Page 40 of What We Bury
I hate how much I wanthim.
It’s disturbing how badly I want to slide into the booth beside him, glue myself to his side, and shrink the space between us until there is nowhere for the wanting to hide.
Jesus Christ, Sage. Get it together! He’s a guy.
Just a regular guy . . .
Around noon, the breakfast rush finally breaks and my replacement, Rosa, shows up. I hang up my apron, grab my bag from the back, and head for the door.
Eli is already standing, pulling cash from his wallet to leave on the counter. Way too much for his eggs and four cups of coffee.
“You don’t have to—” I start.
“I know.” He tucks the wallet away. “Ready?”
“For what?”
“I’m walking you home.”
The presumption of it should irritate me. It does irritate me, a little—this assumption that I need an escort, that I can’t navigate six blocks without a chaperone anymore. But there’s also something warm and inconvenient beneath that irritation that I refuse to examine too closely.
“Actually,” I say, pushing through the door into the bright afternoon, “I’m not going home.”
He follows me onto the sidewalk, squinting against the sun. “Where are we going?”
“I’mgoing to the park.” I hoist my bag higher on my shoulder. “I brought lunch. It’s too nice to be inside.”
I start walking before he can respond. After a beat, I hear his footsteps fall into rhythm beside me.
The park is a ten-minute walk from the diner, a small square of grass and benches wedged between the boardwalk and a row of tourist shops. There’s a bench under an old oak tree that faces the water, quiet enough to talk without feeling trapped.
I claim the bench and pull two sandwiches from my bag. Turkey and Swiss, nothing fancy, wrapped in wax paper because I’m not a complete heathen. I hold one out to Eli.
He stares at it like I’ve offered him a live grenade.
“It’s a sandwich,” I say. “Not a bomb.”
“You made me a sandwich?”
“I madetwosandwiches. One for me, and one for whoever was on babysitting duty today.” I shake it at him until he takes it. “I figured you guys probably don’t eat enough, with all the stalking and hanging and whatever else it is you do with your time.”
He sits on the bench, leaving a careful foot of space between us.
“Thank you,” he says finally. “You didn’t have to?—”
“I know. Eat your sandwich.”
He does. I do too. For a few minutes, we just sit there, chewing in silence, watching the water. The breeze is cool and salty, the sun warm on my face, and if I close my eyes, I can almost pretend this is normal.
God, I wish my life was normal.
Just two people eating lunch in a park.
No blood. No bodies. No rope.
“So,” I say, when half my sandwich is gone and the silence has stretched long enough. “Are you going to tell me how this whole thing started? The . . . I don’t know what to call it. The Suicide Squad? The Vigilante Book Club? Five Guys Who Hang?”
Eli chokes on his sandwich. Coughing, eyes watering, hand pressed to his chest. I thump him on the back, harder than strictly necessary, and wait for him to recover.
