Run Read Online Free Page B

Deirdra Miller student. Exactly like that.”
           Greta lifted a brow. “Deirdre?”
           “D-e-i-r-d-r-a.”
           Keys clicked and I stared at the floor. Absorbed the quiet and the anxiety of finally, after a year, telling one person a tiny piece of the story. Someday someone would get the rest of it. Just not today.
           “This is you?” She’d found the top story.
           I wished it wasn’t. I wished so many things for so many months, and I had no more wishes in me. “I couldn’t take the guilt. The sympathy. Her oldest brother threatened me. I left. I’m not ready to be found,” I said.
           I waited while she read. Click. Click. Click.
           She glanced up. “Your tables are waiting.”
           Relief stole my strength for a moment, and I clamped my hands around the armrests, digging for it. I was okay. For a few days or weeks or months, I’d have funds to pay for my crappy furnished apartment and food for my belly. For gas and the occasional beer in a rundown bar.
           Someone had a piece of me I hadn’t relinquished in a year, longer still since I’d given it willingly.
           Untrue. I’d given a far bigger piece last night, to a man whose name I didn’t know.
           Yoga. I would do yoga. For an hour. More. I would not race back to the squished-down bar hoping to run into him again. I certainly would not take the first invitation I received and jump into bed. Or the cab of a truck. Or an alley. I would find other distractions, distractions that would let me rebuild a life. Something I wouldn’t demolish in a few weeks or months. Something that would last.
           The same thing I vowed with every new town I landed in.
           I gave Gwen a shaky smile and walked out of the office. I had a shift to finish. As I passed Charlie, his face sweaty from manning the grill, I paused. New life. Time to start building it. “You’re on.”
           “What’s that, Kenny? On for what?”
           I pushed aside the rising tide of doubts. “Come now. You gonna break my heart? Drinks. Bring your wife. I want to meet the woman who puts up with a rake like you.”
           He stared. Then his face broke out in a grin so wide and bright, it made the light in the kitchen seem dim in comparison. A grin you couldn’t help returning. I did, and the roaring in my head receded. Not completely. But enough.
           The rest of my shift was a blur of faces and noise, sometimes cranky, sometimes not, and I found myself looking for a shaggy head of hair and a set of broad shoulders. Ridiculous. The last thing I needed on this journey out of fucked up LaLa Land was an entanglement.
           Celia, one of the other waitresses, burst through the door about five minutes before we closed for the night. I frowned. “What are you doing here?” She wasn’t on the schedule for today, and I knew she was fiercely possessive of her days off.
           “Charlie called. Said you’d finally agreed to hang out. So here I am! We’re going. Now.” She bounced around me, a red-headed pixie of a girl, barely twenty one. Her energy reminded me just how old I’d gotten in the last few years. And I hadn’t even hit thirty. God.
           “She’s got work to finish first.” Gwen looked up from the pile of receipts, preparing the deposit drop for the night.
           Celia just smiled and grabbed the nearest chair, swinging it up on the table. She worked her way around the back third of the room, picking up chairs and setting them, legs up, on tables. I kept wiping down the tables in the front, their tops sticky with sugar and ketchup, one eye on the door, the other on the sole diner left.
           His spoon clattered in the bowl and he wiped his mouth, crumpling his napkin and tossing it on the table. The loneliness of the gesture tugged at my heart. Come with us. Have