All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(5)
“Vie, you’re on counter.”
Then she was gone. My back stiff, I took my place next to Becca. Kimmy and Angel left, and a few minutes passed in which both Becca and I pretended the other didn’t exist. Then, Emmett Bradley walked in and I couldn’t think about anything else. That was the way Emmett existed, like a black hole at the center of the universe, dragging everything towards him. He was tall, almost as tall as me, and lean in a way that was perfect for designer t-shirts and for skinny-ass jeans and for getting every heart pumping an extra gallon of blood just at the sight of him. Tan, dark-eyed, with spiky brown hair, he could have peeled himself out of a fashion magazine and come here just to break my heart all over again. It took me fifteen seconds—fifteen glorious seconds as I thought: he got over it, he came here to talk to me, he’s going to apologize, it’s ok, maybe everything’s ok; fifteen seconds when I felt guilty as hell about Austin—and then I saw he was holding someone’s hand. Hailey Van Hoyt’s hand.
As they got in line and worked their way towards the counter, I tried not to shrink into my polyester Bighorn Burgers shirt. I wanted to see Emmett. I wanted to talk to him, and he’d been damn stubborn about not talking to me. But not like this, not when he was holding Hailey’s hand, not when Hailey was smiling like a shark in a kiddie pool, that huge, gobble-them-up smile. She was tall, she was pretty, she was thin, she was perched on a pair of heels so high that I imagined she swayed the way a skyscraper does, and she was a world-class expert on being a bitch when she wanted to. Tonight, she looked like she wanted to. Very much.
And of course, when they got to the counter, they didn’t go to Kimmy’s register. They didn’t go to Angel’s. They didn’t go to Becca’s. They walked straight up to mine. The smell of Emmett’s cologne washed over me, and it hadn’t changed in the last few weeks: a sweet citrus broken by something salty. The ocean, I always thought, and as always I thought of how the salt would taste on his skin. Just for an instant. Just while my heart tried to break my ribs one by one.
“Welcome to Bighorn—” I started, and even I could hear how dry my voice was.
“I want a number six. Hailey?”
That was it. No hello, no how are you, he wasn’t even going to say my name, wasn’t going to look me in the eyes. Nothing that showed what we’d been through together. Nothing to show a fucking ounce of gratitude that I’d cleared his name and proved he hadn’t killed Makayla Price, his girlfriend who had gone missing.
Hailey’s shark grin widened. “Vie? Oh my God is that you?”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea you worked here. That’s, um. Oh my God. Good for you.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s got to be so hard. Oh my God. Like, I can’t even imagine.”
I was sure, a hundred percent sure, that Hailey was telling the truth. She couldn’t imagine anything past the end of her nail extensions. “It’s a job.”
“Wow, and you had to work tonight?”
“No, I’m not at work right now.”
Her massive lashes fluttered. “What?”
“He’s trying to make a joke,” Emmett said, “and he’s sounding like an asshole.”
“Oh. My. God.” Hailey put glittery nails to her lips. “You can’t even spend Austin’s birthday with him? Aren’t you two like—I mean, I thought—”
My cheeks heated. All the sick feelings, all the guilt, all the pain I’d felt at not knowing about Austin’s birthday, her words sent it flooding back through me. I wanted to reach across, grab her by that anorexic neck, and drag her back for a bath in the deep fryer. Without even thinking about it, I glanced at Emmett. A sneer lingered on his face for a moment before it vanished, and all I could see was smooth, empty nothing, like I didn’t even exist.
For a mercy, a crowd poured into the restaurant, and I said, “Sorry, I can’t really talk because we’re so busy. What can I get you?”
Hailey ordered something, and I honestly have no idea what, but I punched it into the register and I took their money, and they grabbed a table where I could see them as they sat next to each other, where I could see as Emmett’s hand ran up her thigh, where I could see as she leaned in to kiss him.
I turned my attention back to the new rush of customers because my other options were either to feel shitty about Austin, or feel shitty about Emmett, or feel shitty about my fight with Becca, and none of those sounded good right then. This crowd, it was easy to tell, had come from the Greyhound station just down the street. Most of them had that look: worn at the edges, unsettled, tired and used up. A few of them looked better, younger, brighter, and they were probably college students trying to save a few bucks. The Bighorn Burger had the perfect location to take advantage of these regular influxes of customers: these people hadn’t planned on coming to Vehpese, but many of the Greyhound buses stopped for rest breaks, and this gave the town more traffic than usual. I was so busy taking orders that I’d forgotten about Becca until, as the customers dwindled to a trickle, I heard her giggle.
The sound made me turn in surprise, and I remembered too late that I was angry and attempting to ignore her. But it didn’t matter, because Becca’s attention was focused—completely focused—elsewhere. Bighorn Burgers could have burned to the ground and Becca wouldn’t have batted an eye, because in this case, elsewhere happened to be a guy. A very good-looking guy, I admitted, and if he had turned that halogen-lamp smile on me, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed a burning building either.