I See Me (8 page)

Even through the haze that the hallucinations and pills always left behind, he was crazy-beautiful. I’d never seen anyone who looked like him — not even online, say in a romance novel meme or a movie.
 

Instead of crossing my arms protectively across my chest, I deliberately wrapped my hands around the coffee that I had no intention of drinking, but I figured would keep the waitress mollified while I decided whether to order a salad or veggie soup. My shrink had spoken a lot about confidence being rooted in body language … or some other garbage I usually only half listened to. But in this case, after midnight in an empty diner on the edge of I-5 and with no one actually knowing where I was or when to expect me back, I wasn’t interested in looking like some victim.

The guy shifted his feet. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his worn jeans. His navy hoodie was soaking wet. He carried a large, overstuffed backpack slung over one shoulder like it weighed nothing.

The sky had opened up as I was walking to the diner. I’d sourced its location and hours of operation with the ever-helpful TripAdvisor app, after discovering its existence via Google. Despite knowing it was going to rain, I’d left the Brave in the rest stop parking lot. I’d straightened it so it was parked within the lines before I locked up. I didn’t want to draw attention. But I was too far gone in the grip of the clozapine to actually drive. Though I was wishing that I’d thought to buy a bike and strap it to the back of the motorhome.
 

Anyway, I’d walked the entire one-point-two miles to the diner, the last quarter of that distance in the rain. TripAdvisor had asserted that the place was open nightly until 2:00 a.m., and the chalkboard sign in the window confirmed it.

By the raindrops that still glistened from his cheekbones, the guy had gotten caught in the downpour for longer than I had. I felt a terribly weird impulse to pull my sleeves down over my hands and dry the rain from his face. I gripped my mug harder, as if to stop my hands from reaching for him without my permission.

“I … I …” He stumbled over the words. “I thought with the tattoos … and I scented …”

“Are you crazy?” I resisted the urge to tug the sleeves of my hoodie down over my arms for a completely different reason now. “Because I have enough crazy already going on in my head. I don’t need yours.”

He hunched his shoulders as if the rain was still pouring down on him. I felt bad for snapping at him. For dumping my issues at his feet and expecting him to just deal or walk away.

Yeah, I expected him to just walk away now.
 

He didn’t.

“No,” he said. “I’m not crazy.”

I risked a glance at his eyes. They were a startling blue-green — a deep aquamarine. I’d expected them to be brown by his skin tone. He was mixed race then, and more the gorgeous for it. Not that I could say the same … for some reason, whatever-kind-of-Asian-I-was mixed with whatever-kind-of-Caucasian-I-was didn’t come with the prettiest-bits-of-both-races results.

I returned my gaze to my coffee.

Silence stretched between us, but again he didn’t leave. I could actually hear water dripping off him. He was probably creating a pool at his feet. The waitress would come back from the kitchen and have a mess to mop up.

“Can I buy you a piece of pie?” he asked.

“Can you afford it?”

“Just.”

I nodded. I still needed to eat after all. “I like apple.”

“With ice cream?”

“No.”

He stepped to the long counter that divided the seating area from the kitchen, leaned past the powder-blue vinyl-topped stools bolted there, and called into the back through the half-open swing doors. “Um, hello?”

The waitress had served me coffee with minimal chatter immediately after I sat down. I appreciated the brief interaction, even though I’d come to the diner seeking human contact. She’d returned to texting and chatting quietly to whoever was in the kitchen. She was about the same age as me. I guess the graveyard shift fell to the youngest employee.
 

“Two pieces of apple pie, please,” he called. “One with ice cream.”

I heard her sigh. Then she poked her head out through the swing doors and saw him. She missed her apron pocket and dropped her phone on the floor instead. Yeah, even soaking wet and — judging by his worn clothing — downtrodden, he was that beautiful.

“Pie?” he asked again.

The waitress glanced toward me, still dumbstruck, and then nodded. I could feel her disbelief from where I sat, but she didn’t hold my interest for more than a second.

