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“Umm. Yeah? I remember you,” I tell him, forgoing any kind of polite greeting. “From San Diego.”
His mouth twists into a half-smile, and he runs a hand through his light auburn hair, gray eyes sparkling in a face that’s sweeter than it is sexy. His mouth looks like it’s made for smiling, and his eyes dance with easy amusement at the situation.
“Yeah,” he agrees, tucking his hands into his pockets and dipping his head. His voice is light and soft like he might struggle to yell or be heard over other conversations. It suits him, though.
And reminds me terribly of Isaac, my friend from middle school with a shitty home life and an aversion to conversation.ThatIsaac never would’ve walked up to a stranger and initiated conversation first. My Isaac was too shy, too nervous, to do anything like that.
He was much more likely to take my hand and let me tow him to wherever we needed to go.
My palm itches at the thought, and I push Isaac out of my head. I hate that I’ve been thinking about him so much lately, and that’s only because I can’t imagine the rest of his childhood wasgood.
At the very least, I hope my old friend is still alive.
“Are you okay?” The doppelgänger in front of me tilts his head to the side like a confused, concerned puppy and his gray eyes widen a little. “You look kind of sad. Not what you were expecting to get in the mail?”
“What? Oh…” I trail off and pull my hands free from the box, sighing as I see the mess I’ve made. “Great. My boss is going to kill me if she sees this.”
“She won’t see,” the man promises, assuring me with kind words as he bends down and starts picking up packing peanuts to deposit them back into the box.
I help, scrambling to get all of the ones on my side of the counter and on the counter itself so that the man doesn’t have to.
As I go to toss the last of mine back into the box, my hand brushes his, and I let my gaze find his.
God, he’sso similarto the Isaac I remember. But he would remember me if he was. Right? I’d asked in San Diego, and this handsome stranger had assured me we’d never met before.
“Are you looking for a book in particular? Do I have an order for you to pick up?” I ask, shoving the box to the side.
“Hmmm.” The stranger reaches out and picks up the newspaper article, making me cringe. I definitely should’ve hidden that already. It belongs at the bottom of the box, and I don’t need this guy thinking I have some weird obsession with murders in San Diego.
“This was on the news yesterday. Evenhere,” he tells me, handing me the paper once he’s skimmed it. “Must be a big deal if it’s being shown all the way out in our city, huh?”
“Yeah, I…” I trail off and blink owlishly. “Youlive here?”
He inclines his head in a nod, his smile fading a little.
“But I met you in San Diego. Remember?”
“I do remember,” he agrees easily. “At the gaming convention there. Kind of hard to forget since it’s not exactly my thing, and I wasdragged thereby my friends.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting. He doesn’t deny it and gives me a plausible reason forwhyhe was there. Is it so strange that we live in the same place? Kind of, I suppose. But it’s not like he just magically appeared in San Diego. Of course, he has a home.
It just happens to be near mine.
“You just…” I lick my lips and continue, though when I realize I’m drawing my hand over the scars on my tattooed wrist, I give myself a mental slap and force myself to stop doingthatimmediately. Now is not the time. “It’s still so weird to me how much you look like someone I used to know,” I admit, leaning my palms on the counter between us.
“Good weird, or bad weird?” He asks, looking more interested in the conversation than he had a moment ago.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I miss him. He was a good friend of mine, and I hope he felt the same about me. But I worry about what happened to him.”
“Why?”
“Because his parents weren’t great.” It feels weird to talk about Isaac like this. Or talk about himat all, really. I haven’t since I was younger. I’ve tried not to think about him anymore because all of my thoughts go to the same place, and I’m working onnotbeing so depressed when I think of things like this.
But it’shardto think about Isaac without the impending cloud of what probably happened to him after his parents took him…somewhere else.
My fingers drum on the wood of the counter, and when I blink, I realize he’sstill staring at me.
This is awkward.
