Page 25 of Haunted

One Year Later

The note Parker left said not to come looking for him. I honored it while I finished my senior year, and while I signed my enlistment papers, and all the way through boot camp. A year, and not one word.

Then boot leave, and a friend from Farley telling me he’d seen him working at the Bean Stop. I went in on a Tuesday in civvies and asked for him. The manager checked a clipboard and said their artist wasn’t on again until Thursday. My leave ended Wednesday. I stood on the sidewalk outside and did the math four separate times and it came out the same every time.

This is what I’ve got instead. Ninety-six hours, most of two of them in the air, six hundred dollars I didn’t have on a commercial ticket, because a military hop could strand me and Monday morning formation is not a thing you’re late to. I landed Friday. I fly out Sunday afternoon.

It’s Saturday, and I’m standing in my service dress uniform on the pavement on Chancellor Street staring into a coffee shop.

Through the front glass I can see somebody in a black apron up a stepladder with his back to the door, and my hands have gone stupid on my tie.

I check it again. Then I go in.

The Bean Stop is, apparently, the kind of place where people sit over endless cups of coffee writing bad first novels. It’s full of college students from the university across the street.

And there he is. On a stepladder by the far wall, hanging a large pencil sketch.

His back is to me. The first thing I register is that he’s filled out—broader across the shoulders, thicker through the arms. His hair has grown past his ears. He’s wearing a black apron and a white shirt with a terry-cloth wristband on his left arm, and I am so purely, stupidly happy to see him that I’m surprised I don’t glow.

“Liam, what do we think?” he calls to the man behind the bar. “Is it still crooked?”

“I don’t know, does it look straight to you?”

“Straight things are not my forte,” he calls back.

I stop breathing for a second. Then I walk up behind him and clear my throat.

“Be right with you,” he says without turning. “This’ll have to do. If Greg complains, we’ll say a college kid messed with it.”

“Parker?” I say.

He stiffens and turns on the ladder. “Lance!” His eyes go to my uniform, and for a second something crosses his face that I can’t read. Then he climbs down and stands in front of me. “I didn’t know you were in town,” he says in that gravelly rasp that never fully healed. “You look—wow.”

“Yeah,” I say, which is the least cool thing I have ever said to another human being. I had a whole speech planned for this moment. Gone. All of it. I’m just staring at him. His face has lost that hungry, hollow look. He’s not the boy I put on an air mattress last year. He’s handsome.

“How did you find me?”

“I came in during boot leave. You weren’t on.”

He goes quiet for a second. “I’m sorry I missed you.”

I try to think of something else to say, but I feel awkward. “You look good,” I say.

“Thanks. I get to use one of the university gyms.” He nods across the street. “You look very…polished.”

I don’t know how to take that. I was hoping for handsome or sexy or at the very least good enough to eat. Polished isn’t cutting it for me, but then again, I gave him a lame-ass you look good, so you get what you give.

I glance at the sketch he just hung. It’s the café interior—the tables, the bar, the chalkboard menu. It’s nice. There’s a lot of detail. I study it for a second. Something about it sits wrong, but I let it go. It’s Parker’s work. That’s enough.

“My first paid commission,” he says, following my gaze, and there’s a flicker of pride in his voice. I don’t think I ever heard him take credit for anything before. “The owner asked me to do a series.” He glances back at the counter. “What can I get you?”

You know what I want, I think, but I just say, “I was hoping to talk to you.”

He looks at the bar, then back at me. “I’m due for a break,” he says. “There’s a place out back. Let me tell Liam.” He gestures to the guy behind the bar.

He has a few words with his coworker, who looks me up and down with a skeptical frown before nodding. Parker takes a key from under the counter and comes back to me.

There is a corridor behind the bar that leads past the bathrooms. At the end of it is a door that Parker unlocks and pushes open. Outside is a small courtyard, walled in by the backs of other buildings, with iron benches and a raised platform that must have been used for a band. Parker flips a switch and naked bulbs strung overhead flicker on.