The Way Back to Us

by Jamie Howard

  “I’m not sick.” I tapped my knuckles against the table. “It was just a case of . . . food poisoning—brief, violent, and—”

  “TMI, man.” Felix wrinkled his nose. “Nobody needs to hear about that.”

  “The point is, I’m over it.” I gritted my teeth, fighting every sensation that was coursing through my body, urging me to look back at Dani. “Dammit, where the hell is this waitress? Can I not get some motherfucking nachos in this place?”

  “Dude, chill.” Felix gave me a once-over like he thought I was seriously off my rocker. “I’ll go find someone and order you some food—nachos, mozzarella sticks, the works. You shouldn’t be allowed out in public when you’re hangry.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he was already speeding away from the table, weaving his wheelchair through the crowd. Scrubbing a hand over my face, I blew out a breath. “I think my blood sugar’s low or something.”

  “Or something,” Bianca reiterated.

  Chapter 8: Dani

  Dozens, there were dozens of people here—from the full stools surrounding the bar, the crowded tables, the customers milling between them—and I couldn’t manage not to look. Couldn’t keep my gaze from traveling to the one face that haunted me.

  And he’d caught me.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered under my breath, slamming down a glass a little bit harder than absolutely necessary onto the bar top. Water droplets leapt from the rim to splatter my fingertips.

  “What was that, sweetheart?” an older gentleman asked. I pegged him at mid-fifties, his hands the rough and calloused clues to a day laborer. I’d sorted him into the harmless category, though of course that was always subject to change.

  Bars could be difficult. Keeping my eye out for frequent flyers, people who drifted too close too often, tended to be a bit problematic in this situation. There were always repeat customers, so singling out those who could be dangerous wasn’t always easy. But there was a fine line between someone being curious and taking too much of an interest, asking questions that were too pointed, too direct to just be casual conversation.

  I cleared my throat, raising my voice over the clamor. “Ready for a refill?”

  The man smiled, blunt fingers pushing his empty glass forward. “I could do with one.”

  I went back to taking mental notes while I poured out another two fingers of scotch and slid them over to him. I tried to focus on faces, memorizing them in case I needed to recall them later, but nevertheless my attention kept drifting back to Gavin’s table.

  It wasn’t any surprise to see him surrounded by beautiful women. I’d glanced through enough tabloids to know he certainly wasn’t pining over me. Which was good. It was good. He deserved to be happy, and that was something he’d never have with me.

  “Lady, hey!” A hand waving in my periphery caught my attention. I glanced his way for a millisecond, just long enough to take a mental snapshot—early twenties, fancy hair flip, reeking of self-importance like it was cologne.

  I held up a finger. “One second.”

  The brunette from their table was hovering at the corner of the bar, quietly waiting for my attention. Her fingers fiddled with the stem of her wine glass, and though she didn’t see it, one of the other guys from their table hovered just behind her. There was something about him that reminded me a bit of my father. Maybe it was the hard line of his jaw or the harsh slant of his lips. No, it was definitely his eyes, so full of conflict, swimming with secrets.

  I stopped in front of her, wiping my hands on a dish towel. “Can I get you something?”

  “Another glass of the Cab, please.”

  I hesitated. “Any particular Cab?”

  “Oh, umm.” Her eyes searched the shelf behind me and she let out a sigh like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. “Whichever, you pick.”

  The Blackbird had a decent selection of reds, a few semi-respectable Cabernets in the bunch. I snagged one at random and poured out a glass, filling it more than I usually did. This girl looked like she needed the bottle rather than just one more glass.

  “Thanks.” Her hands patted down her pockets, searched for a purse that wasn’t there.

  “Forget it, it’s on me.”

  She dropped her head into her hands for a second, gathering herself. When she glanced back up she didn’t even try to disguise the brokenness that lingered in her eyes. It vanished and was replaced with steel when a hand reached down around her, slapping a few crisp bills on the gritty wood.

