Beautifully Cruel

4

From the warmth of the back seat of the Escalade, I stare through the window. Across the boulevard, beyond the rain and lanes of passing cars, the bright lights of Buddy’s Diner shine out like beacons in the dark. She’s there inside, talking to her co-worker the busty brunette, making her look like a pigeon standing next to a Picasso.

Tru.

The girl named after a character in a movie.

The shy beauty with the gentle Southern twang, eyes the color of sea glass, and a smile that could almost make a man like me believe in god.

“We’re late, boss,” says Declan quietly from the driver’s seat.

“I know it.”

If my voice is irritated, it’s only because I’m mad at myself, not him.

Eleven months of denying myself something I want very badly has taken its toll on my temper.

I watch for a moment longer, wishing I had the talent to draw. I’d sketch her face a thousand ways. Try to capture the softness in her eyes when she looks up at me from under those long, dark lashes. The flash of heat as her gaze drifts to my mouth.

But my hands were made for things much more brutal than drawing pictures of a bashful, beautiful girl.

Do the right thing, Liam. Stay away from her. It’s a stupid coincidence that you both come from big families and like pistachio ice cream. It doesn’t mean anything that she likes wild places, too, and grew up in a tiny town, too, and looks at you like you’re the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen.

She’s not for you.

Your life would devour her and leave nothing but bones.

I tear my gaze away from the window, drag my hand through my hair, and tell Declan to drive, and be quick about it.

The sooner I get away from here, the better.

3

TRU

B

y the time I get home from work, it’s after one a.m., it’s raining harder than it was earlier, and I’m in such a state about what might happen when—if?—the wolf comes into the diner on my next shift that I need to pour myself a glass of wine to calm down.

Leaning against the kitchen counter and staring out into the rain, I picture him.

He’s everything I’m not. Sophisticated. Interesting. Self-assured.

Older. Ten years at least, maybe fifteen.

I suppose it should strike me as odd that someone like him might take an interest in someone like me, but I get the feeling he’s the kind of man who notices things other people don’t.

He doesn’t just look. He sees.

Maybe what he sees when he looks at me are the things I try so hard to hide from everyone else. All my restlessness and dark longings, all the chafing at my seams.

Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

I’m finishing off my last swallow of cheap chardonnay when I hear the muffled sound of crying.

“Oh, sweetie,” I say to the empty kitchen, sighing. “What did he do this time?”

Leaving the wine glass on the counter, I pad barefoot across the apartment and knock gently on my roommate’s door. “Hey, Elliebellie. You need anything?”

There’s some sniffling, then the sound of Ellie shuffling toward the door.

Opening up, she rubs a fist into a red and swollen eye. Her short black hair sticks up crazily all over the place. Her room smells like dirty socks and lost dreams. “I’m f-f-fine,” she says, hiccupping. “I was just watching A Dog’s Purpose. That f*****g movie should have a trigger warning.”

“I’ve never seen it. What’s it about?”

“It’s about this dog who keeps dying and getting reincarnated with all its memories of its previous lives and is trying over and over to find life’s purpose, until finally he’s reunited with his original owner who was a little boy when the dog was euthanized in his first incarnation, but now the boy is an old man, and at the end the dog narrates that the true meaning of life is finding that one person you’re supposed to be with.

“How awful is that?” she wails. “Even a fictional dog can find true love!”

Ellie recently went through a bad breakup with her ex. It was their fourth—or tenth, I can’t keep track. Every time they break up, she swears she’s done with him. But within weeks they’re back together and she’s conveniently forgotten all the ways he hurt her before. All the indifference, all the lies, all the other girls he’d been running around with.

I’ll never understand it.

When my ex cheated on me six months after we moved to Boston together, I threw all his clothes into a big pile in the middle of the sidewalk and lit the pile on fire.

I might be an introvert, but I’ve got a temper, and I hold a grudge like nobody’s business.

But, as Ellie’s friend, it’s not my job to judge. “You want some ice cream? I picked up a pint on the way home.”

“You’re sweet,” she says mournfully. “But I think I’m just gonna watch a rerun of Seinfeld and rub one out.”

I grimace. “Thank you for over sharing. I’m scarred for life.”

“Anyway, g’night.”

She closes the door. I head straight for my own room before I can hear any battery-operated devices roar to life and lock myself in for the night.

It’s raining again the next day, dumping on me as I run from my last class to the parking structure. My head stays dry, but that’s about it. From the waist down, I’m soaked.

I throw the umbrella onto the back seat of my beat up Corolla, set my laptop and books on the passenger seat, dig my keys from my purse, and start the car. Though it’s May, spring in Boston is unpredictable. There’s been a nasty cold snap recently. I’m freezing my ass off, shivering like mad. The air conditioner never worked, but luckily the heater’s a champ, blowing warm air onto my icy cheeks after only a few minutes.