Page 7 of With This Lie

“So, the check,” he says, breaking the silence.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “It’s on the house.” And what I mean by that is I will pay for it out of my tips. I do that sometimes for sad girls that come in. Sometimes they’ve just been dumped. Sometimes, like this man, they’ve been stood up.

He is smiling again, though. “Well, thank you…”

“Dani Monroe,” I say.

He nods. “Thank you, Dani.”

“You’re welcome…”

“Lucas Kane,” he says.

“You’re welcome, Lucas,” I say, smiling a rare but genuine smile. It isn’t often one is provoked from my lips but Lucas just stole one and I am not complaining.

“I’ll see you around,” he says, stepping off his stool and turning away to leave.

I watch his triceps flex as he pushes off the bar. I watch the dimple form in his right cheek as he glances back. I watch him glide between people and out the door and into the night. Regardless of his parting words, I doubt I’ll ever see him again. It happens now and again. I happen upon a truly entertaining specimen and then they walk out the door and I never see them again. It’s a real bummer, but perhaps I’m only meant to have these tiny little moments with them and that’s it.

I start to think about all the people who have disappeared from my life. Sometimes with a goodbye, sometimes under a cloak of darkness, and sometimes without even looking in the rearview at what they left behind. I’ve been destroyed by too many goodbyes with no one nearby to build me back up. People don’t stay. We are nomadic at our cores. I lived in four different apartments in the four years before my current one. I never switch cities because I’m tied down here, as much as I don’t want to be. As much as I wish I didn’t have to be. I can’t leave this place.

So I stand here, while all the world moves around me, while all the people go on from this place and never look back. And I watch them. Usher them on. Maybe that’s what I’m meant to do.

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