I studied him while his back was turned. He was wearing black-and-white Converse runners that looked vaguely new.
 
His hair was clipped short against his head. I wondered if it would be curly if it was longer. It was even darker than mine, and I dyed mine as black as I could get it. His accent was southern-U.S. of some kind, but I didn’t know the distinct differences. He was in his early twenties at the most.

He turned back to the booth so quickly that he caught me looking at him.

I didn’t look away this time. I’d said the thing about being crazy and he hadn’t laughed like I was joking. He also hadn’t walked away.

He smiled at me. Not at the waitress, who was scrambling on the floor for her phone now. It was an easygoing, playful smile. My stomach … squirmed … or flipped … curled. I’d never felt anything like it.

“Sit then,” I said, more gruffly than I’d intended. But then I was covering for whatever was going on with my silly stomach.

He slid into the booth across from me, filling the other side as much as two smaller people would have.

I slid my coffee mug across the width of gray-speckled table. He pulled his hands out of his hoodie pockets, swallowed the mug with them, and lifted the still-warm coffee to his mouth.

He looked like he could crush the ceramic mug without even trying. But then maybe he’d be sorry about breaking it afterward.

He scared me stupid — stupid enough to offer him a seat and accept the pie.

“You’ve been walking … in the rain,” I said, aware I sounded like an idiot stating the utterly banal.

He nodded. “Couple of hours. Since the last Greyhound stop.”

I figured the bus ran anywhere and everywhere, as long as you were willing to wait for the next one. The only reason to get off and keep walking was because you’d run out of money. But I didn’t mention it. That was his business, not mine.

He started to pass the coffee back across the table, but I shook my head. “I don’t drink it.”

He smiled. His teeth were startling white against his mocha skin. “Just needed a reason to sit, huh?”

I shrugged. No need to explain I was cold. Cold in a way that made it seem I’d never be warm. Cold in my core, and afraid that if I stayed alone, I’d sleep. Sleeping directly after an episode was one thing. But waking and then sleeping again meant the hallucinations would haunt my dreams in a more visceral way.

The waitress dropped off two pieces of pie and two forks. She put the one with the ice cream in front of me, then lingered to fill my coffee mug, which was now in front of him. She deliberately placed her hand next to his as she leaned on the table. Her nails were lacquered carnation pink.
 

He didn’t take his eyes off me, nor did he lose the easy grin.

I didn’t look away from him either.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“Yeah, okay,” the waitress said, her tone tinged with disappointment. She wandered back to set the coffee pot in the machine.

He reached over and switched the plates.

“Warm,” he said, pleased.

He took a bite, making sure to spear both ice cream and pie on his fork. Then he said, “I’m Beau.”

“Rochelle.”
 

I took a bite of the pie. It was warm. It was also too sweet and the crust was tough, but I could taste the apple. Apples always made me feel better somehow. More grounded.

“Is that French?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “Well, I’m not anyway.”

“My sister’s name is French,” he said as he took another bite. He was going to finish his entire piece in three huge mouthfuls. “Claudette. But she’s not, you know, like me.”

I had no idea what he meant. Maybe that his sister wasn’t mixed race?

“Isn’t your name French? Beau?” I realized what I was saying before I said it, but continued despite my embarrassment. “As in, good looking?”

He looked up at me without answering. I felt like I was missing something in his ‘not like me’ comment. I had no idea what it could be, though — or why it would hang between us so tangibly.

His gaze fell to my piece of pie, or maybe to my hands. I didn’t fiddle with my fork. He unnerved me, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant.

“No,” he said, with a definite shake of his head.

I’d forgotten what we were talking about.

Then he reached across the table and — barely touching me — turned my left hand over until the back rested on the table. With a touch so light that I felt only the shiver of its passing, he brushed his fingers across the black butterfly I had tattooed on the inside of my wrist.

“Rochelle,” he murmured. “Who are you?”

My stomach flipped again. This time the feeling was accompanied by a rush of what was unmistakably desire. This was a thing I had heard many a teenaged roommate gush about … endlessly. Though I’d never experienced the feeling myself, not even during my previous, brief sexual encounters.

