When Kai materialized around the bar in a few sure steps to stand right there in front of me, I was pretty sure he knew I’d been here all along. His smile was halfway in hiding, but there was concern in his face, too. He was guarded but not unhappy to see me. Not at all.
“Hey, you.”
“Hey yourself.”
“You found me.”
“No thanks to you.”
He raised an eyebrow as if this might not be true. “I want to talk.”
“Me too.”
“Not up here, though. Cold storage, basement. Third door on the left. I’ll meet you down there.” He tapped his bare wrist. “I’m on the clock. Though I’ve got some solid backup who won’t rat me out.” He motioned to the busboy, who’d reappeared and was refilling water glasses.
I nodded. “Okay.”
“You go first and I’ll join you. Give me two, three minutes.” Kai winked, hoisted a bar tray, and slipped past me as if we hadn’t connected at all.
I hovered another moment by the archway that marked the stairwell. My eyes sliding right left right to make sure no vaguely menacing eyes were doing any spying on me—though why would anyone care what I did?—and then I bolted down the terra-cotta tiled steps to El Cielo’s underground.
It was an instant atmosphere change from the warmth of the ground-floor crowd. Down here felt cooler, serene and unoccupied. It smelled musty, and I could hear a white noise—a water heater drum, maybe? Sound had shifted to a dull ocean roar. At the bottom of the steps I found myself in a hallway marked with opposing doors—one labeled DAMAS, the other CABALLEROS—plus two more doors on the left. I peeked in the next door, which was thinly cracked on a windowless office.
This third door was heavy, squared off like a vault. Breath held, I turned the knob and pushed. The icy air was almost menacing and the temperature seemed like a warning that this was a forbidden zone, that I wasn’t welcome here. I bit my bottom lip and turtled deeper into my jacket.
There was a fluorescent glare here, too. From floor to ceiling, everything in the room was marble or chrome, with wall-to-wall steel cupboards and a refrigerator that had an industrial lever handle, while the fridge itself looked big enough to hold Noah’s whole ark. Nobody else was down here, but I moved around like a burglar, anyway. The temperature drop made my brain and body sluggish, as the cold slipped and settled over me like a silk scarf.
The silence was lonely, too. I chewed at my cuticles. What if Kai didn’t come? What if he was upstairs getting raged at because the waitress had been watching us? Or one of the line cooks? What if I got caught? What if Kai got fired?
No, no, no. He’d be down soon. And then everything would be okay. Kai wouldn’t have told me to slip away and meet him here if he didn’t think we could pull it off.
The overhead track lights were so white they made me see purple.
On impulse, I snapped them off.
Better.
Humming electricity was an absence that filled the darkness—sterile and antiseptic, delivering me into memories of the unyielding shape of that narrow cot at Addington. So far from my own soft bed and its sweetly shabby friendship quilt. Every room at Addington had a bedside call bell. I’d never used mine.
Press it, they encouraged. Press it and a nurse will appear at your side within moments to meet your demands. Help to the bathroom. A glass of water. A hot-water bottle. Anything.
I’d looked at that bell every night, wishing that it had the power to summon the people I really wanted. My parents, my friends. Those empty, lonely nights where all I’d done was stare up at the ceiling, waiting to heal, had seemed to drag on forever.
Cold was seeping into my bones. I moved slowly, feeling my way, ducking around the refrigerator and out of view in case the wrong person showed up. I sat cross-legged on the ground with my back against the wall. Then I closed my eyes, letting the freeze sink me. Adjusting to it. A minute passed. I heard the door open.
I exhaled. He’d come. I leaned around. “Hey! I’m over here,” I whispered.
Silent as a panther, Kai found me. I could smell him, that intoxicating hint of him, as he slid down next to me in the dark.
“It’s freezing,” I whispered. “I’m not sure I can be here for that much longer.”
“I know, I know. I can’t stay, either. We’re getting slammed. But I’m—wow, I can’t believe you came by.”
“Are you surprised?”
“Hell yeah, I’m surprised. A girl like you, wanting to hang out with a starving student slash waiter like me. What would your parents think?”
“What do you mean a girl like me?”
“A girl like you,” he repeated. “I guess I could say a pretty girl, or maybe I’d say a girl from a fancy landmark district, who goes to Lafayette and buys lunch in a bento box, and can even use the chopsticks. But what I really mean is a girl who knows her own mind.” He smiled. “Yeah, that’s mostly what I meant.”
“Oh.” It was a cool thing to say, though I wasn’t sure that’s how I’d have defined myself. But it wasn’t not true, in relation to Kai. For one, I knew I wanted to see him again. And I’d gone out of my way to find him. “Well, you couldn’t possibly be starving,” I said, deflecting his intensity even as I stored away his compliment. “The food’s too good here.”
“That’s my aunt who heads up the kitchen.”
“She’s a genius cook. I’m surprised you don’t weigh an extra hundred pounds.”
“Put the blame on my good metabolism.” Kai was fiddling with something. His flask, I realized. He unscrewed the top and took a long sip. I could smell the dark-roasted coffee, and I didn’t have to taste it to know that it was strong.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy who drinks coffee from a flask.”
“It was my dad’s,” said Kai. “The only thing I’ve got that’s his.”
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing, except that he ditched. Classic lost soul, and he’s part of the reason why there’ll only ever be coffee in my flask. My mom died—cancer—when I was seven and Hatch was three. Isabella’s really my great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister. She’s been raising us since I was in third grade.” He gave me the information in a voice as flat as a glass of milk, but when he offered the flask, I had a feeling that he didn’t let just anyone drink from it. I took the smallest bird sip.