Twice Upon a Blue Moon (3 page)

That cautious gene must have skipped a generation. Sadie was as impulsive as she was beautiful.

Hazel’s heart bounced against her diaphragm, a cork in water. Trying to steer Sadie away from harm sometimes only encouraged her to cannonball straight into it.

“No… Not if you don’t want to.”

“Dylan was nice and all, but… Eh.” Sadie’s scale for acceptable lovers ran from
eh
to
I’m in love,
and she was as likely to take long walks up that spectrum as she was to demote a potential suitor to
what a loser
at a moment’s notice
.
“Frankly, I kind of thought he was more your type.” She cocked her head, narrowing her almond brown eyes at Hazel. “You know, nerdy-cute. Did I tell you he wears reading glasses?” She hadn’t. “But you swore off guys,” Sadie went on, sighing, “so I guess he’ll just have to die a bachelor.”

“He’ll cope.”

Marco yelled for them from the front of the diner, their absence noticed at long last.

Saved by the bellowing boss
. Hazel flashed Sadie a small smile. “Can’t wait to start calling you Mrs. Doctor.”

“And come play mah jong at my villa!” Sadie’s cackle followed Hazel out of the narrow changing room. It wasn’t the first time they had camouflaged sour grapes with glee.

* * * *

Marco had shaken his head when Hazel told him she’d take Sadie’s evening shift. “I practically live here,” he’d sighed, “but you don’t have to.”

“You pay me enough.” She reasoned that she owed him. If he complained, it was only because he wanted Sadie around. The less he saw of her, the more he wanted her—and the less Hazel could buy that Sadie didn’t know what she was doing.

“No, I don’t.”

Hazel mulled that over as the bus squeaked and rattled down the empty streets. Sadie had borrowed the Volvo. She was counting on coming home late, she said, but Hazel knew that meant she wasn’t counting on coming home at all. Hazel pictured her driving up Mulholland with Frank in the passenger seat, his bug eyes blown wide behind thick glasses.

Don’t be mean.
She had glimpsed his picture on Facebook—courtesy of Sadie’s religiously upheld post-date debriefings—and he wasn’t bad. A little prone to that wide-eyed look of surprise some people wore whenever a camera was pointed at them, but only vaguely Anthony Perkins-ish otherwise.

It didn’t hurt that he was Chinese, either. Less chance of a veto from the Ling clan.

The bus lurched to a stop and a couple wearing matching parkas rose from their seats. Hazel covered her mouth with a yawn as she watched them step out. At least she could sleep in tomorrow. She was due for a long, lazy morning. The blisters on her feet alone would welcome the reprieve.

“I like your hair,” a voice said over her left shoulder.

Hazel sat up, plastic chair squeaking beneath her. The speaker was a broad-shouldered man wearing a Lakers cap. He smiled when he caught her eye.

“Thanks,” Hazel murmured.

Trying to be discreet, she drew her purse closer to her hip.

The man noticed.

“What? You think I’m gonna rob you?” he snorted. The clank and jangle of the bus wasn’t loud enough to conceal the sigh of the seat as he tipped forward. “Hey, I asked you a question.”

Hazel closed her eyes. Cars flashed past the scuffed window, a rapid succession of lights and shiny paint jobs, like fireflies in the dark. She knew there was no point in rushing for the front of the bus. The driver wouldn’t want to get involved. If she got up now, the asshole sitting behind her would become even more enraged.

She wished she hadn’t given Sadie the keys with the pepper spray still on the chain.

“C’mon, now,” the man said, wheedling. “You ain’t doing a very good job of proving those ‘dumb blonde’ jokes wrong.”

Hazel felt him wrap a lock of hair around his finger as the driver braked at the next stop. Revulsion roiled in the pit of her stomach.
Camera flash. “It’s just us, baby…”

She bolted from her seat like a jack-in-the-box, practically leaping through the doors and onto the sidewalk as soon as the doors slid open. Her steps ate up all five hundred feet to her apartment building. She didn’t breathe until she could put a couple of locked doors between herself and the outside world.

The prickle in her scalp where the hair had torn loose barely registered.

Mostly, she felt shame.
If Sadie were with you, she would’ve turned around and given that jerk what for. Why can’t you?

Hazel’s cell shrieked into the silence of the apartment. She plucked it out with unsteady fingers. “Mama, hi…”

“Oh, good, I thought you’d be asleep.” Her mother took no notice of Hazel’s quaking voice.

