“But why North Carolina? I still don’t get it. Couldn’t your dad have just opened up a shop in town, or waited a year for you to graduate?”
Katie’s question made Damien want to roll his eyes, although he knew it was a genuine one.
“Well, Katie, your question makes a bold assumption,” Damien takes a bite of his ham-and-swiss croissant, the bread flakes drifting down to the plate and all over his shirt.
Katie reaches across the table to brush the flakes off of Damien’s chest. “A bold assumption about what?” she asks.
“That he thought about me.”
Katie shrugs, “Valid point. Or me, since he took you away.” Katie frowns in a playful way, putting her hand on Damien’s, and everything about the cafe seems softer, seems brighter. Damien blushes. He’d been interested in Katie since their first class together as freshmen, but she was always just out of reach. Maybe his being absent for a year made her realize something? No, he thought. There’s no way.
“I, uh. My coffee needs more cream.”
When he returns, they sit in silence for a moment, eating their breakfast and drinking their coffee. It had been over a year since the pair had been in Peregrine’s Black Briar Cafe, and although they used to come here every Tuesday morning before school, it felt new to Damien again. It felt new to him because he missed it in ways that changed it, ways that Katie couldn’t understand. She didn’t stop coming here on Tuesdays just because Damien was gone. Her familiarity with the place, her comfort in reaching over the table to brush crumbs off of Damien’s chest, showed him that her world hadn’t changed in Damien’s absence.
“I missed you, you know?” Katie places her hand on Damien’s yet again, breaking their silence. “Things really changed for me while you were gone.”
Damien felt like an idiot. Of course things had changed for Katie. Her best friend left. How could they not have? He missed her too, but he wanted to be different now that he was back in town. A change in his attitude would show that he’s grown. That he isn’t just the best friend hoping for something more.
“Oh yeah? Changed how?” he asks, hoping his interest somehow implied that he had missed her, too, so it didn’t need to be spoken. He thought it would be okay if it wasn’t implied, though. Katie had to know it.
Katie stands up. “Let’s go home and talk about it.” She grabs his hand, holding it as they walk out of the cafe, but they stop by the door as the cafe erupts in the buzzing of cell phone vibrations.
Damien takes out his phone. A red triangle warns of Severe Weather coming tonight, and the barista changes the channel on the cafe’s television to the news, where they report 55 mph damaging winds and the potential for hail, while across the bottom of the screen scrolls: Missing bluff hikers still not found, final patrol leaves tonight before the storm hits.
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“People never go missing on the Bluffs,” Damien says as Katie pulls him out the door, eager to get home before the rain starts.
“Never went missing. That’s the second group of people since you moved away, but only the third group of people in the past decade. I guess you were keeping the place safe, huh?” Katie smirks as she pulls Damien along the sidewalk. “Come on,” she says, “I’d like to be dry and warm at home tonight, if you don’t mind.”
###
Damien had been living with Katie since he had moved back from Raleigh. His father had moved there to open up a new financial advising business in an area that’s pulling people in, so that he can have more clients. It was a good idea, as his father found immense and immediate success.
Damien was working throughout his last year of high school there, delivering pizza for a local chain to save up money to move back to Peregrine, back to his friends. Raleigh’s “shop local” attitude had meant big tips, so once he graduated, Damien used everything he had earned to go back home. He left the day after his 18th birthday.
Damien’s parent’s weren’t awful by any means, just uninterested. Damien wasn’t much of a priority beyond them making sure he was home for dinner and doing well in school, so when he told them he wanted to move back home, they said as long as he had the money to do so, then they’ll help him pack. They called him on his first day back in town, asking him if he had made it. He said he did, and they said he could call anytime. They said goodbye, and be safe. He hung up. He hasn’t heard from them since, and that was two weeks ago.
Thankfully, Katie’s parents were exceptionally well-off and paid her rent on an apartment in town, so she was letting him stay on her couch, where Damien was sitting now, looking out the window at the gathering clouds. The cars down below were mostly older models, even though this was a nicer apartment complex. Of course, most people living in these apartments were in their 30s or raising small families, so it’s no surprise that most people were making the most of what they had. People from Peregrine rarely needed the newest cars, technology, or, well, anything. They were a content town that made do, steadily declining in population as kids who grew up here moved away.
Damien watched the shelf cloud swirl in the clay-grey sky. In its whirling mass, Katie’s blonde hair intruded, a bulwark against the twisting wisps and approaching storm. Her curls draped over her shoulders, over a loose white sleep shirt with a deep v, and stopped just beneath her collarbone. He wondered if she knew he was watching her walk up to him, but then their eyes met. Hers were brown, almost black in the reflection. Damien’s were the same.
Katie’s fingertips traced the bend of Damien’s shoulders, their eye contact maintained. “You moved before I could tell you, but,” Katie ran her hands now to Damien’s sternum. “I always really wished you’d have kissed me at prom.” She pulled his head back to her chest.
Damien’s heart was racing. He knew they liked one another, but thought nothing could come of it. He never wanted to intrude or make her uncomfortable by making a move in case he was wrong about how he thought she felt. He never wanted to risk asking, either.
“I might have, if I knew you wanted to.”
“You’re an idiot,” Katie says, walking around the arm of the couch . “May I join you?”
Damien smiles now. Of course Katie would find a way to make him smile, even as he was filled with nerves, with apprehension, with doubt that this was really and finally happening.
“Be my guest,” he says, hearing his own voice crack as Katie giggles.
She climbs onto his lap as the wind picks up around the building, and the first crack of thunder shakes the town. Together, though, they are safe. Together, they are still amidst the whipping rain and brewing lightning.
Eyes abuzz like neon, the red of the electric glow at the end of a long, lightless hallway, watch them from the rain-spattered window. Damien looks over as Katie’s lips find a tender spot below his jawline, and he mistakes the glow for brake lights in the parking lot below. Ignorance is bliss, the unblinking eyes know as they fly off into the storm, and Peregrine, Illinois, is ignorant indeed.