Page 12 of The Perfect Heart

Nash

I LEANED MY CHAIR BACK, barely avoiding tipping it over. If I leaned at just the right angle, I could see from my office through the archway into the front of the house. I couldn’t see the bar behind the wall, but I could see Nicole taking orders at a table and knew Joseph was pouring the beer and making drinks.

Wednesdays were our quietest nights, and I usually only needed three people to run the place—someone to run the bar, someone to run the food, and someone to cook. Which meant I was extra and had been using the chance to catch up on paperwork and put in a few orders.

But instead of catching up, I had spent the time thinking about Halle, wondering what she was doing, missing seeing her around the bar, and wondering what the hell had happened to her. She had been in town for nearly two weeks now and was settling in, from what I could see. But her gaze still shifted to dark corners, and she startled easily. And it was hard not to notice how she ran to her door, taking the steps like a hurtling track star.

That wasn’t normal. At least not for a twenty-six-year-old woman.

I finally pulled my phone from my desk and tapped my way to our text conversation, spelling out, Do you want to go to dinner tonight? Catch up?

It was a simple ask, but not as simple as it seemed. I wanted to catch up with Halle, but I also wanted to check on her. Too many things weren’t adding up. Especially because today, catching up on paperwork, I had noticed that she hadn’t cashed a single paycheck I’d given her in the past two weeks. Was she only relying on tips to get her by?

Yes, I wanted to catch up, but maybe if I could get her to relax, take her to an environment where she wasn’t looking over her shoulder, I could get her to open up about what was happening.

There was a time when Halle would have opened up to me in a heartbeat. I would have been the first one she called. Not even called—she would have been at my doorstep, using the key my parents had given her to get into the house, up to my room, to collapse onto my bed in tears, or distress, or with a dramatic sigh. Whatever the moment called for.

But that had been years ago.

She had moved to LA, and we had lost contact. I had bought my bar and built myself a good life. A peaceful life. A life I loved, and I had imagined Halle doing the same.

Except now she was back, and that was clearly not what had happened.

Did I want to know? Of course. But more than anything, I wanted to make sure she was okay.

The answer came back a few minutes later, a cheerful Sure! from Halle in text form.

I told her I would pick her up at seven, giving me enough time to finish this paperwork and head out. Freshen up. Put on something other than the old sweatshirt I’d worn to do the paperwork, knowing I wouldn’t be showing my face to customers today.

Although maybe Halle would get a kick out of the sweatshirt I wore, merchandise from an obscure indie band we had snuck out to see, driving all the way to Seattle to attend their concert without our parents knowing. Or so we thought. We had both been grounded for two weeks for that stunt.

Leaning back, I let my head fall over the headrest to look at the ceiling, aged, dusty, stained, thoughts and memories circling each other.

Life in a small town wasn’t always exciting. Most of the time, you had to make your own fun, and Halle and I had done just that. She had lived in Leavenworth her whole life, but when my parents had moved us here from Seattle in middle school, the culture shock had been real. I’d gone from a big, busy city with a million things to do all the time to a town with one main street. To make it worse, I had been a shy kid who had left all his friends behind and wasn’t sure how to make new ones. My first summer in Leavenworth had been one of the worst and most boring of my life.

But then Halle had found me in her typical way, striking up a conversation in a class we shared as though we had known each other for years. I wasn’t even sure what she had seen in me, a quiet, skinny kid starting to get acne with a wild pile of curls. But we had been inseparable by the time we got to high school.

No one would have blamed me when I thought it would last forever, even after school. But it had, falling apart to the point that I hadn’t even gotten an invitation to her wedding. And if I was honest, that hurt—it had hurt a lot. It had taken me time to get over that one, and I still had lingering questions, if not a thread of injury, a wound never entirely scarred over.

And now a new mystery—what was going on with Halle? What had happened to her in LA that she had returned a frightened shadow of herself? The time had passed when we would tell each other everything. That much was clear. But I was too concerned to let it go. I had to get the story from her one way or another.

Hopefully, Italian food would help.

When I picked Halle up, she was wearing a new dress over leggings. Well, it wasn’t new. I could see the place she had covered with a patch, and the jewel blue was slightly faded. But it didn’t matter because Halle looked stunning. Leave it to her to turn a used find into something she could wear out. She’d always been talented at that kind of thing, dragging me through the thrift store here or in Wenatchee until she had found exactly what she was searching for.

Although I had the feeling she had been to the thrift store this time not to find a new outfit but because she didn’t have a choice. I hadn’t failed to notice how she’d worn the same clothing a little too often.

“Is this new?” Halle asked, looking up at the sign as I pulled open the door and motioned her through.

“It opened a couple of years ago.”

The scent of garlic and onions greeted us as we stopped at the hostess stand, and the teenager working there greeted us with a smile and hello before taking us to a table by the window. I picked up the menu to scan it.

“I haven’t been here yet, but I heard they serve the best pasta in town.”

My mouth was already watering reading the dishes—I hadn’t realized how hungry I was or remembered that I had forgotten to eat lunch. But when I glanced up, I could see that line had formed between Halle’s eyes, her lips pressed together as she, too, took in the menu.

“Halle?”