by Helena Maeve
Best heaved a breath, shoulders sagging a little. “Oh. Good.” He sounded genuinely relieved.
“You want more coffee?” Hazel asked, swirling her pot.
“Yes, thank you…” Best maneuvered his mug to the edge of the table so she could fill it. His fingers were very pale around the ceramic—nails square and neatly trimmed, not a hangnail or callus in sight.
No wonder. He probably hadn’t worked an honest day in his life.
“Look. You do what you want, but Sadie said she’ll call you,” Hazel recalled. “You don’t need to show up here to pressure her.”
“It’s a free country.”
Hazel shrugged, trying to play off the venom that rose to the tip of her tongue. “That’s why I said do what you want.” You will, anyway. Men like Best talked a good game about fairness when it suited them but at the end of the day, they only saw to their own bottom line. She knew the type. She’d spent three years kowtowing for scraps from a man none too different.
“Are you this friendly to all of Sadie’s boyfriends?”
“Wasn’t aware you were her boyfriend.” Were, not are. Hazel couldn’t snuff out a flicker of pride for chasing vernacular out of her repertoire when faced with the likes of Best.
Best sucked his cheeks in, as though to conceal a smile. “Touché. I suppose I’m not. But still. Can’t help feel there’s something about me you don’t like.”
“Oh, don’t lose sleep over it. I bet I’m not the only one.”
“I won’t.”
Jerk.
She felt Best’s gaze on her back as she sauntered away to retrieve his pancakes. It stirred something akin to panic in her belly, but Hazel knew how to shove past bothersome discomfort.
The swinging kitchen doors made for a paltry shield.
“So tell me more about your sister,” she entreated, before Marco could ask about Sadie.
By the time she returned to his table with the pancakes, Best was on the phone. He met her eyes for a moment, smiled apologetically, and returned to his hums and hmphs. Hazel made a point not to feel affronted. There were worse things on this job than being ignored.
Marco kept her from dwelling with tales about his sister’s vacation in the Caribbean where purportedly she had fought off a real, live shark and lived to tell the tale.
“And that’s how she got a bionic thumb—” Marco jerked his chin to the horseshoe of Formica tables fanned around the diner. “Did you get his check?”
Hazel turned just as the door of the diner clanged shut. Best’s retreating back flashed into view for a breath then was gone, swallowed up by the swarm of pedestrians on their way to the department stores and food courts that served organic vegetables and lactose-free salad dressing. “Shit.”
“It’s coming out of your paycheck,” Marco remarked in a singsong, no longer the cool boss trading tales. He put up his hands when Hazel fixed him with a glare. “Hey, I’m running a business. I gotta feed my kid.”
She slammed her pad on the counter, vaguely aware of it bouncing back to hit the floor as she stomped away to gather the dirty dishes. A litany of muttered curses bubbling under her breath aborted mid-stream.
Best had slotted two twenties under his coffee mug. Beneath them was a paper napkin on which he’d scribbled Dylan, followed by a series of digits.
He had left her his phone number.
Chapter Two
Sadie breezed into the diner well after the lunch hour stampede. She flashed Hazel a lazy smile and pushed her wide, white-rimmed sunglasses into her hair. It might as well have been a summons. Hazel followed her into the back, where Sadie all but stretched out on the narrow bench between their lockers.
“Did you ever notice how good it smells in here?” She filled her lungs with breath. “Think Marco burns incense or something? Man…” Dyed blonde curls brushed the floor as she laced her fingers across her stomach. “It’s like peaches or something, right? Maybe pomegranates—”
“Are you high?”
“Shh,” Sadie giggled. Levering up onto her elbows seemed to take it out of her, because she huffed and puffed with effort. “No, I’m not.” A lock of flaxen hair fell into her eyes. She blew it out, grinning. “I, uh… I think I met someone.”
Hazel’s stomach plummeted, dismay weighing her down. The news wasn’t one. Sadie fell in and out of love at least three times a week—usually with prohibitively expensive shoes or Hollywood actors whose pictures she pinned to her Pinterest board. But this time, she’d fallen in love with a flesh and blood man that she’d actually met.