  “I got it,” a rough voice said. “Rach, I didn’t mean—”

  “Just don’t, okay?”

  I could see him queuing up to try again, so I took pity on her and gave her the distraction she needed. “Like I said, this has already been taken care of.” Jabbing two fingers down on the cash he’d laid on the bar, I shoved it back toward him.

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Excuse me?”

  I met his stare, not flinching for a second. “It’s on the house.”

  He laid his palm flat on the bar and leaned toward me, just two inches, but enough that I was fully aware how much taller he was than me. As far as intimidation tactics went this one was a classic. Not that it was working in the slightest. “I know you. You’re Gavin’s girl.” He smirked.

  I felt my spine stiffen. It was only by sheer force of will that I kept my fingers from curling and biting into my palms. “Clearly you weren’t listening.” I spit the words out, though they tasted like ash: “I’m no one.”

  Another inch disappeared. “Bull. Shit.”

  Pure unadulterated anger shimmered in the air between us. It pulsed through my veins, thrummed in my blood, ramped up the adrenaline coursing through me. Every muscle in my body tensed, ready, begging for release.

  “Ben?” A small hand laid itself tentatively on his arm.

  Just like that, the fight drained out of him. He blinked like the world had just come rushing back around him and he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten where he was. An apology was clearly written across his face, and his hand lifted to cover hers. “C’mon, Rach.”

  They left together, not touching anymore, but walking close so their hands almost brushed in passing.

  And there I was—nothing but futile emotions and broken dreams. My gaze followed them back to the table, helplessly. It waited there, hoping for some godforsaken reason that Gavin might throw me a lifeline.

  He didn’t even glance my way.

  “Lady—” Fingers wrapped around my arm, digging into me, and before I could even process what was happening, I reacted from the darkest recesses of my mind. Effortlessly, I twisted his arm, my other hand grabbing his skull and slamming his face down into the bar. The whole thing shuddered with the impact.

  He let out a strangled cry, his fancy hair flip falling over his eyes. “Jesus, I’m sorry. Easy.”

  I released him as quickly as I’d grabbed him, the horror of what I’d done slowly sinking in. He shoved away from me, stumbling and falling to the floor in his haste to get away. A bruise was blooming on his cheek, but it was his stare, that utterly petrified look morphing his face, that sucked the air right out of my lungs.

  Fuck.

  Everyone was staring. Watching me. Someone was probably seconds away from calling the police. It was that last thought that got me moving. Panic flooded through me, hurrying my steps. I yanked my purse out from its hiding place and hustled for the back door, fending off unsuspecting elbows and shoulders.

  The door ricocheted off the brick wall like a shot, echoing down the alley. I’d already mapped out a route, just in case. Another contingency for another what-if. That’s all my life amounted to if you broke it down into its tiniest components.

  “Dani, wait!” Footsteps sounded behind me. “Stop! Please!”

  It was the please that got me, the strangled sound of it wrapping right around my throat. I froze in my tracks, my body still poised for flight. The urge to keep moving, the sound of a ticking clock in my head, torme
nted me.

  Gavin stopped in front of me, eyes searching my face. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine.” My fingers tightened on my purse strap. “But I have to go.”

  “Go?” He threw a hand back at the still-open door. “What the hell just happened?”

  “It was an accident. He grabbed me and—” I ground my teeth together, willing the images that flashed behind my eyes to disappear. I couldn’t do this, I was wasting precious time. “I’m sorry, but I need to go.”

  “Everyone in there saw you were just defending yourself,” he shouted at my back. “That’s all that happened. Bonnie asked me to come out here and make sure you were okay.”

  I snorted out an unladylike laugh and turned on my heel. “Is that why you’re out here?”

  “Yes.” He tugged on his hair, making it stand on end. “No.”

  “Well, which is it?” I folded my arms across my chest.

  “Why did you leave?” The question burst out of his mouth like it was in a rush to escape.

