Run (3 page)

       Alone, it was easy to come, my fingers a poor substitute for his. I showered off the sex, propped myself up against the cool tile, and remembered what he’d looked like above me, racing for the finish. My broken moan was embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as how fast I’d gotten myself off.

       Short term solution to a long term problem. But I slept better that night than I had in almost three years.

Chapter Three

       The diner was about half full. Most of the patrons had their food, which was good for Charlie. The cook—you couldn’t call him a chef, not in a place like this—needed the break. His line cook was out, again, and the dishwasher had been conscripted into making salads and other easy shit. Unfortunately, he’d only succeeded in screwing up the orders and was sent back to the dishwasher.

       Charlie took his break leaning against one of the long metal counters, curly hair sticking to his head from the sultry heat. He’d waylaid me with the same question he asked every day. A drink, a meal, a movie, hell, a walk. Anything, anything at all, just to put his poor misbegotten heart at ease. And he did it all in such an over the top fashion I knew he was joking. The ring he carefully placed on his left ring finger when his shift was over cemented it. I took the teasing and horded it. It fueled the spark and made it last a little longer, and I had hope that someday it would catch and burn the forest.

       “Kenny, babydoll, you’re breakin’ my heart here.” His eyes rounded and his mouth drooped at the corners.

       I snorted. “Dude. The puppy dog eyes don’t work on me. I thought we’d been over this.” I grabbed the salad sitting in the order window.

       “Works on everyone else.” He grinned.

       “If by everyone else, you mean your wife, good for you. Because, you know, it should. Would kind of suck otherwise.” I carried the salad out to table five and set it down, flashing a smile at the woman who’d ordered it. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

       I checked on my other tables, refilled water glasses, retrieved another fork for a young mother who’d lost hers when her son decided it would be better on the floor. It was normal. It was spectacular. I felt better than I had in days. Weeks, maybe. I could box up the negativity roiling inside and chain it, lock it down. Keep it from escaping.

       The diner helped some. It reminded me of the old cafe outside San Diego I’d worked at all through college, with its faded Formica tabletops and scuffed linoleum. I felt more comfortable in this worn place than I had in the last bar I’d picked up some shifts in. Gwen, the owner, hadn’t blinked at my hair or the tattoos she could see.

       I wasn’t about to delude myself, though. My mystery lover from the night before was the reason for my good mood. The knot between my shoulders that no amount of yoga could get rid of was gone. I’d eaten a full breakfast this morning, and lunch, too. Dinner was hours away, and already my stomach was looking forward to it. Sex healed. I just hoped the magical properties would last long enough for me to find a safer, healthier way to cope.

       Gwen stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Kenna? My office when you have a minute.”

       I dropped off the check for a man holding his hand up like he was in a classroom and made my way through the kitchen to Gwen’s miniscule office. “What’s up?”

       She waved a hand at the door. “Close that and have a seat.”

       I shut the door and sat in one of the half-wrecked chairs in front of her desk. She pushed a piece of paper across the desk at me. “There was a problem with your Social Security number.”

       A shock of cold shot through my chest and formed a lump in my stomach. “Oh?” The paper was my I-9 form. I’d used my passport for my employment papers. I’d managed to alter the birthdate so I could still use it. I’d faked the social, coming up with a random nine digit number. The diner, and Gwen, had looked like the kind of place that wouldn’t look too closely at something like that. I’d been wrong.

       “It came back belonging to a fifty-four year old housewife in Detroit.” Not so random, then. Not so random at all. “You don’t look like a middle aged housewife.”

       I swallowed hard. Stared at the form. Realized this meant I’d have to quit. Find work elsewhere. Maybe move on. I’d been in Austin less than a month, here for about two weeks. I had some money. Not enough.

       I wasn’t ready to go home.

       “Are you in trouble?” Gwen asked, her tone blunt. Almost harsh. “Running from someone?” The question must have shown on my face, because her expression softened. “I help out at a women’s shelter. You don’t exhibit any of the usual signs of abuse, but I’ve learned you should never assume.”

