Page 39 of Another Girl Lost

“I have not. I usually have less than an hour for my workouts, and the wall looks like it would take time to learn.”

“It takes practice.”

Luke was attractive, and I liked the cut of his jaw, his broad shoulders, and the tuft of dark hair in the V of his shirt. Hints of his aftershave reached me as someone walked past and stirred the air. If I were a normal person, I’d kiss him by the end of the evening and maybe wrap my arms around him. But I wasn’t normal. There were a million invisible fissures running through me, leaving me more fragile than I wanted to admit. What remained whole and intact was the darkness lurking inside me.

“When you’re not practicing law or doing an express workout, what do you do?” I asked.

“Not much,” he said ruefully. “But when I do get a day or two off, I drive to the beach. I like swimming in the ocean.”

“No lying on the hot sand and soaking up the sun?”

“I don’t sit still well, and after reading thousands of pages of briefs, the idea of reading anything isn’t appealing. By the time I escape to the beach, I’ve had my fill of words.”

“And the ocean forces you to concentrate on exactly where you are.”

“It tries.”

“Like my wall.”

The waitress came to our table with menus. “Would you two like to order dinner or appetizers?”

Luke looked at me. “What do you think?”

Food meant more time, more conversation, and more interaction. “Sounds good.”

Without glancing at my phone, I estimated we’d been here about twenty minutes. I’d become good at judging time in the basement. To avoid being swallowed by an endless abyss, I’d started to collect all the clues hinting to the passage of time. When I heard Tanner’s steady footfall on the floor above, I paid attention. The rising volume of the radio news suggested he was getting ready for work. I guessed it wasabout 7:30 a.m. because he’d always shown up at the neighbor’s house for work at 8:30. During the day, while Della slept, songs on the radio blaring upstairs fell into a predictable pattern of morning, midday, and late day. Occasionally a bird chirped or a delivery truck pulled into the driveway and dropped a package.

According to my internal time gauge, I was only a third of the way into my sixty-three-minute date-night goal. I glanced at the menu, my gaze scanning words but not really processing. So much food. So many options. I never got tired of food.

Twenty more minutes here with him could prove I wasn’t such a big mess. “How about the fruit and cheese board?”

Luke looked up at the waitress. “That work?”

“Coming right up,” the waitress said.

“You’re tense,” Luke said. “Everything all right?”

Maybe he knew my backstory. The Judge wasn’t one to talk, but word got around. Normally, I didn’t care who knew about my past. I’d done nothing wrong. But in this moment, I hoped he didn’t just for a little while. I rarely experienced normal, and it was kind of nice.

“Am I that obvious?” I asked.

“Only a little.”

I smiled, wondering if he was simply playing his cards close to the vest. “You’re very diplomatic.”

“I try.” His gaze swirled with more questions, but he employed silence to entice unsaid words.

“I don’t date much.” My awkwardness danced between us.

And if anything, it only deepened the mystery of me. “Why is that?”

Never default to truth if there’s a believable alternative. “I’m the classic absent-minded artist who spends most of her time in the studio.”

“Why did you say yes to this date?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I get tired of being awkward and alone.” The key to a good lie was to thread in the truth.

“You’re not. Awkward, I mean.”

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