‘Pete?’ he says. ‘Who’s Pete?’
‘Our cook.’ The griddle is hot now; it sizzles as I sprinkle it with water. ‘Nice guy. Very protective of his kitchen.’
‘Your dad finally got some help around here, then?’
I smile, sadly: the gentle face familiar to anyone who’s used to breaking bad news. ‘Dad passed a couple of years ago,’ I say. ‘Back in ’08. Cancer.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
I shrug. It is what it is. I made my peace with it a long time ago – I had to, because Mom absolutely went to shit after the fact and one of us needed to keep the place going – but I don’t expect Hale to understand. I never met his father, not in person at least, but from what I can gather from the scars and bruises on Hale’s body he didn’t seem like a man you could ever mourn.
‘What about your mother?’ he asks, more to break the silence than anything else.
‘Mom?’ I say. ‘Oh, she’s fine. Same as ever.’ That much is true, at least. It was a rough couple of years, immediately after Dad died, but over time she seemed to find some way to pull herself back into a rough facsimile of the woman she used to be. The thought of losing the diner to the bank was a powerful motivator, but… well, as she put it, time marches ever onward. Always, whether you like it or not. Sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse – and sometimes it’s hard to tell which it is until it’s after the fact and you can’t do a damn thing about it either way.
There’s a pot of Pete’s Soup of the Day left over on the stovetop, a rich and creamy tomato that’s such a deep red it looks almost like a pasta sauce. I ladle out two bowls, blast them in the microwave for a few seconds, and load them up on a tray.
‘Voilà,’ I say as I step out into the restaurant. ‘Dinner is served.’ Hale is seated at the counter, a wide strip of formica that separates chef from diner, customer from owner. I stay on my side, even though it means standing to eat. For some reason, it seems better that way. Without the barrier between us, I find myself worrying I might do something I regret. I haven’t yet made up my mind whether that’s more likely to be trying to kiss him, or slapping him as hard as I can across his pretty, stupid face for leaving all those years ago.
But instead, I merely slide a bowl and plate across to him and pluck a couple of spoons out of the dishwasher. ‘It’s not exactly haute cuisine, but it’ll fill you up.’
‘It looks great,’ he says. ‘Really.’
He digs a hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a leather billfold. ‘You can put that away, too,’ I say as he begins rummaging through it, trying to track down the right bill to make us even. ‘This one’s on me.’
There’s a flash of something in his eyes, something I recognise from way back when: that old defensiveness. He was a little too poor for a little too long for even something as a bowl of soup to seem like anything but an act of charity, and a little too proud for something like that to be allowed to stand unquestioned. ‘I can afford it, Carrie,’ he says quietly. ‘You don’t need to cover for me anymore.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ I say. ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not taking your money. This is my restaurant, and you’re not a customer here. You’re a guest.’
I can see him grumbling internally, wondering if it’s worth making a fuss about it, but eventually he gives in and puts his wallet down on the table next to him: not back in his pocket, just in case I change my mind and he can pay off his debt early, but down.
‘Thanks, then,’ he says.
‘Don’t mention it. If it really bothers you, you can buy me a beer sometime, how about that?’
I try to keep it light and playful, but Hale freezes like a rabbit in headlights, the spoon he’s holding hovering inches above the surface of the soup. ‘I’m not really here for all that long,’ he says. ‘It’s more of a… flying visit, I guess.’
And suddenly any remaining appetite I might have had flies out of the window.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Well, I mean, in that case…’
I don’t finish the thought. I’m not sure I know how to. It’s ridiculous to think how quickly I had spun myself a new future with Hale, how easy it was for me to take the tattered fragments of a decade-old summer and weave them into something new and wholesome. And what did I think would happen, realistically? That he’d just roll back into town, announce that I was the girl for him, take over the hardware store at the end of the street and we could all live happily ever after?