       I shook my head. “Not running. Just not ready to be found.” The fake birthdate and Social Security number might have been overkill, but it helped keep me calm most of the time.

       Key words being
most of the time
.

       My knuckles were white. I loosened my clenched hands. “I—” I couldn’t do this. I had to give a truth, a part of the story, because I wasn’t ready to leave. Selfish of me. “I’m a horrible person,” I muttered. “Horrible for asking for this.”

       Gwen’s expression had closed off. “If I could give you the reason to pay me under the table, would you let me stay? I’ll leave if you can’t. I’ll leave at the first hint of trouble if you do,” I added.

       The silence sucked the air out of the room. I couldn’t blink. Everything,
everything
, stilled. Halted. Waited for her response.

       “Might not look like it,” she said, drawing out the words, “but I don’t hire illegals. I can keep you off the books for a few weeks and deduct back taxes if you need more money up front. Best I can offer.”

       In the year I’d been gone, I’d never been able to prove anyone was looking for me. I made the occasional phone call to my parents, reassuring them I was alive. Deirdra’s brother Adam had threatened my life before I’d run, but would he really waste money trying to track me down? Whenever I managed to convince myself I was paranoid, something would happen to make me glad I’d taken the precaution. Making my choice, I straightened my shoulders and drew in a breath. “My name really is McKenna Davis,” I said quietly. “My Social Security number and date of birth are false, though the birth year is correct. I am running from something. Some
one
. Google McKenna Davis teacher Deirdra Miller student. Exactly like that.”

       Greta lifted a brow. “Deirdre?”

       “D-e-i-r-d-r-a.”

       Keys clicked and I stared at the floor. Absorbed the quiet and the anxiety of finally, after a year, telling one person a tiny piece of the story. Someday someone would get the rest of it. Just not today.

       “This is you?” She’d found the top story.

       I wished it wasn’t. I wished so many things for so many months, and I had no more wishes in me. “I couldn’t take the guilt. The sympathy. Her oldest brother threatened me. I left. I’m not ready to be found,” I said.

       I waited while she read. Click. Click. Click.

       She glanced up. “Your tables are waiting.”

       Relief stole my strength for a moment, and I clamped my hands around the armrests, digging for it. I was okay. For a few days or weeks or months, I’d have funds to pay for my crappy furnished apartment and food for my belly. For gas and the occasional beer in a rundown bar.

       Someone had a piece of me I hadn’t relinquished in a year, longer still since I’d given it willingly.

       Untrue. I’d given a far bigger piece last night, to a man whose name I didn’t know.

       Yoga. I would do yoga. For an hour. More. I would not race back to the squished-down bar hoping to run into him again. I certainly would not take the first invitation I received and jump into bed. Or the cab of a truck. Or an alley. I would find other distractions, distractions that would let me rebuild a life. Something I wouldn’t demolish in a few weeks or months. Something that would last.

       The same thing I vowed with every new town I landed in.

       I gave Gwen a shaky smile and walked out of the office. I had a shift to finish. As I passed Charlie, his face sweaty from manning the grill, I paused. New life. Time to start building it. “You’re on.”

       “What’s that, Kenny? On for what?”

       I pushed aside the rising tide of doubts. “Come now. You gonna break
my
heart? Drinks. Bring your wife. I want to meet the woman who puts up with a rake like you.”

       He stared. Then his face broke out in a grin so wide and bright, it made the light in the kitchen seem dim in comparison. A grin you couldn’t help returning. I did, and the roaring in my head receded. Not completely. But enough.

       The rest of my shift was a blur of faces and noise, sometimes cranky, sometimes not, and I found myself looking for a shaggy head of hair and a set of broad shoulders. Ridiculous. The last thing I needed on this journey out of fucked up LaLa Land was an entanglement.

       Celia, one of the other waitresses, burst through the door about five minutes before we closed for the night. I frowned. “What are you doing here?” She wasn’t on the schedule for today, and I knew she was fiercely possessive of her days off.

       “Charlie called. Said you’d
finally
agreed to hang out. So here I am! We’re going. Now.” She bounced around me, a red-headed pixie of a girl, barely twenty one. Her energy reminded me just how old I’d gotten in the last few years. And I hadn’t even hit thirty. God.

