Page 59 of Don't Tell Me How It Ends
Ro:come anyway
Me:Ha I can’t today. But good luck finishing up.
Me:I’ll hit you later.
But of course, I didn’t. And neither did he.
What Ididdo is reread the exchange so many times this week that I’ve nearly memorized it. But being able to recite every word forward and back still hasn’t helped me figure out which of us is avoiding the other. And after so many days, our silence is starting to feel more and more like a final word.
I’m actively trying to pretend that prospect isn’t eating me up inside when a knock at my door saves me from my thoughts.
“Ready to go again?” Zola says, like the madam she is.
“Round two,” I say, monotone. “Bring it on.”
But then I realize we’re down a man. “Where’s your sidekick? I thought collecting my dowry was a two-person job.”
“Mom left while you were in the shower.”
“With who?” I say, the words so sharp on my tongue that I taste copper in their wake.
Zola shakes her head. “Honestly, I didn’t even ask.”
I’m mid eye roll, pushing past Zola, when she pulls a folder from behind her back. I’m not mad ather,but I am mad that we’re back here again. Even if I shouldn’t be.
“Don’t you want to see his picture?” she asks, attempting to breathe some levity into the moment, with a half-hearted shoulder shimmy.
“Oh,” I say, not really caring either way. “Sure.”
Seeing a stranger’s face and learning that he’d want the ability to rewind time if he could isn’t going to change today’soutcome, but when your sister does a little dance, you read the file anyway.
—
There are no signs of life at the café Zola’s directions have led me to, so without my permission, my brain does itsDatelinething:Death at the Diner, Café Crimes, Lured to the Luncheonette.I’m texting Zo to confirm the address when the front door swings open, and a very tall, very dark,veryhandsome man steps from the restaurant’s interior.
I lock my doors immediately.
“Kaia?” he asks, shielding his eyes from the glare of the evening sun.
I nod and roll down the window, but I keep my phone in hand. Just in case. “James?”
He smiles his confirmation.
“It looks like this place is closed,” I say, ignoring the fact that having come from inside, he’s very likely already aware. “Do you know anywhere else nearby?”
James stuffs his hands in the front pockets of his jeans so completely that his shoulders round and slump. “Itisclosed,” he says, smiling wide enough to reveal the slight gap between his front teeth. “But not for us.”
Oh yay. The first date of every girl’s dreams—all alone with a total stranger at an abandoned location with a Sub-Zero walk-in freezer.
As I commit James’s features to memory for a possible future police sketch (early to mid-twenties, Black male, five foot ten, brown eyes, tight fade), he pulls a hand out of his pocket to grab the cloth apron slung over his shoulder. He unfolds it, displaying the embroidered word that mirrors the one scrawled across the café’s green awning:Josephine’s.
“You work here?”
“Yeah. It’s my spot actually. I own it.”
Slightly comforted knowing this guy’s legal name is on the deed, I open the car door fully. “So it would be a really bad business model to bring women to your own restaurant to—ya know.”
I make a knife motion across my throat, but smile brightly as I do it. The two gestures balance each other out nicely, I think.
