Page 164 of What We Bury

“And if I call?”

“Then you decide whether you walk through it.”

Dean rolls the card once between his fingers. “You make it sound dramatic.”

“It is.”

He huffs out the barest breath through his nose. Not really amusement. More like acknowledgment that I’m not dressing this up as anything it isn’t.

Outside, tires hiss over wet street. The barista calls out a drink that sounds like a chemical formula. Everything in this place keeps moving like two men at a table aren’t discussing a way to get rid of the scum the system keeps setting free.

Dean tucks the card into his wallet.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll call.”

I drink my cold coffee and let out a breath. I’m not sure if I just gave Dean a way out of the loneliness or recruited him into sanctioned murder. Either way, I’m probably ruining his life.

FORTY-FIVE

SAGE

Thursday’s lunch rush is barely a trickle, which is odd since the local schools went on summer break just a week ago. I expected families with their kids and teenagers heading to the beach. But by two o’clock, the diner’s almost empty. Just a couple of regulars nursing coffee in the back booth, a trucker working through a plate of meatloaf, and Jamie, perched on a stool at the counter with his laptop open and a half-eaten slice of cherry pie beside it.

“You seem different today,” he says, not looking up from whatever he’s typing.

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. Lighter.” He glances up. Smiles. “Like someone turned the brightness up on you.”

I duck my head to hide the flush creeping up my neck. “I’ve just been sleeping better.”

“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t push it, just goes back to his screen, but the smile stays. Jamie has this way of noticing things without making you feel observed. It’s the opposite of how the guys see me. With them, being seen is a full-body experience. WithJamie, it’s more like a warm lamp clicking on in a dark room—comforting, low stakes, and maybe sharper than I first gave him credit for.

I top off his coffee and lean against the counter across from him, grateful for the quiet. The diner hums around us—the soft clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the oldies station playing something by The Supremes, the occasional scrape of a fork on a plate.

“Can I ask you something?” I say before I can talk myself out of it.

“Always.”

“Do you ever feel like your life just . . . shifted? Like one day everything was normal and then something happened, and now you’re a completely different person, and you can’t go back to who you were before even if you wanted to?”

He closes his laptop. Gives me his full attention. “Yeah,” he says. “I do, actually.”

“Really?”

“After I came out—surprise, I’m gay, if you didn’t pick up on the flames.” He wiggles his fingers, half-hearted jazz hands.

I laugh, even though it’s obvious. “I did pick up on a little something.”

“I’d be concerned if you didn’t.” He crosses his arms. “Before that, I spent years performing the version of me everyone else wanted—how I talked, what I wore, who I was supposed to want. Cardboard-cutout Jamie. Eventually I couldn’t keep living inside the lie, so I came out. It didn’t go well. I lost . . . a lot. Pretty much everyone, actually.”

“Jamie. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not. But it’s getting there.” He gives me a crooked smile. “I found people who let me breathe now. It’s like you shed the skin you thought you needed, and the new one never quite fits the same, but once you’re out, you reallydon’t want to crawl back in.” His eyes warm. “Plus, I found a place with mid coffee and great pie. And you’re easy to talk to. So maybe the big shifts find a way of working out.”

My throat tightens. His shift makes sense to me, but mine is so much darker and uglier and more complicated than anything I can hand him over a diner counter. Still, the need to saysomethingis eating me alive.

“You know I’m pretty new in town, right? I thought I was doing okay. My roommate and I were becoming friends—real friends, maybe, which is not something I’ve had much practice with. But her boyfriend doesn’t like me, and lately she barely comes home except to grab clothes and leave.”