth dry as bone.

  “My uncle—her brother—lives here and offered to help us out while we try to…I don’t know. Figure out how to go on, I guess.”

  “B
ut it doesn’t feel like there’s a way to move on, not really. Does it?”

  She shook her head. “Most of the time, it feels like wearing a plastic mask over the truth my feelings. Or wrong, like I shouldn’t even consider my own happiness or try to move on. But then I remind myself that it’s what he would have wanted. In fact, I think he would have insisted on it.”

  “I understand how you feel,” I said, my voice quiet. “My mom died a few years ago.”

  Her eyes met mine, wide and shining with understanding and connection. “Greg…I’m so sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything—”

  “It does. There’s no real consolation to give, only the offer of acknowledgment.”

  She nodded. “That’s exactly it. I’d rather that than, Just give it time, or, It’ll get easier. Because I know it won’t. It’s a wound that will never heal, no matter how much time passes. I’ll just find ways to live with the pain.”

  “Years have passed, and I still sometimes forget she’s gone,” I said, half talking to myself, though I knew she understood. “The holidays are the worst.”

  Tears sprang in her shining eyes out of nowhere. “Daddy died just before Christmas.”

  Her hand rested on the table, and I didn’t think, just reached for it, hoping she could feel that I understood as best I could.

  She nodded again like she’d heard me, her throat working as she swallowed. “It’s never going to be okay, that holiday. It used to be my favorite. The magic, the lights, the love, the food. And now…now, it’s only going to remind me of what I lost.”

  “Do you have any siblings? Because that’s what got me through—being there for them, with them and my dad.”

  “I have two sisters—one older, one younger. They’re all I have left, besides my loss.” She drew a breath. “It’s just so hard to grasp how quickly everything changed, everything I’d ever known, all in the span of a moment. A stoplight. A phone call. A sentence. And now, I’m here. But I can hear him in my mind and in my heart, telling me not to waste the chance I’ve been given moping around.” She laughed, her nose a little stuffy. Then, she smiled. “So, I’ll listen to him like I’ve been taught.”

  I smiled back. “I bet he’d have approved of that.”

  “I hope so.”

  She moved her hand out from under mine to pick up her sandwich again, and I reached for my own.

  The moment passed.

  But the connection didn’t.

  Annie

  Greg and I finished lunch—courtesy of the pocket money Susan had been keeping me stocked with—and as I stuffed the last bite of the meatball sub in my mouth, I found I felt lighter than I had in some time. I’d shared my grief with someone who understood, someone who could shoulder it.

  Grief was strange that way. It was a constant companion, one my family saw and felt and understood too well; we could share that grief, but sharing sometimes made it harder. Because my loss was heavy, and they had their own weight to bear. I felt compelled to keep my grief to myself so I wouldn’t weigh anyone else down more than they already were.

  But Greg understood. He’d been through it too, in his own way. And the sense of connection, forged by sharing an experience so profound to both of us, was so strong and alluring, I yielded to the heady desire for more.

  He was telling me a story about his younger sister, who was three years older than me, his face alight with love for her, and I listened, amused and enchanted.

  His smile was bright and handsome, his jaw square and strong, the line sharpened by his dark scruff. Finger ruts cut through the top of his long hair, the sides neatly trimmed, the effect a contrast of clean and casually chaotic. And his eyes were the most stunning mixture of blue and green, the color deep and dark and rich as velvet. I tried not to stare at the tattoos on his forearms that rested on the table between us—I hadn’t seen a lot of tatted up guys in Boerne—and I wondered what their stories were, thought about how tall he was, how broad his shoulders were under his well-fitted shirt that hugged the curves of what appeared to be quite substantial biceps.

  Really, Greg was gorgeous. Gorgeous and funny and clever.

  And he’d graduated high school when I was in the second grade.

  It was just too weird to even consider—although I had in some detail—even if he were interested in me, which he absolutely wasn’t.

  No way would a guy like Greg be interested in a kid from Nowhere, Texas, who had never been kissed.

  For years, I had considered ad nauseam why I had never been kissed, had never had a boyfriend, hadn’t even entertained the idea of any of the guys I knew.

  One reason was that I’d known the vast majority of the two hundred kids in my class since we were in kindergarten. When you grew up knowing everyone’s business, it was hard to see anyone in a new light. I watched some boys go from pigtail-pulling bullies to pigskin-throwing jocks. Some went from country boys in plaid pearl snaps to drama boys with enviable eyeliner skills. Everyone wanted to reinvent themselves, but we all saw each other as we had in Mrs. Clary’s first-grade class. I was sure they only saw me as the sick girl with eyes too big for her face, the girl who always had a book in her lap and laughed a little too loudly. And even though new kids occasionally moved in—Boerne was becoming an up-and-coming spot for new families—they were quickly absorbed into one of the defined social cliques.

