“Lori!” I shushed her, my cheeks heating up.
“I’m just saying. You’re working three jobs to pay for a house that you need to fix up anyway, in order to prove that you can be an independent woman. You could fix up the house and live with Dan, you know.”
“The house isn’t that much of a fixer-upper,” I argued.
“Aly.” She moaned, slapping her hand against her face. “The last time I came over to share a bottle of wine, I used your bathroom and I didn’t close the door when I used it. You know why? Because there wasn’t a bathroom door.”
I laughed. “Okay. I get it. So it’s a fixer-upper. But, I like the challenge.”
“Hm. You must be a really good lay for Dan to stick around the way he does.”
“What? Dan and I haven’t slept together.”
“Seriously?” she exclaimed. “You mean he’s drooling over you, and you two have never done the deed?”
“Never.”
“But… That smile!”
I giggled. “I know. But he’s a good friend. I have a big rule for my relationships, and it includes never dating any of my friends. Ever.” I’d been down that road before, and was never planning to travel down it again. To this day I still thought about Logan and mourned the friendship I loved and lost.
We would’ve been better off never falling in love.
“You know, Charles and I were best friends before we decided to date. He was the love of my life, and no one has ever compared. He used to make me laugh so hard, before I even knew what love was. Some of the best things in life come from the strongest kinds of friendships,” Lori explained. Her head lowered, and she gripped the locket hanging from her necklace, which held their wedding photo inside of it. “Boy, oh boy, do I miss that man madly.” She hardly ever spoke about Charles, her late husband. But whenever she did, there was a twinkle in her eyes as if her mind was traveling back to the day she first fell in love with him.
Our boss told us to stop chatting so much and get back to work, which we did. We were always busy in the mornings, serving more people than seemed humanly possible, but the busier we were, the less time I had to think about things.
“Are you good on coffee?” I asked a woman sitting near the window. I held the coffee pot in my grip as I made my way around to all my tables for refills.
“Yeah, I’m good. Thank you.”
I smiled wide, and when I glanced up out of the window, my heart caught in my chest. My fingers landed against the glass, trying to reach out and touch the figure across the way. When I blinked once more, what I thought I saw was gone. A shiver ran down my spine, and I stood up straight.
Lori glanced up in my direction. “You okay, Alyssa? You look like you saw a—
“Ghost?” I said, finishing her sentence.
“Exactly.” She came over and looked out the window. “What is it?”
A ghost.
“Nothing. It was nothing,” I said, taking my coffee pot to the next table.
It was my imagination, that’s all.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Chapter Sixteen
Logan
My stare was trained on Alyssa as she walked around the diner, helping customers. I sat in a back corner, unable to be seen from her location. I shouldn’t be here. My mind knew all of the reasons I shouldn’t have walked into the diner that day, but my heart felt a tug in her direction.
She still smiled the same. That made me happy and sad all at once. How many smiles had I missed? Who did she smile for nowadays?
“Here’s your omelet,” my waitress said sitting the plate in front of me. Her face was somewhat pale, and sweat was dripping at her forehead. She rocked back and forth, trying to force a smile. “Anything else I can get you?” she questioned.
“Orange juice would be great,” I said.
She nodded in reply, walking away.
I picked up the salt shaker and started to add some to my omelet. A loud chuckle escaped the diner, and I took a deep breath. Alyssa’s laugh. It hadn’t changed. I shut my eyes, feeling my chest tighten. Memories flooded me like a hurricane, knocking me backwards as I envisioned all of the times I laid beside her, listening to her laugh ripple through my soul.
“If you wanted a plate of salt with an omelet on the side, you could’ve just asked,” a voice offered, snapping my mind from the past. My stare fell to the omelet that I’d been mindlessly shaking salt onto for the past five minutes.
“Sorry,” I muttered, placing the salt shaker onto the table.
“No need to be sorry. We all have our preferences,” the voice promised. “Anyway, the wait staff is being hammered, Jenny was just sent home with the flu, and I was ordered to bring you an orange juice and take over your table.”
My eyes moved to the girl speaking. She had full, rose-colored lips and blue eyes that were more than familiar to me; they were the one thing amazing about that town. Those eyes had a talent of being able to smile all on their own. Her blonde hair was straight, and she had bangs that fell over her eyebrows.
Neither of us had spoken a word.
She kept staring.
I wouldn’t look away.
Alyssa.
High.
My greatest High.
She looked beautiful, but that wasn’t surprising. There wasn’t one day I remembered where she wasn’t beautiful. Even on the days where I was too far gone to open my eyes, I remembered the beauty of her soft words begging me to come back to her, to keep breathing.
“Logan,” she whispered, placing the glass of orange juice onto the table. I stood up from my chair as she stepped forward toward me. At first I thought she was going to hug me, embrace me, forgive me for being me and never returning her calls. But in reality, she wasn’t going to hug me. Her palm was open, and I knew right when I saw it, she was going to slap me. Hard. Whenever Alyssa did anything, she did it with full force, nothing was ever half-assed.
Her arm rose, came at me swift, and I was ready for the sting that I deserved. I closed my eyes in anticipation, but I never felt her touch. God, how I wanted to feel her touch. Opening my eyes, I watched her shaky hand hovering in the air, centimeters from my cheek. Our eyes locked and I saw the tears burning in the back of her eyes, the confusion, the heartbreak.
“Hi, Alyssa,” I softly spoke. She cringed and closed her eyes. Her hand stayed in the air and I took it in my own, laying her fingers against my cheek. A small whimper of pain escaped her lips as her skin laid against mine. I pulled her closer into a hug, and it felt just like yesterday. Her skin was so cold, like always, and my body heated hers up. Her fingers moved from my cheek, and she wrapped both arms around my neck, holding onto me as if she forgave me for all of the missed calls and silence.