No. Even I wasn’t quite that naïve. If there’s one lesson I’ve managed to pick up in twenty-six years, it’s that Happy Ever Afters belong in fairy tales and children’s picture books, where you can close the pages and keep them safely locked away so they can’t do any damage. It’s when you let the idea of them slip out into the real world that things get dangerous. Hope is the thing with feathers, as they say, but they never mention that it’s really a vulture, waiting to pick you clean if you let it.
But it worked for Hale, plainly. His hope – that stupid, stupid optimism that one day he’d break out of Eden and make his own way in life, that the horrors of his childhood were temporary, that there was a new world waiting over the horizon in the strange land of Away – had paid off. It had sprouted its feathers, spread its wings, and carried him forward, upward, onward. So why can’t it work for me?
Because I’m stuck here.
That’s why, isn’t it. Because my feathers were plucked and my wings clipped a long time ago. Because I was caged by a restaurant that has all the weight of memory attached to it, a weight that I can’t just cast off the way Hale could. I came close – so very, very close – but…
But I stayed, and he left. He grew, and I shrank. One glance at us would have made that clear to anyone.
Perhaps that’s why he froze. Perhaps when he looked at me, he doesn’t see the girl he used to know. Perhaps he sees an anchor, the kind of chain that would have kept him trapped in this dismal little life.
Or perhaps he doesn’t see anything all. After all, isn’t that what I tried to convince myself of for so many years? That that summer was some stupid crush, some girlish fantasy, rose-tinted by nostalgia into appearing something more than it really was?
I’m not sure which one hurts more, but they’re fighting it out in my chest like King Kong and Godzilla. Whichever one wins, I’m not going to like the result.
We stick to small talk until the soup bowls are drained; anything more feels like it would be too much. Hale compliments the food over and over, just to fill the awkward pauses in conversation, the lapses of years. He asks about the diner, and I respond in the vaguest of terms. I don’t ask too many questions about where he went when he left, or his life in the past ten years, or – God forbid – if he’s seeing anyone. It’s not that the questions don’t bubble up inside me like lava through a volcano, hot and eager to reach the surface, but I don’t want the answers. I’m scared of them. I’m reluctant to look too deeply into the wishing well and see what might have been.
And then the bowls are emptied and the sandwiches are nothing but crumbs on the plate. It’s over.
‘I should probably be getting gone,’ he says. ‘You sure you don’t want me to pay for the soup?’
‘I’m sure. On the house.’
‘Well, thanks. And good luck with everything.’
We stand, and do the awkward side-shimmy of old acquaintances – do we hug? Shake hands? Give a kiss on the cheek, continental-style? – before settling on none of the above. He gives me a sad little wave, and heads off.
And I know that if I let that be it, I’ll never forgive myself.
‘Hale,’ I say. The word comes out as a single choked cough, raw and shaky, but it stops him nonetheless. He pauses with his hand on the door.
‘Yeah?’
Now or never, Carrie. Now or never.
‘The night you left...’
He lets the words hang in the air for a moment, just l
ong enough for me to wish I could draw them back. ‘That was ten years ago,’ he says gently, but there’s a tension in him; his hand is gripping the door handle so tightly that the knuckles on his otherwise tanned hands are white as paper. ‘It’s a long, long way in the past by now. Maybe we should let it stay there, you know?’
He’s right. Of course he’s right. What was I thinking? I can feel the blush of humiliation spreading up throughout my face, burning my cheeks to the same shade of red as the diner’s leather stools.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I mean, yeah. Obviously.’
And suddenly, for an instant, he’s the same Hale I used to know: the lost soul, the brawler, the charmer, the saint, the sinner, all rolled into one. I can see it in his eyes. I see the warmth in them now, the heat behind the ice. It was missing when he first walked into the diner again, but it’s back now.
Vulnerability? Regret? I don’t know. I’m not even sure he knows.
‘Everyone makes mistakes, Carrie,’ he says softly, eventually. ‘Everyone.’ He doesn’t wait for me to reply; the chimes above the door give a high-pitched, mocking jingle, and then he’s gone.