A guy who just so happened to be the standard variety of double-dealing asshole that didn’t deserve Sadie.
“Oh, hon…” Hazel stuck a hand into the voluminous pocket of her apron. Dylan Best’s phone number crinkled in her grasp.
Sadie pulled her knees up to her chin. “Do you remember Frank?”
Hazel frowned, unclenching her fingers. Had she heard that right?
“Med School Frank?”
Sadie’s aunts had taken up the cause of finding her a husband soon after she’d turned eighteen. Eight years later, they were still going strong, undaunted by Sadie’s choosy nature. Med School Frank was the latest in a long line of suitors whose accomplishments and pedigree had been first vetted by Sadie’s aunts and the other ladies at the hairdresser’s where her mother worked.
“He came by last night,” Sadie gushed.
“At midnight?”
“Well, no. Earlier. He left flowers and a note.” She rummaged in her Louis Vuitton knockoff for the missive. “Aha!” Her smile was triumphant as she plucked out the envelope.
It was, Hazel had to admit, a very nice gesture. Most of Sadie’s admirers could barely manage texting—although they were very adept at sending her dick pics.
Sadie hugged her jean-clad calves and propped her chin on a tear in the distressed denim. “He didn’t source the poem, but still… What do you think?”
Hazel took her time, considered her response. Sadie gave her heart like some people dispensed bird feed. Inevitably, that meant she often got hurt.
“Byron,” Hazel murmured, having scanned the careful, blocky penmanship. “Nice.”
“I know, right?” Sadie hitched up her shoulders. “I was thinking I might swing by tonight… His mother’s hosting the other biddies for mah jong. He’ll be so bored.”
It sounded like her mind was already made up, a sign that Hazel’s input was expected to flow in the same direction.
Better Med School Frank than Wall Street Best…
“What about last night?” Hazel asked as the note exchanged hands again. “You gonna call Tall, Dark and Handsome?”
“Probably not. Why? Do you think I should?”
She had a round, doll-like face, the kind Hazel would’ve expected to see in cereal commercials on TV. No wonder talent scouts had invited her to a couple of castings when she was a teen. No wonder her mother had refused. Hollywood was a mere stone’s throw away, teeming with impressionable young women—a scary prospect for a single mother from the Midwest.
That cautious gene must have skipped a generation. Sadie was as impulsive as she was beautiful.
Hazel’s heart bounced against her diaphragm, a cork in water. Trying to steer Sadie away from harm sometimes only encouraged her to cannonball straight into it.
“No… Not if you don’t want to.”
“Dylan was nice and all, but… Eh.” Sadie’s scale for acceptable lovers ran from eh to I’m in love, and she was as likely to take long walks up that spectrum as she was to demote a potential suitor to what a loser at a moment’s notice. “Frankly, I kind of thought he was more your type.” She cocked her head, narrowing her almond brown eyes at Hazel. “You know, nerdy-cute. Did I tell you he wears reading glasses?” She hadn’t. “But you swore off guys,” Sadie went on, sighing, “so I guess he’ll just have to die a bachelor.”
“He’ll cope.”
Marco yelled for them from the front of the diner, their abse
nce noticed at long last.
Saved by the bellowing boss. Hazel flashed Sadie a small smile. “Can’t wait to start calling you Mrs. Doctor.”
“And come play mah jong at my villa!” Sadie’s cackle followed Hazel out of the narrow changing room. It wasn’t the first time they had camouflaged sour grapes with glee.
* * * *
Marco had shaken his head when Hazel told him she’d take Sadie’s evening shift. “I practically live here,” he’d sighed, “but you don’t have to.”
“You pay me enough.” She reasoned that she owed him. If he complained, it was only because he wanted Sadie around. The less he saw of her, the more he wanted her—and the less Hazel could buy that Sadie didn’t know what she was doing.
“No, I don’t.”
Hazel mulled that over as the bus squeaked and rattled down the empty streets. Sadie had borrowed the Volvo. She was counting on coming home late, she said, but Hazel knew that meant she wasn’t counting on coming home at all. Hazel pictured her driving up Mulholland with Frank in the passenger seat, his bug eyes blown wide behind thick glasses.
