The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(38)

“How’s business these days? I imagine it might be tough for a high-end place.”

“We’re hanging in there.”

She nodded and took a sip of her beer.

He took a long hit off his beer. “Okay, listen,” he said, putting his beer down. “I gotta tell you something.”

She put her arms on the table and leaned in to hear what he had to say.

“I’ll just say it. I did some time in a federal penitentiary. Just got out. The part about me being an assistant manager, that’s true. But I’m just starting there.”

“Okay,” she said, working it over in her head. “You get out of prison and you go right to one of the top restaurants in town?”

“The conviction was overturned.”

“Oh!” she said, her face brightening. “You see that in the paper, somebody going to jail for something they didn’t do. Finally getting out years later.”

“It’s prison, not jail. But, yeah.”

“Prison, jail—what’s the difference?”

“The amount of time you’re there,” he said.

“How long was it?”

“Five years.”

“You’re telling me you did five years for a crime you didn’t commit? Are they gonna make that right? Pay you something?”

“No.”

“They should,” she said. “You lost five years of your life. They have to do something about that.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“What did they say you were guilty of?”

He hesitated.

“A robbery.”

“They thought you were there,” she said. “A case of mistaken identity.”

“Something like that.”

“It must have killed you going away like that for something you didn’t do. I can’t even imagine.”

“You do the time every day,” he said. “Or the time does you.”

This is a mistake, he thought. I can’t sit here and lie to this woman. One lie tonight turns into another lie the next time. How far could I take that?

What was I thinking? That I could have a normal relationship like a normal man?

“So what’s it really like? You hear things about how it is in prison . . .”

“There are three kinds of people in prison,” he said. “People who want to get out, people who never want to get out, and people who know they are never going to get out. You can’t count the days. You keep quiet, keep to yourself. Don’t go with anybody, don’t owe anybody. You’re all you got in there. The only thing you can count on is yourself.”

Lauren was leaning over the table again. Her entire body language had changed. Mason remembered something Gina had told him once a long time ago. A boy wants a good girl who will be bad just for him, but a girl wants a bad boy who will be good just for her. Mason wasn’t an ex-con—not officially, not on paper—but maybe that made it even better. He was bad, but not too bad.

Little does she know, he thought.

They ordered dinner. They had a few more drinks. When they were done eating, they went back outside into the warm night and walked up Halsted Street.

A few blocks up, he heard a band playing a Springsteen cover in a bar and slowed his pace.

Lauren noticed. “What?”

“I just like that stuff,” Mason said.

“So do I.”

“Yeah? You want to go in?”

“Yeah!”

They drank a little more. They stood close together while the band ran through all of Mason’s old favorite songs. “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” then slowing down for “Meeting Across the River.” It was good to feel her body close to his.

When it was after midnight, they walked back to the lot where he had parked his car. He could feel her shoulder brushing against his arm as they walked.

“Take you back to the store?”

She hesitated for a moment. “No, I don’t have my car there. I take the train down most days.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

They got in the car and he asked her where she lived.

“I’m right up by the stadium,” she said.

“Wrigley?”

“Yes. Two blocks away.”

“You’re a Cubs fan.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“We were getting along so well,” he said as he put the car in gear.

He drove up through Lakeview to Wrigleyville, shaking his head as he saw the stadium looming above them. Lauren started laughing.

After he parked the car, she took him into an old brick building and up a set of narrow stairs to her apartment. He turned her around and kissed her in the doorway. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

“How long has it been?” she whispered into his ear.

“A long time.”

“How long? Tell me.”

“Five years.”

“Say it again. How long?”

“Five years.”

“Show me,” she said. “Show me what five years feels like.”

He lifted her up and took her into her bedroom. They took off each other’s clothes and came together while a fan blew back and forth across the room, cooling his back.