Again.
I watch him walk past the window, praying that he might turn around and look at me one last time, terrified that if he does he’ll see my face crack and a flood of hot, inevitable tears come pouring out of me. It doesn’t matter either way; he keeps his face straight ahead, his step resolute, and then he disappears out of the frame of the diner’s window and I know – I just know, deep down inside of me – that I’m never going to see him again.
That he’s gone from my life.
That his visit to Eden will be the last one.
I’m not really here for all that long.
It’s more of a flying visit, I guess.
Everyone makes mistakes.
Everyone.
Well, my mistake was clear – but then again, didn’t I already know that? Did I really need the salt in the wound of having him point it to me? To show up here, looking as he does, reminding me of the life I could have had if I’d taken the leap with him all those years ago?
No. Yes.
Maybe I deserved it.
Maybe the pain is the only thing that keeps you from making the same mistake in future, if the opportunity arises. It’s like a child touching a hot stove, a painful lesson that prepares them for the future in a way that a mere telling-off could never manage. Well, I burned my fingers real well on Hale when I was sixteen, well enough that even a child could understand never to touch that particular flame ever again – so why, why am I so reluctant to learn my lesson?
Chapter Three
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I haven’t moved from my spot behind the counter in God only knows how long. I cleared away the bowls, wiped down the surface, and then propped myself up against the formica.
And waited.
For what? I don’t know. I don’t have the faintest idea. For the tension in my chest to subside? For the stupid, childish dreams I’d had to give up and die already? For the image of Hale walking away, burned onto my retinas ten years ago and given a fresh coat of paint today, to fade away into nothingness? It’s impossible to say. All I know for sure is that whatever it is, it’s in no hurry to get here and relieve me. The weight I’m feeling in every muscle in my body makes it difficult to do much of anything except sit and dwell on what just happened, and on what didn’t.
The door chimes and opens, and for a brief instant I let myself believe it might be Hale coming back to talk things through, to apologise for everything – hell, even just to see me; would that be so far-fetched? – but it’s only Pete. He throws me a mock salute as he walks in.
‘Permission to come aboard?’ he asks.
Somehow, I’m not in the mood to play along.
I check the clock on the wall; it’s a quarter after four. I was supposed to open up fifteen minutes ago. Well, it’s not like the customers were banging the door down to get in, I tell myself. It’s a little early for even the earliest birds to come and get their special. No harm done.
‘You’re late,’ I say.
‘Am I indeed?’ He smiles at me. It’s friendly, paternal, without judgement. ‘Or have I been walking around and around the block for the last twenty minutes because I saw you had company?’ He lifts up the counter gate and slips back into the kitchen behind me. ‘Figured you probably wouldn’t want me barging through and interrupting you.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘Who was he?’
There’s a line drawn in the sand in Eden: an invisible barrier that separates the people who were born here, who know the town like the backs of their hands (for better or for worse), and those who came from Away. Away can be anywhere in a town like this. It’s a catch-all term for the wider world, including everywhere from the darkest Peruvian jungle to the unincorporated township a mile or so to the east where the Grove trailer park sits on cracked, dusty soil. There are some people who’d have you believe that the stink of Away never really washes off, especially in the older generations. Perhaps that’s why so very few people from Away ever manage to become townies – at least, not really. You can live here for ten years, twenty years, thirty years, and it’s still no guarantee of acceptance. There will always be someone sitting on a porch chair, waiting to hear that you broke the unwritten covenant of small-town life. ‘Well, what did you expect?’ you can almost hear them saying, in not-quite-hushed whispers, ripe to be overheard by anyone passing by. After all, what could you expect from a city boy? Or a Yankee? Or, as I once heard a vicious prune of a woman say of her own nephew, who had committed the grievous sin of moving to San Francisco and had found the freedom of California to his liking, a ‘West Coast Lah-di-dah’?