Hazel frowned at the wood grain of the front door and concentrated on getting her breath back.

“Why are you whispering? What’s wrong? Is Dad—?”

“Your father’s asleep. Nothing’s wrong.” A good Southern woman wouldn’t admit otherwise under pain of death. Mrs. Whitley was nothing if not a good Southern woman. “You haven’t RSVP’d.”

“What?” It might have been the adrenaline pumping in Hazel’s bloodstream, but though both words and disappointment registered, neither made sense.

“The Facebook event?” Mrs. Whitley sighed. Hazel pictured her pinching the bridge of her nose, winged glasses twitching up and down on her fingertips. “Are you coming to the baby shower?”

Oh
. Now Hazel remembered. “Probably not…”

“Rhonda was hoping you would.”

But you’re relieved I’m not
. Hazel swallowed the retort as she toed off her shoes and stripped out of her denim jacket. “Tell her I can’t afford the plane ticket.”

“She’d offer to lend you the money. You know what she’s like.”

Hazel knew. Rhonda was her brother’s ‘can do no wrong’ wife. Class president, preacher’s daughter, single-handed organizer of raffles and food drives to help Dunby’s indigent population from sinking into delinquency. She was Med School Frank’s polar opposite—no matter how impromptu the photo op, she was always camera-ready, her smile as blinding as a fleet of stars.

It was impossible not to envy her. It was also impossible not to feel bad about letting her down.

“Say I have to work,” Hazel suggested.

“You could find someone to take your shift, couldn’t you?” One question prefaced another before Hazel could get a word in edgewise. “How
is
Sadie Ling?”

We’re doing this again, are we?
Sadie’s reputation had never endeared her to many mothers around Dunby, something to do with the Lolita antics she’d supposedly got up to with some of the high school teachers.

All lies and rumors, but the small town gossips didn’t care to be set right.

Hazel flopped down onto her futon and glared at the silent television. Unfortunately, the TV didn’t cower in response. “Do you
want
me there, Ma?”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“I’ll call her to apologize,” Hazel promised. “Is that okay?”

“Do it tomorrow,” her mother advised. “It’s already short notice.”

Hazel wondered what her mother would’ve done if she had said she’d already bought her ticket. It didn’t even have to be a flight. She could just take the Greyhound. LA to Missouri wasn’t that far. Even Dunby, tucked neatly into the boot of the ‘Show Me’ state, couldn’t quite escape being connected to the rest of the country.

Not for lack of trying.

“You and Dad doing all right?”

“We’re fine,” Mrs. Whitley replied crisply. “Buddy comes by every Sunday.”
And you don’t.
It
went without saying.

“He does have the advantage of living right next door.”

“Next door are the Rileys. Buddy moved into the Gainses’ colonial on Three Lane. I don’t know
why
he didn’t just demolish that monstrosity and start fresh. There’s so much work—”

Hazel pressed a knuckle into her eye socket. “Ma, do you mind if I let you go? I just got off work.” The last thing she was in the mood for was a retrospective of her brother’s domestic arrangements.

I’m living in a shoebox apartment and struggling to make rent. Thanks for asking.

Her mother’s reply was icy, affronted. It was rude to interrupt. “Don’t forget Rhonda.”

“I won’t.”
How could I, when I have you to remind me?
“’Night, Ma…” The line went dead before the words were fully out of her mouth. Hazel dropped the cell onto the couch and tipped her head against the backrest. “Love you, too,” she murmured, to no one in particular.

* * * *

The gap-toothed toddler gazing up at her from his mother’s arms made it virtually impossible not to smile. “All right, two Sloppy Joes coming up—hey!”

Breath left Hazel’s lungs in a rush.

Sadie’s hold on her elbow was punishing, but it was the tense expression on her face that stunned Hazel.

“We’ll be right back,” Sadie told their bewildered clients with a tepid smile.

She left Hazel with a choice between walking and being dragged away over the sticky linoleum. Hazel spurred her feet. Sadie seemed resolute enough to use force.

“Okay,
what?
”

Sadie knew all about the no-touching policy—every painful, humiliating detail—so whatever had her breaking the holiest commandment must have been big.

“He’s here,” Sadie hissed between clenched teeth, once they were safely inside the kitchen doorway.

“George Clooney?”