Don’t be mean. She had glimpsed his picture on Facebook—courtesy of Sadie’s religiously upheld post-date debriefings—and he wasn’t bad. A little prone to that wide-eyed look of surprise some people wore whenever a camera was pointed at them, but only vaguely Anthony Perkins-ish otherwise.
It didn’t hurt that he was Chinese, either. Less chance of a veto from the Ling clan.
The bus lurched to a stop and a couple wearing matching parkas rose from their seats. Hazel covered her mouth with a yawn as she watched them step out. At least she could sleep in tomorrow. She was due for a long, lazy morning. The blisters on her feet alone would welcome the reprieve.
“I like your hair,” a voice said over her left shoulder.
Hazel sat up, plastic chair squeaking beneath her. The speaker was a broad-shouldered man wearing a Lakers cap. He smiled when he caught her eye.
“Thanks,” Hazel murmured.
Trying to be discreet, she drew her purse closer to her hip.
The man noticed.
“What? You think I’m gonna rob you?” he snorted. The clank and jangle of the bus wasn’t loud enough to conceal the sigh of the seat as he tipped forward. “Hey, I asked you a question.”
Hazel closed her eyes. Cars flashed past the scuffed window, a rapid succession of lights and shiny paint jobs, like fireflies in the dark. She knew there was no point in rushing for the front of the bus. The driver wouldn’t want to get involved. If she got up now, the asshole sitting behind her would become even more enraged.
She wished she hadn’t given Sadie the keys with the pepper spray still on the chain.
“C’mon, now,” the man said, wheedling. “You ain’t doing a very good job of proving those ‘dumb blonde’ jokes wrong.”
Hazel felt him wrap a lock of hair around his finger as the driver braked at the next stop. Revulsion roiled in the pit of her stomach. Camera flash. “It’s just us, baby…”
She bolted from her seat like a jack-in-the-box, practically leaping through the doors and onto the sidewalk as soon as the doors slid open. Her steps ate up all five hundred feet to her apartment building. She didn’t breathe until she could put a couple of locked doors between herself and the outside world.
The prickle in her scalp where the hair had torn loose barely registered.
Mostly, she felt shame. If Sadie were with you, she would’ve turned around and given that jerk what for. Why can’t you?
Hazel’s cell shrieked into the silence of the apartment. She plucked it out with unsteady fingers. “Mama, hi…”
“Oh, good, I thought you’d be asleep.” Her mother took no notice of Hazel’s quaking voice.
Hazel frowned at the wood grain of the front door and concentrated on getting her breath back.
“Why are you whispering? What’s wrong? Is Dad—?”
“Your father’s asleep. Nothing’s wrong.” A good Southern woman wouldn’t admit otherwise under pain of death. Mrs. Whitley was nothing if not a good Southern woman. “You haven’t RSVP’d.”
“What?” It might have been the adrenaline pumping in Hazel’s bloodstream, but though both words and disappointment registered, neither made sense.
“The Facebook event?” Mrs. Whitley sighed. Hazel pictured her pinching the bridge of her nose, winged glasses twitching up and down on her fingertips. “Are you coming to the baby shower?”
Oh. Now Hazel remembered. “Probably not…”
“Rhonda was hoping you would.”
But you’re relieved I’m not. Hazel swallowed the retort as she toed off her shoes and stripped out of her denim jacket. “Tell her I can’t afford the plane ticket.”
“She’d offer to lend you the money. You know what she’s like.”
Hazel knew. Rhonda was her brother’s ‘can do no wrong’ wife. Class president, preacher’s daughter, single-handed organizer of raffles and food drives to help Dunby’s indigent population from sinking into delinquency. She was Med School Frank’s polar opposite—no matter how impromptu the photo op, she was always camera-ready, her smile as blinding as a fleet of stars.
It was impossible not to envy her. It was also impossible not to feel bad about letting her down.
“Say I have to work,” Hazel suggested.
“You could find someone to take your shift, couldn’t you?” One question prefaced another before Hazel could get a word in edgewise. “How is Sadie Ling?”
