CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Then
Jenni hadn’t said more than a word or two to him in two weeks. Ilya tried to act like he didn’t give two shits about what she did or whom she did it with, but the truth was, he’d been going crazy. She knew it, he thought, watching her from the back booth in the diner while Jenni moved from table to table, refreshing coffee and taking orders. Maybe she didn’t know he was there.
More likely, she was ignoring him on purpose.
It would be easier if they’d had a fight. Something he could blame this on, the slow but inexorable distance growing between them. It wasn’t even a cold shoulder—that he could handle. He could think she was a bitch and blame her for pushing him away, but the truth was that Jenni hadn’t been cold to him. Or mean. She’d simply been . . . gone.
Looking at her now, he studied the faint dark circles under her eyes. Her cheeks seemed hollower. Her blonde hair was tied in a high ponytail but looked messy, all the same. She looked tired, even when she smiled.
He was suddenly, achingly, desperate to figure out what was going on.
What had gone wrong between them? Was it that he hadn’t made her his girlfriend, officially? That he hadn’t told her he loved her, hadn’t bought her flowers, hadn’t given her his class ring to wear? All that stuff might’ve made a difference, or not, but it had never seemed to be their thing. She’d been the one to scoff when he suggested it, but Ilya knew that meant nothing.
Women, he thought.
When, finally, she looked at him, her eyes narrowed. Coffeepot held high, Jenni came to his table and stood with a hip cocked. She didn’t pour him a cup, even when he shoved the plain, thick white mug toward her.
“What are you doing here?” Her demand was crisp. Cool. And dammit, so distant, it made every part of him cringe.
Ilya sat up straighter in the booth. “Getting something to eat, what does it look like?”
“Are you stalking me?”
He started to laugh until he saw that she was serious. “What? No!”
“Look, this is where I work. You can’t just show up here. I don’t have time for this.”
“Time for what? I’m not doing anything.” It wasn’t the truth, and he knew it. She knew it. Still, he tried to charm her with a smile.
It didn’t work.
“You’re going to get me in trouble.” Her frown was genuine. “Reggie doesn’t like kids just hanging around. I can’t give you anything for free. Don’t even ask.”
“I don’t need free anything. I came to get a burger and fries.” Ilya pointed across the room. “There are tons of kids from school here, and he doesn’t seem to mind them hanging out.”
Jenni fixed him with a long, stern look that dug right into him. “I don’t need you checking up on me, Ilya.”
“I’m not even . . .” Defeated, he tossed up his hands and shook his head. There was no talking to her, and if he made a scene, she’d get even angrier with him. That wasn’t what he wanted. “Whatever. I’ll just eat and go, okay? Sorry to cause you such distress.”
For a second, he thought he might’ve earned a response, a softer one. Then, she didn’t answer him but instead took her coffeepot and returned to her section of the diner. She didn’t look at him again, and something about this was worse than if she’d continued to shoot him daggers. All he wanted was her attention, for them to fix whatever it was that had gone so spectacularly wrong, and she barely seemed to notice he existed.
The burger arrived overdone, the fries limp, but Ilya wasn’t hungry anyway. He picked at it, forcing a smile when Lisa Morrow invited herself and her best friend, Deana, to sit in the booth with him. Lisa wanted him; he did not want Lisa. Wasn’t that how it always went?
Sensing his distraction, Lisa put on more of a show, giggling and tossing her hair. Her laughter was loud and braying, determined to draw attention to the fact that they were sitting together. She was trying to mark a territory that was not hers, and he let her because maybe if Jenni saw them, she’d decide she missed him.
Over Lisa’s shoulder, Ilya watched Jenni talking to a man in the diner’s far, opposite corner. He had to be in his fifties, at least. Older than their parents. A trucker, by the looks of his stained ball cap, rough beard, and belly pushing at the front of his plaid lumberjack shirt.
The trucker slid a wad of money across the table to her—way more than it would take to pay for the eggs and pancakes he’d been shoveling in his mouth hole. Jenni tucked it into her apron pocket and counted out some change. She put it on the table. The trucker covered it with his hand, sliding it toward him. For a second, both of them seemed to fumble with something, a stray dime, perhaps, but it was too hard to see from this distance. The trucker slapped his hand on it. He said something to Jenni, who nodded and moved away without a backward glance. She took the money and the check to the cash register and rang him out. The trucker passed her on his way through the front door, and whatever he said to her this time earned a pale hint of a smile from her.
“Ilya?” Lisa leaned across the table to tap his hand. “Hey, I asked you a question.”
He hadn’t heard. Didn’t care. Once, last year, Lisa had offered him a hand job at Ben Masterson’s party, and maybe Ilya had let her. He couldn’t remember now; it had been dark and he’d been drinking. By the way she looked at him, he was pretty sure he had.
“Sorry,” he said. “I gotta go.”
Out back, he waited in his car for Jenni’s shift to end. When at last she came out through the kitchen door, untying her apron and balling it into her fist, he thought about driving away before she could see him. She was already pissed off that he came into the diner. What would she say about him lurking in the parking lot?
A soft drizzle fell, and Jenni tipped her face up toward it. She was so beautiful that every part of him thrummed and burned and hurt from looking at her. Ilya got out of the car.
Wasn’t this love? This fire, this sting? It had to be, and he moved toward her, thinking he would just tell her. Anything she said in reply couldn’t hurt him any worse than these past few weeks had.
“Jenni.”
She twisted, surprised. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I thought you might need a ride home.” He moved closer. Love was on his lips. He meant to say it, no hesitation, but she wasn’t giving him the chance.
“I have a ride home! Go away, Ilya! You need to go away right now!” Incredibly, she shoved him hard enough to make him skid on the parking-lot gravel. “Get out of here. I don’t want you here! What is wrong with you?”
“I love you, that’s what’s wrong with me!” His shout was hoarse. His voice, cracked. Not the declaration he’d intended. He sounded like he might cry.
Jenni pushed him again. “I don’t care. You can’t be here. I don’t want you here, okay? Just go.”
“What did I do wrong?” he demanded, refusing to go. “Just tell me that.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t . . . nothing . . . it’s just that I don’t need you here. Okay?”
“It’s not okay!”
“Leave me alone, Ilya!”
“Fine. If that’s what you want. Fine. Fuck you, Jenni.” Ilya backed away, turning from her. “Forget it.”
By the time he got back to his car, Jenni had walked around the corner of the diner. Out of sight. The rain was really coming down now, and it spattered the roof of his car, streaked the windshield. He couldn’t leave her out there, not even after what she’d said. But when he drove around the corner, there was no Jenni. There was the distant blink of some taillights, a car pulling out of the lot, but it was raining too hard and too dark for him to see what kind of car.
Jenni was gone, and that was the last time he ever saw her alive.