I stared at the tattooed butterfly as he withdrew his hand. I was suddenly very pleased that I had chosen to keep it free of the barbed wire, which also started at my wrist and wound up my arm.

“You got somewhere to stay?” he asked.

“Always,” I answered, glad my voice wasn’t as shaky as my insides.

I took a second bite of my pie, already knowing I was going to invite him back to the Brave.

“Good,” he said, and he meant it for me rather than himself. As if he was glad I wasn’t living on the street, even though he’d only just met me.

“And you?” I asked. “Got somewhere to stay?”

“Never.” He answered without concern, or sadness, or self-pity.

“That works,” I said, not really knowing what I meant.

“Yep,” he answered. Then he finished his pie.

∞

“There should be lights,” I said as I stumbled up the two steps into the Brave. “Somewhere in here.”

We’d walked back to the rest stop parking lot without really discussing it, without Beau even asking where we were going. It had stopped raining by the time the waitress informed us that the diner was closing. I probably should have been concerned about bringing a stranger back to the Brave — especially a man of Beau’s size — but I wasn’t. I knew a predator when I saw one. Unfortunately, most foster kids were pretty savvy that way, pretty early on.

“I can see,” he murmured behind me.

It was seriously pitch black in the interior of the motorhome, even with the exterior lights still illuminating the public washrooms behind us. Completely blind, I reached for the countertop I was fairly certain was a couple of steps off to the side. I stumbled over some of the clothing I’d left in the middle of the kitchen-area floor.

Beau grabbed me by the elbow, so that I only listed deeply to one side rather than doing the face plant I’d thought was coming my way. As soon as I had my footing, he let me go.

I hunkered down, still blind, and started gathering the items strewn across the floor and shoving them back into my suitcase underneath the kitchen table.

“You don’t have to do that for me,” he said.
 

“I’m not.”

Even without being able to see him, I could feel how he completely filled the darkness behind me. Knowing that the interior height was approximately six-foot-five, I guessed that Beau could just stand up straight inside, maybe with a couple of inches clearance. Yes, I’d practically memorized the owner’s manual while waiting to buy the Brave.

I heard him close and lock the exterior door. “You can park here overnight?”

“Yeah, but there’s no water hookup or electricity, so I’m running off storage tanks and the battery.”

A light flared behind me. He’d found a large flashlight somewhere, though how he’d seen it in the dark, I didn’t know.

“Cool,” he said, looking around with the light. “I’d like to check the engine for you tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah,” I said, straightening up after wrestling the suitcase back underneath the table. “You think you’re staying until morning, hey?”

A slow grin spread across his face. “I’m not going anywhere until you kick me out,” he said. “I think you’ll find me useful.”

“Can you cook?”

He laughed, low and deep. A curl of desire ignited in my belly. Again, though I’d never felt such a thing before, it was unmistakable.

“I can.”
 

He set the still-lit flashlight on the counter, facing upward so it illuminated the ceiling. Then he dropped his backpack on the bench seat of the dinette and took a short, deliberate step toward me. “I can drive. I can fix the engine. I get paid well to fix engines, actually. I can carry heavy things for you.”

“I don’t really keep many heavy things around,” I said, aware that this was the beginning of some sort of mating dance and relishing every minute of it. What someone who looked like him was doing in my RV, I had no idea. But I also felt no need to question it. Not right now, at least.

“You don’t,” Beau said with another measured step and another glance around. He was now only about two feet away from me, standing in front of the flashlight. Even though its light was directed at the ceiling, he was so big that he actually blocked it. “You’ve just moved in?”

“Yeah,” I answered, really unable to say or think anything of substance anymore.

He reached over, and with a touch as light as he’d used in the diner, he brushed his fingers across my cheek. He tucked my hair behind my ear, feathered his fingers over the side of my head, and then caressed down my neck and across my collarbone.

I shivered, swaying slightly toward him.

 
He dropped his hand off the edge of my shoulder. He didn’t move closer.