Page 17 of Don't Go
“I'm fine. I didn't know the man. I don't know any of those people.”
“Okay.”
He picked the lime knife out of the sink, rinsed it, started cutting again. He didn't push. That's why Kit is Kit.
I poured a vodka soda for the woman who was waving at me from the second stool. I rang it. I came back to the limes, finished the bowl, and took it down to the rail.
He'd seemed like a decent enough human being, in the end. I would've had more for him if I hadn't been so shocked, and as it was, I'd been polite.Nice to meet you, Mr. Cross.It was in the past. He was in the past. His foundation could push my daughter to next March or next May or next never, and I would handle itthe way I handled everything, which was loudly, with a pen in my hair, until I couldn't handle it anymore.
Later that night, the door opened.
I didn't look up. The door opens four hundred times a night. The door opening isn't, statistically, an event.
Kit looked up.
He stilled beside me, half a beat, and his head turned.
I looked.
Mr. Cross was standing inside the door.
His eyes went around the room, looking for one thing and refusing to be distracted by anything else, and they landed on me.
He smiled.
It was the auction smile, mostly, but tired around the eyes, and there were shadows underneath them. He hadn't shaved either. His shirt was the same shirt he'd had on the night before, top buttons still open, no tie, jacket slung over one forearm.
He walked to the bar. He sat at the empty stool directly in front of me.
Kit looked at me and asked, "Do you know him?"
"No."
Kit looked at me for one more second. Then he picked up a tray and walked down the rail without another word.
Mr. Cross put both hands flat on the bar.
I didn't speak. Didn't look at him. I wiped a glass that had already been wiped and picked up another one.
Finally I looked.
He looked exhausted. I thought,What happened to you?But I shoved the thought somewhere I wouldn't have to look at it.
"You shouldn't be here." I said, quietly.
"I know." He didn't move his hands off the bar. "But I am."
4.Sabrina
I know. But I am.
I stared at him. He stared back.
He had curiosity in his eyes. I knew that look. I'd seen it in too many men's eyes, including the eyes of the deadbeat asshole who'd told me he loved me a week before he flew to Phoenix. That look didn't belong to me. That look was a wager somebody else was placing without my permission, and I wasn't interested in being a horse in this race.
“What are you playing at? What are you doing here? What are you hoping to gain from this?”
He raised both hands off the bar. "Whoa. All at once? Slow down, sweetie."
