Serious Moonlight(25)

The server gave him a long-suffering sigh before looking toward me. Could she tell I was mortified? Did she know what we did last month? “I swear I know you from somewhere else,” she said, squinting at my face. “Oh, wait. Have I seen you in here talking to Ms. Patty?”

I nodded. “I grew up in one of the apartments upstairs. She babysat me a lot.”

“Oh,” the server said. “You’re the kid. Dovie.”

“Birdie.”

“Sorry about your mom. Ms. Patty said she was like a daughter.”

“Thanks,” I said. Condolences made me uncomfortable, so I blindly stared at the menu and ordered without thinking. I was relieved when she left.

“Thanks for covering,” I mumbled to Daniel.

“It’s fine,” Daniel reassured me. “You okay? You sort of clammed up when she brought up your mother.”

“I guess I just get tired of everyone feeling sorry for me. Death is sort of personal. Talking about it so casually with strangers, like, you know—hey, it’s a scorcher out there, and by the way, sorry to hear about that person dying—it can be . . . exhausting.”

“Totally get that.”

“And, you know, it’s been ten years since my mom died, and I feel like it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does sometimes.”

“But your grandmother died how long ago? Six months?”

“Give or take. I should be a pro at condolences by now, huh?” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“I don’t think anyone masters them,” he said with a soft smile that was strangely comforting. “And they’re always given with a touch of pity, which is the worst.”

I nodded, a little surprised he got it. Then I remembered the social media account matching his name online, and the one-line bio that accompanied it, Stop asking if I’m okay. Maybe it was more than just generic teenage angst. I hesitated and then asked, “Has someone close to you . . . ?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I just hate people feeling sorry for me. It makes me feel weak.”

Oh. I guess he was talking about his ear, but he didn’t seem to want to keep talking about it, so I just nodded and gazed out the rain-spattered window. Moving headlights created blurry trails up and down the street.

“I wasn’t running an errand.”

I flicked my eyes toward Daniel. “Excuse me?”

“I lied,” he said, rearranging his silverware. “I came all the way up here to see you. Not in a stalker way. I just . . . I don’t know. I don’t know,” he repeated.

“Oh,” I said stupidly. Part of me was panicked and thinking: Does he want to have the Talk? He agreed it would be weird to talk about it here. Yet I was also thinking: He came here on his day off to see me? And a dozen heart-shaped bubbles filled my head. Maybe he just wanted to talk about Raymond Darke. If so, why was he acting so flustered?

And now that was exactly how I felt. So I just asked, “Where do you live?”

He crossed his arms and rested them on the edge of the table, leaning forward. “A couple of blocks from Alki Beach in West Seattle. I grew up across town, just east of the International District. Graduated from Garfield last year.”

“That’s a big high school.” Their football team was always on the local news. Jimi Hendrix went there. And Quincy Jones. If my mother had never died, and we’d continued to live in this building, it would have been my high school.

“Did you like it?”

He shrugged. “It was fine. I liked our old neighborhood. A lot of my cousins lived there. But we left after graduation, when my mom decided to move into the Nest.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

He groaned. “Cohousing. It’s, like, this entire block of private land with twenty families. They each live in separate houses or condos, but there’s a common house in the center, and that’s where all the residents meet and make decisions. It’s some Danish concept from the 1970s. A lot of old hippies live there, but they’re trying to be ‘diverse’?”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“so that’s why my family got chosen for a house. We’re the token non-white family. Yay,” he said without enthusiasm, raising his fist.

“That’s . . . interesting? I mean, the housing concept.”

“It’s cool when you want a free meal in the common house. It’s not cool when you want to crank up music and chill, because one of the crotchety community elders will come over and tell you to turn it down, sonny boy!” he said in a cartoonish old-man voice. “And then you’ll be shamed in the monthly residents’ meeting. But whatever. It’s fine. I save money. I just have to listen to my mom trying to get me to go to fake school.”

“What’s fake school?”

“I’m not built for college. It’s a boring story.” He gave me a dismissive shrug and sighed. “Anyway, I just wish Alki Beach wasn’t so far from work.”

“I can see it from my house.”

“You can?”

“On clear days,” I amended. “I can just make out the lighthouse on Alki Point.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

He laughed. “I love how prim and proper you sound when you swear. It’s adorable. So, if I stand by the lighthouse and wave, you could see me?”