by Frankie Rose
MORGAN MAKES me run the next morning. Running and I aren’t even vaguely acquainted let alone best friends, so it takes a few strongly worded threats and the promise of chocolate waffles to get me out the door at six am. It’s bitterly cold, the morning air determined to freeze my lungs from the inside out. We last all of twenty minutes before the temperature gets the better of us and we head to Jacquie’s Breakfast Diner.
“You realize,” I say, sliding into the booth opposite Morgan, “that ordering pancakes with a ton of maple syrup is going to make your ass fat?”
“It’s already fat,” she announces.
“It really is,” I agree. “I was trying to be polite, but damn you need to start eating right. I’ve never seen an ass that big.”
“Bitch!” she laughs, slapping my arm with the menu.
“You deserve it.”
“I know,” she sighs. “So, we going to put it off much longer?”
I squint at her, trying to ascertain whether there’s any point in pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about. It’s not every morning she shows up on my doorstep demanding exercise. This is all subterfuge, and I know what she’s after. Her jaw is set, which means I am shit outta luck. “He’s just a guy I used to know back home,” I tell her.
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“Don’t give me that, Iris,” Morgan quips. “I know there’s a whole freakin’ well of gossip here and you’ve been holding out on me.”
My face blanches at her use of my real name. I haven’t had to hear it in months. Even my mom calls me Avery now. It’s as though, if she can pretend I’m someone else and not Maxwell Breslin’s daughter, she, in turn, can pretend she was married to some other guy named Patterson and not a murderer.
I look down and see that my hands have clenched tight and I’m ruining the waffle house’s laminated menu. Morgan sees, then screws her face up into a fairly good impersonation of remorse. “Oh, uh…sorry, Ave. I’m not too smart sometimes.”
“It’s okay. I just…I’m not her anymore.”
“I know. I won’t do that again, I promise.”
I shoot her a guilty smile. “Thanks.”
The waitress comes and takes our order; we both get the same thing—Belgian waffles with chocolate sauce. By the time our coffee arrives, Morgan is over the embarrassment of upsetting me and back in Spanish Inquisition mode.
“So, how do you know him?” The salacious glint in her eye declares she’s hoping for a hot hook up story. Boy, is she going to be disappointed.
“He went to my school. He was a cop in my home town for a few years before he moved out here.”
“Uhuh…” She nods, taking a sip of her coffee, never taking her eyes off me.
“That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
She looks around the room like she can’t believe what she’s hearing.
“You knew that guy back in Hicksville and you didn’t claim him immediately? What’s wrong with you, girl? You do realize he’s fucking beautiful, don’t you?”
I blow out a long breath and drop my head against the table. “Yes, I know how hot he is. But he was twenty when he left town and I was sixteen. Plus he has a girlfriend, Casey Fisher. They dated the whole way through high school and moved out here together. So…”
“None of that should have been a problem.”
I just stare at her. If the tables were turned, Morgan would be rolling her eyes right now, but my mother forbade that particular trait when I was younger. I haven’t been able to do it ever since, despite how much I may want to. “Well it would have been pretty difficult. And illegal. And besides, I was a mess. My dad…”
A horrified expression develops on Morgan’s face. “Ahhh crap, Ave. This guy didn’t…was he on the force when your dad, um…”
Finally. Some quick thinking on her part. I focus out of the window, trying to shut out the memory of Luke Reid on my doorstep, telling my mom that my dad was dead. “He and his partner were the first officers on the scene. He’d only been on the job four days. Nothing like that had ever really happened in Break before. He puked in my mom’s rose bushes.”
“Man, I’m sorry, Avery. I’m hopeless sometimes. There just seemed to be something there, so I thought…”
“There is something there. Luke’s always felt sorry for me. I suppose being the one to find my dad and the others imprinted itself onto his brain and now he can’t shake it. We used to meet up whenever he was back in town. Mostly we’d grab a coffee and he’d just talk at me.”
Our conversation stops when the waitress arrives with our food. I stare glumly down at my waffles wishing I’d ordered something different. Pushing the plate away, I go back to staring out the window.
Sam O’Brady. Jefferson Kyle. Adam Bright. Sam O’Brady. Jefferson Kyle. Adam Bright.
“That other cop said he was in a band, right? I wonder where they play. Hey, if you want me to answer your phone later, I can ask him if you don’t wanna seem too eager?” She clearly didn’t just hear a word I said—that for the past five years I have associated Luke Reid with finding out my dad was dead. The girl has selective hearing. I shoot daggers at her and she shrinks back into her seat. “Or I can tell him you have avian bird flu and you can never see him again. It’s no problem. I am a master of deception.”
I allow myself a small laugh and kick her under the table. “It’s all right. I can handle it.”
But I honestly don’t know if I can. Having Luke in my life here is like bringing a piece of Breakwater into the relatively safe, happy world I’ve built for myself at Columbia. It could ruin everything. When I speak to him later, I know what I am going to do. I’m going tell him the truth. He’ll have to understand that I want to put my past behind me. Surely no one in the world could begrudge me that.