Very little, apparently. It’s only townies that can truly be trusted. They’re our people; everyone else is suspicious in a dozen little ways. Pete has mostly managed to make the jump from one side of that treacherous divide to the other, but even after five years here he’s still viewed as a little bit of an outsider, and in all likelihood always will. He doesn’t know Eden’s history, or the complex relationships that have stretched out like poisonous roots throughout the years. How could he? Entire volumes could be written on the topic.
It’s better that way, I think. If Pete had passed by the windows, he would have been staring straight at Hale. A townie would have recognised him immediately, and set their judgement in stone. I don’t want that for him.
‘He’s just an old friend,’ I say.
Pete snorts. ‘A friend, eh? Well, if that’s what the young folks are calling it now…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your little private dinner date. Looked mighty cosy to me. You didn’t have to hide it, is all. I would have cleared out and given you two lovebirds some space. I’d even have thrown something special on the grill for you, if you’d asked nicely.’
‘Pete…’ My tone is as light as I can make it, but my eyes say Drop it, and drop it now.
He raises his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Fine, fine,’ he says. ‘I’m just saying, back in my day a guy who left a girl looking at him so moony-eyed probably wouldn’t be so thrilled to be called a friend, that’s all. Seems a mite… insufficient, if you follow my meaning.’
There are few people in town who know me as well as Pete, but still… was I really that obvious? The thought pains me. Little girls wear their hearts on their sleeves, because they’re too dumb to realise that that’s how it gets broken. And if Pete saw it, then maybe Hale did too.
So much for playing it cool.
‘I’m not… you know,’ I say. ‘I’m not moony-eyed. I’m not moony-anything.’
‘Sure you’re not, kiddo. Because whoever he was that’s making you blush right now, he’s just a friend.’
‘That’s right.’
&n
bsp; He slips his apron over his head and smiles. ‘Glad we got that straightened out.’
I consider arguing the point, but there’s another jingle of the door chimes. A customer would be a saving grace – for more than one reason – but I’ve got no such luck. The woman waddling her way through the door is lumbered with two overstuffed brown paper bags, her back bent theatrically out of shape under their weight. ‘Would someone please give me a hand with these?’ she asks.
‘Sure, Mom.’ I jump up from behind the counter and take one of the paper sacks from her. It bulges with produce, eggplants nestling on top of celery, propped up with leafy kale. Kale, of all things. To my knowledge, that much greenery has never crossed the threshold of the Red Rose Diner in one go before now. I mean, sure, we’re no stranger to vegetables: lettuce (for burgers), cabbage (for coleslaw), mushrooms (fried), onions (ringed), tomatoes (ketchuped). This, though… this is practically unheard of.
‘Why all the vegetables?’ I ask.
‘Oh, it was just an idea we had,’ she replies, setting her bag down. ‘We thought we might do something about the diner. Trying some new things, that’s all. I’ve been off at the Farmer’s Market in Hogarth. Quite the selection, I have to say. You should really check it out sometime, if you get the chance.’
I am shocked and amazed by the fact that, after twenty-six years of knowing me, my mother still thinks that checking out a farmer’s market is still the kind of thing I’d do in my limited free time, no matter how well-stocked it might be, but I have bigger concerns right now.
‘New things?’ I ask.
She sighs. ‘Yes. We’re thinking about changing the menu.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Me and Pete.’ She pauses for a second, reading the expression on my face. ‘You don’t seem impressed, honey. What’s wrong?’
To my knowledge, the menu hasn’t been changed since Mom and Dad took the place over, way before I was born. It’s always served the same basic staples: burgers and fries, soup and sandwiches, eggs and bacon and waffles in the morning. You don’t need fancy if you’ve got good, Dad used to say – and he was right. We’re not the kind of diner that could ever make anything complicated work, because we’re not the type of town where the customers want anything more gastronomically taxing than grilled meat and fried potatoes. It’s just not what we do here. It’s just now how things are.
Reckless: A Bad Boy Musicians Romance Page 3
