Wherever is Your Heart by Anita Kelly

Author:Anita Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Anita Kelly

6

JUNE

“So,” Mal placed her forearms on the table, leaning over her mug of coffee. “Here’s what I’m thinking. If we’re doing this, we should go all in.”

I raised an eyebrow as I lifted my own coffee to my lips. I felt like I’d been pretty clear thus far on being all in.

“Agreed.”

Mal nodded. “Let’s get it all out there over this breakfast. Share all of our shit.”

“Ah.” I placed my mug back on the table, ran a finger inside the smooth handle. I admired a mug with a handle. “Sure. You can ask me anything. I’ll tell you anything.”

I hadn’t always been a super open person, in the past. Which probably explained my patchy history of semi-relationships. But Mal was different. Asking her to do this at all had been the scary part. Walking into the hotel room in a few hours might be a bit scary, too. Had to wait and see with that one. But telling her shit wasn’t hard at all. I sort of felt like maybe I’d been ready to tell Mal my shit for years.

“All right.” Mal looked straight at me. There were bags under her eyes, exhaustion pinching the corners. But the eyes themselves looked bright. Present. Piercing. “Your family. Why you never talk about them. Why you never go back to Jersey.”

I nodded. Rather expected all that.

And I was about to open my mouth to answer when our meals came.

I leaned back as the waiter placed the dishes in front of us. Smiled at Mal’s basic breakfast: eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns. Something deep seated and wonderful had lit in me when I’d heard her order it, exactly as I knew she would. I’d never gotten breakfast with Mal before, but I knew her order. It was one of the first things we’d talked about, god, years ago now, when she’d asked about my favorite diners on the road. We actually talked about breakfast food a possibly weird amount, me and Mal, but when I thought about it, good breakfasts made up most of my favorite moments in life.

It was like the world getting a little more colored in, being able to witness all the things I knew about Mal Edwards actually happening in real time, in front me.

Me, I always liked trying something new for breakfast, depending on the city I was in, the special of the day. That was half the fun of the road, experiencing what the locals loved, even if you’d never actually be one of them. Which was why I had a smoked salmon benedict in front of me. It had been the most expensive thing on the menu, but if being out with Mal wasn’t an occasion to get the most expensive thing on the menu, I didn’t know what was.

Although, truth be told, it wasn’t the first smoked salmon benedict I’d had on the Oregon coast. It was possible I was almost dangerously close to being a local here. But that discomfited me far more than the idea of telling Mal my Very Sad Past, so I wasn’t going to dwell on it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.