  “I already told you—”

  “Not tonight.” His hands landed tiredly on his hips, but his gaze strayed up to mine and held there. “How could you just disappear like that?”

  My heart shuddered inside my chest, reverberating from the impact of his words. “I don’t have any answers for you.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t have any answers for me or you just won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t give you any.”

  He mumbled something under his breath that I couldn’t catch, and before he could throw another retort my way his phone started ringing. His screen lit up the night in neon blue as he scowled at the screen. The ringing immediately ceased as he silenced the call.

  He tapped his phone rhythmically against his thigh, his jeans absorbing the impact. His movements halted when he let out a heavy breath. “Why are you here?” He waved a hand around us. “New York, The Blackbird, all of it?”

  I rocked back on my heels, biting my lip while I tried to decide how I wanted to answer that question. It wasn’t nearly as innocent as it sounded; I didn’t even need my years’ worth of intuition to tell me that. In the end, he didn’t really want to know why I was there so much as he wanted to know if I was there for him.

  I stared hard at the uneven bricks to my right, tracing the crack that ran through them. “It wasn’t my choice.”

  “Someone is forcing you to work here?”

  I glanced back at him, but couldn’t hold his gaze. “No.” I cracked a knuckle and then another. “New York wasn’t up to me, but The Blackbird was all me. But it’s not like you need to worry about that anymore.”

  He frowned, a small line creasing his forehead. “What’s—” His phone started ringing again. He snapped it up to his ear. “What is it, Lilah?” A pause. “That’s how I greet her when she’s harassing me, yes.” He held up a finger in my direction, asking me to wait.

  He spun around, hand knifing through his hair. With his back turned to me, I considered taking off. The fact that I didn’t hear any sirens was a good sign, but staying was still a risky play no matter what way I looked at it.

  “No, I actually had no idea. Clearly I’m not as morbid as you are.” He was facing me again and I caught him making a face. “Actually, I’m pretty sure that talking about wills, in any way, shape, or form, is considered morbid.”

  I fought off my smile. Lilah, right. The name finally clicked and, with it, the sister that went with it—oldest of his sisters, extremely type A, logical to the max. No surprise she was a supremely good lawyer. This bizarre conversation really took me back.

  “Look, as much as I’d love to chat with you about Mom’s imminent demise, I really need to go.” His gaze flipped back up to me like he wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t going to vanish into thin air. “Yes, yes, fine. I’ll call her. Yes, I promise. No, not now. Later. This weekend. Fine, tomorrow.” He held the phone away from his ear and shouted down at it. “Goodbye, Lilah!”

  “Holy hell.” He flashed me a grin, likely remembered that even though this scene was reminiscent of many others we were miles and years away from that place, and it fell right off his face. “If you’re worried about your job here you shouldn’t be.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Going to put in a good word for me with the manager?”

  “Well, since I own the place they kind of have to do what I tell them.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You own this place?”

  “I’m more of a silent co-owner.” His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t know?”

  “No.” I tugged on the end of my braid. It took my mouth a second to form what I wanted to say next. I had two options, one would drive the wedge between us even further, but the other . . . the other glimmered with possibility. So tempting, so infectious that I couldn’t resist it. “I knew you hung out here. Sometimes. Or at least that’s the rumor.”

  His hand gripped the back of his neck, squeezing. “You checked up on me.”

  A statement, not a question, that all of a sudden seemed as dangerous as a knife pricking against the sensitive skin of my throat. My feet started moving backwards. “I have to go.”

  He searched the alley behind me. “Do you need a cab? A ride? Something?”

  “No, I’m fine.” I spun around, picked up speed. For some reason the air suddenly seemed thinner, harder to breathe.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dani.”

  It sounded a lot like a promise.

  Chapter 9: Gavin

  This was the best bad decision I’d made in a long time. Definitely better than my ill-advised purchase of the RompHim, though I maintained I rocked that outfit. The only issue with a button-up one piece was that I had to wrestle the entire thing off to take a piss. That and the fact that it squeezed my twig and berries like it was trying to make juice for Sunday brunch.