       “She’s got work to finish first.” Gwen looked up from the pile of receipts, preparing the deposit drop for the night.

       Celia just smiled and grabbed the nearest chair, swinging it up on the table. She worked her way around the back third of the room, picking up chairs and setting them, legs up, on tables. I kept wiping down the tables in the front, their tops sticky with sugar and ketchup, one eye on the door, the other on the sole diner left.

       His spoon clattered in the bowl and he wiped his mouth, crumpling his napkin and tossing it on the table. The loneliness of the gesture tugged at my heart.
Come with us. Have fun.

       My stupid heart is what got me into this mess to begin with.

       Two minutes later the restaurant was empty, the door locked, and Charlie had pulled off his apron. “Heading out. Grab a shower first. Meet you at the Hooch?”

       Celia whooped and went back to the chairs while I carried the empty dishes into the kitchen, handing them over to Ron. The dishwasher grinned his crooked grin and dumped them in the sink, then went back to wiping down the counters around him.

       Gwen let us out the front door and we started down the block to the bar, Celia chattering nonstop. The night was warm and alive, full of catcalls and strains of music spilling into the streets to mingle with the cars rushing past. Determination surged. So Gwen knew. No one else needed to. Not yet.

       The Hooch was crowded. Dark wood, darker floors, tables willy-nilly off to the sides, the air scented with beer and stale cigarette smoke. It lacked the closeness of the bar the night before. We pushed our way through the crowd to order drinks. Half the neighborhood had to be crammed into the room, conversations a high whine over the wail of music pouring from invisible speakers.

       It took a while for the bartender to work his way toward us, but when he did, Celia leaned over the bar to yell our order directly in his ear. His eyes fastened on her tits as soon as she bent toward him, and his gaze lingered there after she dropped to her feet. Not surprisingly, two bottles of Dos Equis appeared seconds later, the bartender waving away Celia’s money. She shrugged, grinned, and handed me a bottle. “Cheers!”

       I downed half the bottle before I realized what I was doing, the bitter liquid running over my tongue and down my throat. Crap. I hadn’t been hungry for dinner after my conversation with Gwen, so I hadn’t eaten on my break, and now the only thing in my stomach was beer. “They got food in this place?” I yelled. “Didn’t get a chance to eat.”

       “No! You okay for a while?”

       I’d risk the hangover if it meant holding the anxiety at bay. “Yeah.”

       We yelled back and forth for a while, Celia telling me about her date from a few nights ago. I polished off the beer and left Celia to grab another. I didn’t get as lucky as her. The bartender barely looked at me and when I leaned over to grab my bottle, I got a phantom hand palming my ass. And I still had to pay for the beer. Nice.

       Charlie and a woman I assumed to be his wife had joined Celia by the time I returned to the spot we’d staked out, and they were scouting for a table. He introduced me to the woman, Dawn, and spent the rest of the evening with his arm around her, never letting her out of touching distance. It squished my heart, just a little, to see the obvious love between them and wanting it for myself. Not from Charlie, but from someone who wouldn’t look at me and see a woman who had screwed up so badly she couldn’t walk down the street without people whispering behind their hands.

       The evening passed in a blur of beer and laughter and noise. We left the Hooch behind for an all-night hole in the wall three blocks down, crowded with drunk people, and I fit right in, the alcohol a pleasant haze over my brain. There were tater tots. Tots covered in cheese and bacon and sour cream. They were quite possibly the best thing I’d ever tasted.

       I stumbled out onto the sidewalk, draped over Celia as we tried to hold each other up. The skitter of nerves died under the flood of alcohol, leaving behind the calm I’d found last night. I’d guard it more closely this time.

       “You’re fun,” Celia declared. “We’re going to do this again. Frequently. We need to go to a show. You’re in Austin now. We have shows coming out our ears.”

       I gave her a goofy, loopy smile. “I like shows.” I liked being included. I liked not living inside my head. Why had I thought alcohol was a bad idea? It was a fabulous idea. It reminded me of college, the drinking, the parties and the instant friends.