That other life is like a ghost, visible from the corner of my eye but only real so long as I don’t look straight at it.
Another realization dawns, slowly, easily, like a sunrise over a lake.
The ghost life I’ve never allowed myself to want isn’t real yet.
It could be real.
Holly killed some of my demons and Liam just propped open the door to another world.
She squeezes my hand. “Are you okay?”
In some ways it’s easier to know that all hope is lost, and any dream you ever have is a survival mechanism meant to keep you from throwing yourself in front of the next available bullet. I’ve tried that, again and again, and kept on living. Now, to dream and live deliberately, with the whole world in my hands?
It’s goddamn terrifying.
I swallow hard and look into Holly’s eyes. She’s tired, but she still glows, fresh color in her cheeks. It’s because of me that she looks that way instead of pale and resigned, the way she was in the parking garage. “Will you marry me?”
In the ghost life I have a ring with an enormous rock and a catered picnic on some French lakeside. In the ghost life I’ve prepared for this moment for weeks, choosing the perfect day and the perfect moment to ask her. In the ghost life I don’t have a half-broken body and I’m not desperate for a bed.
It doesn’t matter. Ghost life, this life—I want her in all of them.
Holly’s smile chases all the shadows from her face. She lets go of my hand, soft and tentative, and slides both palms up the front of my jacket to my face. She kisses me, the fresh, clean taste of her the only thing I want in every life. “Yes,” she says. “I will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
London
Working at the coffee shop isn’t all bad.
For one thing, it leaves me a lot of time outside my head.
I lose myself in the steam wand and hot milk and stirring. The rhythm of brewing and pouring and replacing cups. Sweeping. Replacing fat muffins in the pastry case. It makes it possible, for long stretches of time, to stop thinking about Adam.
He’s never far out of mind. It’s the internal clock that’s slowly ticking me to death.
When I’m at work, my brain eventually quits replaying the night of the fundraiser. It focuses on the drink recipes and the difficult customers and the orders so complicated they should require a degree.
He’s been gone for three weeks, four days, and eleven hours.
He never came back after the fundraiser.
I waited up for him.
Not too late, he said. Adam promised me they wouldn’t be late, and I believed him. I told Elijah I’d never talk to him again. It was a lie. I knew in my heart that if Adam came back, I would fight with him, and then I’d fuck him, and then we would talk.
I brew a new dark roast and let the thoughts fade into the background. Holly’s okay, at least. Elijah came for her, at least. It’s right that she has a happy ending while I don’t. That fits. She’s the happy ending sister. I’m the work as a barista while recovering from a coke habit sister.
The line stretches out for the morning rush. God bless these caffeine addicts. The morning rush is usually a hectic parade of pissed-off people. Bring them all to me today.
Eventually the crowd thins out, the way it always does. There’ll be another rush at lunch with people impatient to get back to the office or trying to extend their break, and then I’ll leave, back to the apartment where Adam is not.
There’s always a moment when I hesitate before I open the door. It’s not that I’m hoping for another catastrophic injury, another emergency Google session. It’s more that the couch seems empty without him. The whole space seems empty without him. I take a series of orders from a line of anonymous men and suits. Their faces don’t stand out from one another. The last one orders a black coffee. I have two hours left in my shift.
I pump the coffee from the carafe, slide a sleeve onto the cup, and push it back across the counter. “It’s one seventy-five,” I say, tapping the order into the register.
He drops something onto the counter.
The sound is all wrong for coins.
I take a deep breath and put on a smile, prepared to deliver my jokey yet firm speech about how we don’t accept anything but cash or credit for payment. Not bus tokens, not pressed pennies…
…not diamonds.
The words die on my tongue.
Someone has put diamonds on the counter.
I draw my hand back from the coffee cup and look up at his face.
Adam looks different. He’s had a haircut and shaved, and that’s why I didn’t notice him before—he’s blending in. He stood in line at the coffee shop like all of those other guys. But he is different, as much as he tries to hide it. The slacks and shirt don’t hide anything from me, now that I’m looking. His overcoat looks expensive. Something he’d wear if he worked for one of the fancy law firms downtown.
Maybe he does. I don’t know anything about him now. Not that I knew much before, except—
“It was all for you,” he says. “It was always for you.”
The door opens and two teenage girls walk in, heads close together, giggling about something. They toss their backpacks into one of the booths along the side of the shop and slide in. It reminds me of me and Holly.
I don’t dare touch the diamonds.
“We—” My mouth has gone dry. “We only accept cash and credit for payment.”
Adam puts a palm over the diamonds, hiding them from view, and slides them across the counter to me. When he lifts his hand I half-expect the diamonds to be gone. A trick.
They’re not a trick.
“I wouldn’t leave them out, if I were you.”
If there’s anything I’ve learned since I flew to France, it’s that touching diamonds is dangerous.
Then again, so is leaving them out on a counter where anyone could walk up and snatch them.
This feels like the moment in the fairy tale just before the girl pricks her finger on the spindle. Before she bites into the poisoned apple. Before the fairy godmother brings her wand down and transforms her into a princess.
“You left,” I say. “And you didn’t come back. I waited up. For days, I waited up.” I take the diamonds in my hands. It’s easy enough to slip them into my pocket, out of sight.
Adam reaches into his own pocket and puts a few dollar bills on the counter. “I’m sorry. I was dealing with some shit.” He gives a small smile. “Family drama.”
I make his change. Family drama. That’s an understatement. The actions of Lieutenant Colonel Mark Jefferson have been all over the news. Adam’s popped up in a few of the articles. He enlisted, like his father and grandfather before him. And he was discharged dishonorably when he tried to bring his father’s crimes to light. That decision is being revisited, along with a lot of other shit that’s been swept under the carpet for so long.
The diamonds burn a hole in my pocket. I can feel them there, vibrating with possibility and fire, and that’s the thing—it feels good.
It feels right.
It feels dangerous and exhilarating and right.
When I look up from the cash register Adam is at the door. The sight of him on the threshold, about to disappear, turns me into a human scream. I’ve never unknotted the coffee shop apron so fast in my life.