I arrived at Froth and Java for the second time in the same day, which was actually not that unusual for me. What had me a little off balance was a message from Cole Bauer that had been waiting on my cell phone, asking me to call him. I did, but ended up leaving him a voicemail in return. So much had changed since that morning, and I felt slightly disconnected as I smoothed my windblown hair and checked my reflection in the front window of the coffee shop, wondering if I should put on lip gloss.
Justin was already inside, staking out a pair of deep chairs good for conversation. He stood when he saw me, and we did another one of those unsure dances of greeting. Finally he took my shoulders, leaned down, and kissed my cheek. And I blushed. I could feel it spread over my skin, from the top of my dress to the roots of my hair.
“Hey,” I said, brilliantly.
He stepped back and grinned as he looked at me. I still wore my sundress, though I’d taken off the despised name tag. He’d showered and changed into jeans and a green and white rugby shirt. Close up, I could smell him, clean and sort of spicy, beneath the overwhelming scent of coffee. While there might be some uncertainty to our relationship, there was no ambiguity about the way I felt when I was near him.
“You look great, Maggie.”
A short lock of hair fell against the heat of my cheek, and I brushed it back. “Thanks. I’ve been working out.”
Justin laughed, because he knew how ridiculous that was. He gestured to the chair perpendicular to his and I sat, setting my cell phone and car keys beside his on the side table.
“So, what’s this about going undercover?”
“With the Future Stepfords of America, you mean?” The chair was too soft and deep. I had to balance on the edge to keep from sinking into it like quicksand. “Newspaper story.”
“So how is it?”
“Interesting.” I solved the quicksand problem by tucking my legs up under me and leaning on the poufy upholstered arm. “It’s more of a social commentary sort of thing than hard-hitting investigative journalism.”
“So nothing …” He gestured vaguely. “Weird?”
“Sorority girls from Hell, you mean?” I laughed. “That’s so seventies B movie.”
His smile turned rueful. “It does sound cliché when you put it that way. How’s your mom?”
“Aside from the morning pukeathon, she’s doing great.”
“And your gran?”
“Good.” I anticipated his next question. “And Dad, too.”
He smiled that crooked smile. “And Lisa?”
“Fine, I guess. She left for Georgetown last week.”
“Is she still …?” He faltered, maybe because of the busy coffee shop, maybe because of the baggage it brought up.
“Studying the dark arts?” I tried to hit a droll tone, but missed the mark and landed closer to sour and dejected. “It should make her fit in well in Washington, D.C., I guess. If I wasn’t worried about her moral compass before, living that close to the Capitol would do it.”
“I don’t know.” Justin had better aim, and he struck the perfect note of comforting humor. “Georgetown University is affiliated with the Jesuits. Maybe it will be good for her.”
That made me smile. Not because of any renewed hope for Lisa’s ethical education, but because Justin was such a font of eccentric information.
I left the uncomfortable subject of Lisa for a happier one. “Was the internship everything you’d hoped it would be?”
“It was great.” His face lit with warmth for his subject. “Hearing their folktales in Gaelic, looking into the weather-beaten faces of those living so close to the land and the legends, and seeing the belief that’s woven into the tales. And the pictures we took of the haunts of the fair folk and the giants … I have enough for a whole book, let alone a thesis.”
“That’s fantastic.” I had to grin; his enthusiasm was contagious. Justin’s graduate studies were in anthropology, specifically the folklore of magic and the occult. Or as I called it when we met, an advanced degree in “Do You Want Fries with That.” Dad said Justin was hard to classify academically, but they let him hang out with the history folks anyway.
“After what happened this spring,” I ventured, curious, “how will you write about all this in a scholarly paper? Don’t you question everything now, wonder what’s myth and what’s real?”
He fiddled with his cell phone on the table. “I still have to record it empirically as folklore and fairy tales. We don’t know which is which, do we?”
I paused, a little surprised at that noncommittal answer from Justin, the true believer. And there was that ambiguous “we.” I knew he wasn’t talking about me. I had the theoretical advantage of my Spidey Sense to tell me when the boogeyman was real. “No. I guess not.”
He rose to his feet, dusted his hands on his jeans. “Can I get you something to drink? Vanilla latte, extra shot, right?”
“Yeah.” I smiled, feeling a melty warmth inside at the fact that he remembered.
Our friendship had been a brief, intense proving ground, but romance-wise, he’d left before we’d gone out more than twice. We’d kissed—which was a little like saying Mount St. Helens had exploded once. But I suppose I could understand the “just friends” uncertainty of our relationship when he boarded that plane, and why we were starting over now.
I even understood if he’d gotten too busy, too involved with his work to e-mail me the way he did at first. Three months was a long time. He was across the ocean, building his career, and …
His phone rang. I glanced toward the counter, where Justin waited for the drinks. Clearly he couldn’t hear his ringtone over the chatter and music. I swam out of the chair and picked up the phone, intending to flag him.
It was playing that Irish song, the one they use in every movie with a bar fight or a leprechaun. Everyone knows it’s the Irish song, and Justin’s phone was playing it and flashing the name Deirdre on the caller ID.
A vision popped in my brain—in the space of a held breath, a series of images flickered in front of my mind’s eye like those old film reels where you see the blink between frames: A black-haired, green-eyed, creamy-complexioned woman trekking through a boggy field, sitting with Justin over a couple of pints in a pub with a smoky peat fire. The two of them, heads together in intimate conversation, him inclining to say something, her leaning forward to meet him and …
The phone clattered to the floor, falling from my nerveless fingers. Maybe I broke it, but I couldn’t care. Head whirling, I tried to bring the room back into focus. My heart slammed against my ribs. What the hell had just happened?
“Maggie?” Justin had returned, drinks in hand.
“I dropped your phone.” My own voice sounded flat and cold. I stared stupidly at the phone on the floor, not about to touch it again. Something was wrong with me.
He set down the drinks. “Are you all right? You look sick.”
I felt sick. I was seeing things while I was awake. My freakitude had just reached a whole new level.
“Deirdre called.” The words blurted out, the way the images had blurted into my brain. “I wasn’t spying on you.”
“What?” He blinked in confusion, brow knit in concern. “Spying? Of course not.”
“I just picked it up and …”
“And what, Maggie?” Bending slightly, he searched my face, trying to trap my gaze. “What happened?”
But I couldn’t tell him. Too many emotions had seized my brain and nailed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t make my lips form the questions that would clear everything up. Who was Deirdre? Was she why you stopped writing? All valid questions, but I couldn’t get past the part where, oh my God, I was even more of a freak than I thought.
“I need to go.” I grabbed my keys from the table and he snatched them neatly from my shaking fingers.
“Maggie, what the hell is wrong with you?”
I pressed my hands to my pounding head. “I have a headache all of a sudden.”
“Then let me drive you. You look awful.”
“No.” My latte, all three shots of it, stood on the table. I grabbed it, took a scalding drink, gasped, but felt better. The burn, like a slap in the face, calmed my hysteria. One more deep breath and I squared my shoulders. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.” His voice had a taut edge, from trying to keep it below the general hum of conversation and the music playing in the background.
“All right. I’m not fine.” Another sip of espresso and I could lift my eyes to his and hold out a steady hand. “But I can drive. Give me my keys.”
His gaze searched mine, and I wondered what he saw there. I had no clue to his thoughts, though his confusion and worry were clear. Finally he relented. “Will you call me when you get home so I know you made it okay?”
“Fine.” Anything to get him to give me the keys. He hesitated a moment longer, then dropped them into my palm. I didn’t wait, but fled the coffee shop like the coward I was.