Page 32 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
I turned around and nearly collided with his chest. My heart seized—probably because I was already sipping my fourth coffee for the day. At that point, I’d surpassed the state in which caffeine gives you energy. I’d transcended it, moving instead to that placebeyondcaffeination, that cliff’s edge from which you stare down into a never-ending well of panic.
“Um,” I said eloquently. “Hi.”
“May I get a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee. Yes.” My heart was pounding. I stepped out of the way. “Go ahead.”
“So,” he said too casually, pouring his own cup of muddy hot liquid. “Should we talk about what happened last night?”
I shimmied down the cabinets, coffee sloshing back and forth in my mug. “I said everything I needed to.”
“Did you?” Mug filled, Manuel turned around, leaning against the divot in the countertop. “Because I detected many, many holes in that half-assed explanation for why you shut me out of your life.”
“I told you.” I squeezed the counter behind me, its chipped wood digging painfully into my palm. “There are—”
“Things I don’t understand.I know.” Manuel shook his head. “Fuck if I didn’t stay up all night replaying that conversation until it drove me half-mad.”
My heart stilled within my chest. “You—”
“And after peeling it apart nineteen different ways, I could only reach one conclusion.” He stepped closer. “You’re afraid.”
I swallowed. “Afraid of what?”
“Of me.” He stepped closer again, far too close.Not close enough.“Ofus. That’s why you ran three years ago. I got too close, and you panicked, and you ran.”
“I—”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You don’t—”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
By then, Manuel had wrecked the carefully laid distance between us. He crowded me up against the cabinets, just an inch between us, almondine eyes blazing with heated focus. I sucked in a breath—and instantly regretted it, because there it was: coffee and fabric softener, toothpaste and something deep, earthy, inexplicable. The smell of Manuel in the morning.
“You’re wrong,” I whispered.
He cupped his ear. “What was that?”
Louder, I said, “You’re wrong, Manuel.” And then, because it wasthe truth, and because I owed him at least a slice of the truth, I added, “I was afraid. But not of you.”
He straightened. “You…” All anger slipped from his face, replaced by blank confusion. “What?” He shook his head. “But then…what were you afraid of?”
Me, I thought without hesitation.I was afraid of myself.
But I couldn’t tell him that. Of course not. To tell him that would lead to all variety of questions that I was ill prepared to answer.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Doesn’tmatter?” Manuel stared at me incredulously. “How could you say that? If someone scared you enough to run off to New York…”
All at once, realization seemed to settle in his mind. A dark realization. One that made Manuel—my best friend, my quiet, brilliant, even-keeled, snaps-at-no-one best friend—twist his face into a look of such blind, murderous rage that I took a shocked step back.
“Who was he?” Manuel asked, voice deathly quiet.
“Wh-who was who?”
His teeth ground together as tight white fists balled up at his sides. “Who. Was. He?”
