I gasped in the freezing car, and realized I'd been holding my breath. I was so relieved.
And not. Because at some time in the last five days, I had freaking fallen in love with John After.
Chapter 15
We pulled up at the jail/courthouse/city hall, and he turned off the engine. He didn't make a move to get out. Neither did I.
"Is it 6:01 a.m. Thursday?" I was wearing my watch, but I was more interested in what time he had. He glanced at his watch. "It's 6:05." "Did we miss it?" He laughed.
"So where do we..." I looked around the car, then at him. "You don't want to, do you."
He turned his dark eyes on me. It wasn't the look of love. It wasn't the hard, angry look, either. Damn it, I couldn't read the look.
I knew not to get too close, because it was easier to see what was going on from the outside. I knew this, and I'd gotten too close anyway. I shouldn't have told him what happened four years ago. He thought I was diseased. He knew I was evil. Now I was about to get hurt.
I breathed, "You were alone, on night shift, with a girl, and you were bored."
"Why would I have taken you seriously?" he protested. "You told me you don't plan. I thought you were bored. You'd get in trouble if you didn't show up for work at the diner now, anyway."
He had a point. The diner hadn't occurred to me. That was one problem with not planning. You got in trouble a lot.
"Right." I leaned down and grabbed my notebook from the floor. "Pop the trunk, would you?"
I didn't even slam my door. I managed to close it properly. When he didn't open the trunk right away, I knocked on it politely. It opened. I retrieved my motorcycle helmet, closed the trunk gently, and walked over to slip the notebook into the bag on my motorcycle.
John opened his window and called to me. "You know you're not off the hook until you send the DA your project proposal and tell her what you've learned."
"I e-mailed it to her yesterday from work." I got on my bike.
He leaned a little farther out the window. "You're still not going to give me a hint what it's about?"
"Yeah, John. Here's what I learned by wasting my spring break with the police. I learned that you're a f**king ass**le." I started the engine so I wouldn't hear anything else he said, then put on my helmet. Briefly I considered taking off my helmet, hooking it to my bike, and roaring away. But that would just make him come after me. I didn't want him to come after me. Repeat: I did not want him to come after me. And anyway, I couldn't afford another traffic ticket.
I fastened my helmet and (hen roared away, without looking back.
As if I had the last laugh. The last laugh was definitely his. He had done what he set out to do. He had taught the dead girl a lesson.
*
It felt like the longest shift of my greasy spoon career.
Some days I almost enjoyed parts of working at Eggstra! Eggstra! Cooking. Making up new recipes. Observing the more colorful customers, like the hunters and fishermen out-boasting one another, or the cheating-heart couples using the diner as the starting point for their rendezvous. If given a choice, they always picked the Princess Diana table, like she gave cheating a good name.
Today I didn't enjoy it. I botched orders and burned my finger on the grill. I couldn't concentrate on work with the last five days playing over and over in my mind. Screaming at John outside his car at the bridge. Touching him in his apartment. Kissing him in his car. Watching him walk calmly to his imminent death in the convenience store, while I stayed behind like his worried missus, whipping up a fruit cobbler for him in my mind.
I felt more of a connection with him than I'd ever felt with anyone in my life. Was it possible I had imagined this vibe? Maybe so, I decided as I wiped our table carefully and turned the busts of Elvis toward the wall.
The other days this week, I'd taken a break mid-morning. I'd left Corey in charge of the front and checked my e-mail in the office. Today we were so busy, I didn't get a break until almost two in the afternoon, quitting time. Good news, though. The DA had accepted my bullshit proposal to discourage other errant teens from following in my footsteps. In fact, the city was instituting my proposal today. Suddenly I was a model citizen. Go figure.
John would love my project. Or hate it. And me. Not that I cared anymore.
I switched off the computer and sauntered back into the diner to wait out the few minutes left in my shift by scrubbing chair legs or something else the paid employees didn't bother to do, and—oh, yeah—obsessing about John some more. Would you believe it, a customer had the audacity to walk in just then. I couldn't see his face in the blinding beam of sunlight behind him. But I could tell from the way he walked he was a teenager.
On my way toward him, I grabbed a menu from the stack. I wished I could tell this kid to go to McDonald's, because teenagers didn't tip. But he might cause a hullabaloo that would get back to my parents. I knew this from experience.
When I walked in front of him, where his head and shoulders blocked the sun, I stopped dead. It was John. The sun behind his back made the edges of his blond hair glow like a halo.
I had never seen him look so good. I mean, Officer After was manly. Johnafter the runner was hot. But this boy wore loose jeans and a faded T-shirt that clung to his chest. An Incubus T-shirt, the one with a heart inside a grenade. His hair was short, but not abnormally so. It stuck out in strange places like he'd run his hands through it on the drive over here. Despite the halo, he was a mess.
Exactly as a boy should be.
I looked around for Corey. He could wait on John instead of me. But he must have taken a bathroom break.
Then I glanced out the front windows into the parking lot, on the chance Bonita had pulled up. Usually she was fifteen minutes early for her shift, which was miraculous considering what my parents paid people. No such luck today.
John walked right past me. He slid into our booth, the Elvis table.
I walked toward him and stopped in front of the table, holding the menu awkwardly. At a complete loss for words. For once.
"I don't need a menu," he said.
I was not supposed to be flabbergasted at seeing him. And definitely not ecstatic. I was supposed to be angry with him for blowing me off this morning. I called up some fake anger. "What do you want?"
"The Meg Special." He pinned me to the spot with his dark, sleepy eyes and looked me up and down.
That did make me angry. "We're all out."
"Then why are you still advertising?"
Two could play that game. I slid the menu in front of him and put both hands on the table. Leaning forward so he could see down my shirt, I said low, "I did the crime. I did the time. You got nothing on me, copper."