  But even beyond that, no one had caught my eye. There were three boys in my grade called Bubba, and although their names had nothing in common with their intelligence—one was our valedictorian—I couldn’t see myself with a Bubba. Although, trust me when I say that if you’d heard their real names, you’d understand the appeal of the nickname. No one read. Instead, they threw keggers in their parents’ pastures, tubed in the springs, camped at Canyon Lake. They hung out at Whataburger or Sonic, spiking their Route 44 Cherry Limeades with cheap vodka.

  I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wanted to go too. But the truth was that I couldn’t have walked the distance into the pastures, and I couldn’t have run for it if the cops came (they always did). I couldn’t have tubed in the springs because, if I had fallen in, I might not have been able to fight the current. I couldn’t have camped; I wouldn’t have been able to set up my tent or swim in the lake or go on any hikes. And I didn’t drink—mostly because it was bad for me, but also because the idea intimidated me.

  Oh, I’d been asked to go on those outings a few times—not many, but a few—but once you refused so many times, people would quit asking. And a few boys had tried to pursue me, but I always declined. As nice as it might have been to have a date to homecoming and get a big, jingly, ridiculous mum to wear, I didn’t want to say yes until I felt that yes all the way through me, down to my toes.

  None of the boys in Boerne made me feel anything down to my toes.

  So I’d read books, and I spent my recesses, lunches, and homecomings with my best friend, Jill, until she moved away the summer before senior year. And then…well, she moved on.

  Luckily, Elle was my other best friend.

  Greg stayed to chat with me until Harrison started flicking coasters at him from the bar like tiny frisbees.

  I quit eating when I was stuffed, which was just as Harrison approached.

  “You’re not gonna leave me here to eat all alone, are you?” he asked with puppy-dog eyes.

  I chuckled, sliding out of the booth as he slid in. “I wouldn’t, but I’ll never get through training if I take an hour for lunch.”

  “It’d be time well spent. Just saying.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second. See ya later, Harrison,” I said over my shoulder as I made my way back to Ruby at the register.

  She was handing a bag of books across the counter. “Here you go. Read Fables first, and if you don’t love it, come back here so I can tell you why you’re wrong.”

  I laughed, a single, surprised burst of sound. The guy with the bag in his hand blushed, his ruddy cheeks splotchy and smile shy, lips closed over his brace
s.

  “Thanks, Ruby,” he muttered before hightailing it out of the bookstore like his pants were on fire.

  “Man, that’s the best part of this job,” she said with a shake of her head. “How was lunch?”

  “Greg was right; that sandwich blew my mind.” I made an explosion sound with my mouth.

  She laughed. “Man, Harrison is practically tripping all over himself to get you to notice him.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  Ruby nodded behind me, and I turned to catch him watching us, smiling with a wad of sandwich in his cheek. He jerked his chin in acknowledgment.

  I laughed. “Oh, he’s just being…I don’t know. Funny.”

  With one eyebrow up, she said, “Funny?”

  “Well, yeah. He was trying to make me laugh.”

  “Guys like Harrison try to make you laugh so they can get your phone number.”

  My face quirked. “No.”

  “Yes,” she said on a laugh. “Anyway, Cam wanted you to head to the back. She’s got some more paperwork for you to fill out.”

  “All right. Thanks for your help today, Ruby.”

  “No problem. You’re a real natural. It takes a lot of skill to manage these babies,” she joked, stroking the plastic buttons.

  I chuckled and headed to the office I’d become acquainted with earlier that day. Cam was sitting at her desk, laptop open in front of her.

  “Hey, Annie. Come on in. You can sit at Rose’s desk.” She motioned to the empty desk butted up against the back of hers. “Let me grab some forms for you—taxes, that sort of thing.”

  She rummaged around in a file cabinet at her side, retrieving one paper at a time until there was a stack on the table. A minute later, she handed them over with a pen. “Here you go.”

  I scanned the one on top and got to work.

  “So, how are you liking it so far?”

  I looked up, smiling. “It’s the best first job I’ve ever had.”

  She laughed. “Make any new friends?”

  I thought there might be a question under her question, but there was no way of knowing what it was. “Ruby is so much fun. She even made stocking books interesting by riding the cart like a chariot.”