Loud Awake and Lost by Adele Griffin

Author:Adele Griffin [Griffin, Adele]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2013-11-11T18:30:00+00:00

18

Third Door Down

I froze. Kai didn’t see me at first. He had paused at the touch screen to place an order. But for me, everything stopped—the hour itself seemed to come screeching to a halt, along with my pulse, my thoughts, and every single half-prepared scrap of speech I’d ever recited to Kai in my head.

Stop…stop…stopped. Numb. I was scared to blink, to lose him.

Kai worked here? My brain reeled to make this seem obvious and natural. Of course he worked here—the matchbook had been his clue to me. He’d wanted me to find him. He’d been expecting me to find him. In his element. Because he looked good working here, too, dressed in his waiter’s tailored black pants and short black apron plus a golf shirt with the restaurant’s red and yellow logo emblazoned on the front pocket.

As soon as he finished punching in the order, I was sure that Kai was going to turn in my direction. But I was jolted to watch him coast past me toward the front of the restaurant.

He’d sensed me, though. Of course he had. Nobody who gets stared at as hard as I was staring at Kai doesn’t somehow figure that out.

So now what? Do I just wait for him to come to me?

I glanced down at the sauce and sour cream pooled on my empty plate. It was probably the lingering after-impression of all that spicy food, but I was heated up and close to tears; they threatened to wash out at any moment. Or maybe it was the old here-we-go-again panic slash exhilaration of being caught in another sort-of chance meeting with Kai. The matchbook had led me to him so easily. Too easily.

Okay, but now I was here. I’d found him. And he was less enigmatic now, right? Here was a huge new chunk of information. Kai worked here at El Cielo. As a waiter. Was anything less mysterious than that?

My heart thrumming, I kept my head downcast. I took tiny mechanical bites of the last tortilla, all too aware that Kai was wandering around in possible eye- or earshot. And when I twisted and craned, I caught him in angles as he tended to the tables, skirting between them, a purposeful back-and-forth from the wait stands and busing stations and then around again—to stack a high chair or bring a pitcher of beer. My vision of him was broken, occasionally, by the busy presence of the blond girl, who seemed to deal with Kai’s tables as well as her own. Maybe he was just a backup waiter?

After a few minutes, I could relax almost to the point of enjoying him. It was a new power, to watch while I remained unobserved. Kai looked more boyish in this setting, and more sweetly earnest while at work. His white shirt set off the dark tones of his skin—a color I could semi-achieve if I baked myself in the sun all summer—and his hair was different, comb-marked like a little kid’s on school picture day.

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