  I ran my fingers through my unruly hair, the long, curly strands wreaking havoc on top of my head. A few quick swipes with the buzzer would tame them, but, then again, so would a hat. I inched a little closer to the mirror and skimmed my cheek, debating the same fate for my two-day stubble.

  Screw it.

  I trekked into the kitchen, my messy hair a problem for another day. On the counter sat a partially opened package the size of a small shoebox, a piece of duct tape curling back from the side that was pulled back. I snickered when I thought about what was inside—hundreds of tiny bouncy balls. No way in hell Felix was going to be able to guess that one.

  A booming knock echoed through my apartment while I was shoulders deep in the refrigerator, a chicken wing in my mouth and a bowl of pasta salad cradled in the crook of my arm. “One sec!”

  The bowl thunked as I set it down on the counter and I ripped off a chunk of cold chicken while I sauntered over to the door. I readjusted my gaze downward a bit after I swung the door open. “Speak of the devil. I was just thinking about you.”

  Felix wheeled right by me. “Dude, how many times to we have to go over this? Pants. You need to put on pants before you answer the door.” He shook his head.

  I glanced down at my Captain America boxer briefs. “These don’t count? I mean, I think they should.”

  “Let’s put it to the little sister test. Would you want Daphne hanging out with a guy who’s only wearing that?”

  “Well, I’d applaud his taste in superheroes, but fine.” I took another bite off my drumstick. “Point taken.” I pointed the half-gnawed-on chicken wing at him. “You want some? Or macaroni salad? I think I’ve got some leftover pizza in the refrigerator, or some lo mein? Actually I may have—”

  “I’m good.” He ran his hands over his wheels, gaze locking on to mine. “Actually, I just stopped by to bring you a present.”

  He lobbed something at me. It rattled in the air and I managed to catch it with my non-chicken hand. “Tums? You brought me Tums?”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “For your gut. I hear it’s been giving you some trouble lately.”


  I licked my fingers clean. He’d always been a smart bastard. “What’d Jules tell you?”

  “That if men just learned to talk about their issues instead of grunting like cavemen the world would be a better place.” Felix sighed. “But I’d have to be an idiot not to notice The Blackbird’s newest addition and that she’s the girl from the gala. She’s the redhead, isn’t she?”

  “Dani.” Her name slipped through my lips. It seemed like the more times I allowed myself to say it, the easier it was to do. “That’s her.”

  He drummed out a beat on his thighs. It was something he always did when he was thinking, parsing a situation. “You wanna tell me about her?”

  I snickered around a forkful of macaroni. “You gonna braid my hair too?”

  He flipped me a one-finger salute and a sarcastic smile.

  “Fine.” I tossed my fork in the sink. It ricocheted around the basin with an echoing clang. Even though I’d mentally moved past it, dwelling on this part of our history never failed to rip the hunger right out of me.

  I gave him the short and sweet version—the CliffsNotes to a depressing story no one would want to read. Just the highlights, the ups and downs. “Then she showed up at the gala and you know the rest.”

  Felix had traded his distracted drumming for wheeling in endless circles around my apartment. Around the island, circling the dining room table, down the straightaway to the living room, running the length of the windows, and then back again. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I . . . am going to Hogwarts.”

  His mouth opened and closed a few times, before he finally said, “Are you high?”

  “It’s a metaphor.” I rolled my eyes. Sometime between seeing Dani go all ninja warrior on the guy at the bar and her fleeing the scene I’d come to a decision. “If you had the option of going to Hogwarts for a few weeks, months, maybe a year or never getting to go at all, what would you choose?”

  “I’d go—”

  “Exactly.” My stomach twinged so I sought out another fork and went back to work on the macaroni. “See, Dani and I were . . . indescribable. Like the hottest sex you’ve ever had times ten. But it was more than that. I’m not sure I can explain it.”