Through a billowing cloud of steam, Sadie glowered.

“Jesus?” Hazel guessed, throwing up her hands. “I got nothing.”

“
Dylan
.”

A cold shiver rippled down Hazel’s spine. She didn’t have to play the ‘Dylan, who?’ charade because one glance at the door confirmed it. Best wasn’t alone this time. Three other men were with him, laughing and talking in too-loud voices as they scrutinized the diner for a free table.

“You have to take ’em,” Sadie entreated.

“I do?”

“I didn’t
call
.”

Hazel sighed. “Keep tallying up the IOUs and you’re gonna end up having to murder someone for me just to even up the score.” She picked out four greasy menus. “You bus the corner booth in my section real quick.”

Sadie bolted like the Energizer bunny.

“Gentlemen,” Hazel greeted, frosty smile in place. “Welcome to The Last Crab Pub. How many?”

Dylan turned to face her, eyebrows climbing half an inch up his brow. He was wearing a suit again—ash gray—with a baby-blue tie. He even wore a pocket square. It wouldn’t have surprised Hazel to discover that each individual strand of his shiny raven hair had been painstakingly arranged with tweezers before being gelled in place.

She wished it left her cold.

“The Last what?” one of his friends snorted. “Menu reads
Marco’s…”

“Does it?” Hazel feigned surprise. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Sadie making her way out of her section with a thumbs-up. “Huh. How about that? Let me show you to your table.”

Dylan’s friends fell into step behind her like ducklings in a row.

“So does that mean you serve seafood?” asked the pedant of the group.

“No.”

Hazel stood idly by while they crammed themselves into the vinyl booth. At least two of the men seemed perplexed by their surroundings. Dylan wasn’t among them. The intensity of his stare was beginning to render Hazel uncomfortable, but she couldn’t very well throw him out—or, worse, go to Marco and ask
him
to do the throwing out. He didn’t usually like to interfere until and unless a client took creepiness to the point of groping.

She wasn’t going to risk her job for the likes of Dylan Best.

“No,” Hazel repeated, clearing her throat, “but the pork chops are pretty good. I’ll let you look over the menu.” She couldn’t get away fast enough.

“So?” Sadie murmured as they convened behind the bar under the guise of passing orders back and forth to the kitchen. “What did he say?”

“He’s totally heartbroken. Hasn’t slept a day in five weeks.”

Sadie gave her a playful shove. “You’re the worst. I almost started feeling bad for the guy.”

“You must not have seen his Rolex.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Sadie promised before sauntering away with a tray filled with sweet potato hash, tamales and French fries.

Out of curiosity, Hazel slanted a glance to Dylan’s table. She wasn’t surprised to find his dark gaze didn’t track Sadie across the diner, but she didn’t know what to do with their eyes locking across the room.

Dylan cut his eyes away first. It didn’t help.

He was perfectly cordial when Hazel went to retrieve their drinks order. The rest of his buddies likewise kept to themselves. They went quiet whenever Hazel returned to their table, as though whatever it was they were discussing was too important to let strangers overhear.

It was a relief to drop off their check an hour later. Whenever she turned back to the room, she couldn’t shake the sense that someone was watching her—and that said someone was Dylan.

She jumped when she heard him clear his throat from the other side of the counter.

“Do you take credit cards?” he asked, holding up the check.

“Yeah…”
You couldn’t wait until I came back to your table to ask?
Hazel rolled her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She’d made it this far without causing a scene, she could go a little further.

Dylan slid his leather wallet out of his coat. Hazel suspected it probably cost as much as her rent. It even smelled new.

She glanced away as she waited for him to hand over his Visa.

“Did you have a good time?”

Marco insisted on friendliness.
Clients want to feel special. That’s why they come here instead of the Olive Garden across the street. It’s all about the dining experience.

Hazel often wondered if he’d swallowed a marketing course book.

“Yes, it was great,” Dylan replied, too kneejerk to be sincere.

Hazel aimed her smile at the cash register. “Your buddies are like fish out of water.”

“It’s their first time out of Century City.”

“Ouch. Culture shock,” Hazel drawled. She knew where she stood with the Brentwood types—easily recognized outside their leafy green territory by the faint sneers they all wore when exposed to the common folk—but Century City mostly kept to itself. It was busy enough that its residents never really needed to venture out, except perhaps into equally hectic Beverly Hills.