A Flicker in the Dark(8)

“Well, mission accomplished. How’s the family?”

“They’re good,” Shannon says, twirling the ring on her finger. “Bill is in the kitchen getting a refill. And Riley…”

She scans the room, her eyes flickering past the sea of bodies bobbing together like waves. She seems to find who she’s looking for and smiles, shakes her head.

“Riley is in the corner, on her phone. Shocking.”

I turn around and see a teenaged girl slumped in a chair, tapping furiously at her iPhone. She’s wearing a short red sundress and white sneakers, her hair a mousey brown. She looks incredibly bored, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Well, she is fifteen,” Daniel says. I glance to my side and Daniel is standing there, smiling. He slides up to me and snakes his arm around my waist, kissing my forehead. I’ve always marveled at the way he glides into every conversation with such ease, dropping a perfectly placed line as if he’d been standing there all along.

“Tell me about it,” Shannon says. “She’s grounded at the moment, hence the reason why we dragged her along. She’s not too happy with us, forcing her to hang out with a bunch of old people.”

I smile, my eyes still glued to the girl, to the way she twirls her hair absentmindedly around her finger, the way she chews on the side of her lip as she analyzes whatever text just appeared on her phone.

“What’s she grounded for?”

“Sneaking out,” Shannon says, rolling her eyes. “We found her climbing out of her bedroom window at midnight. She did the whole rope-made-out-of-bedsheets thing, like you see in the freakin’ movies. Lucky she didn’t break her neck.”

I laugh again, clasping my hand to my open mouth.

“I swear, when Bill and I were dating and he told me he had a ten-year-old girl, I didn’t think much of it,” Shannon says, her voice low, staring at her stepdaughter. “Honestly, I thought I lucked out. A kid-on-demand, skipping right through the whole dirty-diaper-screaming-at-all-hours-of-the-night part. She was such a sweetheart. But it is amazing how the second they become teenagers, it all changes. They turn into monsters.”

“It won’t be like this for long,” Daniel says, smiling. “One day, they’ll just be distant memories.”

“God, I hope.” Shannon laughs, taking another swig of her wine. “He really is an angel, you know.”

She’s speaking to me now, but she motions to Daniel, tapping him on the chest.

“Planning this whole thing. You wouldn’t believe the time it took him to get everyone together in one place.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I don’t deserve him.”

“Good thing you didn’t quit a week earlier, huh?”

She nudges me and I smile, the memory of our first meeting as sharp as ever. It was one of those chance encounters that could have easily meant nothing. Bumping into an exposed shoulder on the bus, muttering a simple excuse me before parting ways. Borrowing a pen from the man at the bar when yours runs dry, or running a wallet left in the bottom of a shopping cart to the car outside before it drives away. Most of the time, these meetings lead to nothing more than a smile, a thank-you.

But sometimes, they lead to something. Or maybe even everything.

Daniel and I had met at Baton Rouge General Hospital; he was walking in, I was walking out. More like staggering out, really, the weight of the contents of my office threatening to tear through the bottom of a cardboard box. I would have walked right past him, the box obscuring my vision, my eyes downcast as I followed my own footsteps to the front door. I would have walked right past him had I not heard his voice.

“Do you need a hand?”

“No, no,” I said, shifting the weight from one arm to the other, not even bothering to stop. The automatic door was a yard away, less. My car was idling outside. “I got it.”

“Here, let me help you.”

I heard footsteps running behind me; felt the weight lifted slightly as his arm snaked between mine.

“Good God,” he grunted. “What do you have in here?”

“Books, mostly.” I pushed a strand of sweaty hair from my forehead as he lifted the box from my grip. And that was the first glimpse I got of his face—blonde hair and lashes to match, teeth that were the product of expensive adolescent orthodontia and maybe a bleaching treatment or two. I could see his biceps bulging through his light blue button-up as he hoisted my life into the air and balanced it on his shoulder.

“You get fired?”

My neck snapped in his direction; I opened my mouth, ready to set him straight, until he glanced my way and I saw his expression. His tender eyes, the way they seemed to soften as he took in my face, scanning his way from top to bottom. He stared at me as though he were staring at an old friend, his pupils flickering over my skin, searching for a trace of familiarity in my features. His lips curled into a knowing grin.

“I’m just kidding,” he said, turning his attention back to the box. “You look too happy to have been fired. Besides, wouldn’t there be some guards escorting you out by the armpits before throwing you down on the pavement? Isn’t that how it works?”

I smiled, let out a laugh. We were in the parking lot then, and he placed the box on the roof of my car before crossing his arms and turning toward me.

“I quit,” I said, the words settling over me with a finality that, for a second, almost made me burst into tears. Baton Rouge General had been my first job; my only job. My coworker, Shannon, had become my closest friend. “Today was my last day.”