We’re doing this again, are we? Sadie’s reputation had never endeared her to many mothers around Dunby, something to do with the Lolita antics she’d supposedly got up to with some of the high school teachers.
All lies and rumors, but the small town gossips didn’t care to be set right.
Hazel flopped down onto her futon and glared at the silent television. Unfortunately, the TV didn’t cower in response. “Do you want me there, Ma?”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“I’ll call her to apologize,” Hazel promised. “Is that okay?”
“Do it tomorrow,” her mother advised. “It’s already short notice.”
Hazel wondered what her mother would’ve done if she had said she’d already bought her ticket. It didn’t even have to be a flight. She could just take the Greyhound. LA to Missouri wasn’t that far. Even Dunby, tucked neatly into the boot of the ‘Show Me’ state, couldn’t quite escape being connected to the rest of the country.
Not for lack of trying.
“You and Dad doing all right?”
“We’re fine,” Mrs. Whitley replied crisply. “Buddy comes by every Sunday.” And you don’t. It went without saying.
“He does have the advantage of living right next door.”
“Next door are the Rileys. Buddy moved into the Gainses’ colonial on Three Lane. I don’t know why he didn’t just demolish that monstrosity and start fresh. There’s so much work—”
Hazel pressed a knuckle into her eye socket. “Ma, do you mind if I let you go? I just got off work.” The last thing she was in the mood for was a retrospective of her brother’s domestic arrangements.
I’m living in a shoebox apartment and struggling to make rent. Thanks for asking.
Her mother’s reply was icy, affronted. It was rude to interrupt. “Don’t forget Rhonda.”
“I won’t.” How could I, when I have you to remind me? “’Night, Ma…” The line went dead before the words were fully out of her mouth. Hazel dropped the cell onto the couch and tipped her head against the backrest. “Love you, too,” she murmured, to no one in particular.
* * * *
The gap-toothed toddler gazing up at her from his mother’s arms made it virtually impossible not to smile. “All right, two Sloppy Joes coming up—hey!”
Breath left Hazel’s lungs in a rush.
Sadie’s hold on her elbow was punishing, but it was the tense expression on her face that stunned Hazel.
“We’ll b
e right back,” Sadie told their bewildered clients with a tepid smile.
She left Hazel with a choice between walking and being dragged away over the sticky linoleum. Hazel spurred her feet. Sadie seemed resolute enough to use force.
“Okay, what?”
Sadie knew all about the no-touching policy—every painful, humiliating detail—so whatever had her breaking the holiest commandment must have been big.
“He’s here,” Sadie hissed between clenched teeth, once they were safely inside the kitchen doorway.
“George Clooney?”
Through a billowing cloud of steam, Sadie glowered.
“Jesus?” Hazel guessed, throwing up her hands. “I got nothing.”
“Dylan.”
A cold shiver rippled down Hazel’s spine. She didn’t have to play the ‘Dylan, who?’ charade because one glance at the door confirmed it. Best wasn’t alone this time. Three other men were with him, laughing and talking in too-loud voices as they scrutinized the diner for a free table.
“You have to take ’em,” Sadie entreated.
“I do?”
“I didn’t call.”
Hazel sighed. “Keep tallying up the IOUs and you’re gonna end up having to murder someone for me just to even up the score.” She picked out four greasy menus. “You bus the corner booth in my section real quick.”
Sadie bolted like the Energizer bunny.
“Gentlemen,” Hazel greeted, frosty smile in place. “Welcome to The Last Crab Pub. How many?”
Dylan turned to face her, eyebrows climbing half an inch up his brow. He was wearing a suit again—ash gray—with a baby-blue tie. He even wore a pocket square. It wouldn’t have surprised Hazel to discover that each individual strand of his shiny raven hair had been painstakingly arranged with tweezers before being gelled in place.
She wished it left her cold.
“The Last what?” one of his friends snorted. “Menu reads Marco’s…”
“Does it?” Hazel feigned surprise. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Sadie making her way out of her section with a thumbs-up. “Huh. How about that? Let me show you to your table.”
