Page 10 of August Lane

“Terry slept with me ,” August snapped. “He told me they had filed for divorce. And I was only at the house to return a gift he should have given Shirley, not to rub it in her face. I was doing him a favor.”

“Of course you were,” Mavis said, with a sigh of weariness that made August feel like she’d failed some test. “Why did you trust him? He can’t be the first man who ever lied to you.”

August immediately thought of Luke. Mavis didn’t know what he’d done, but she knew enough about August’s history to recognize a pattern.

Mavis had witnessed the high school Richard Green debacle.

She’d watched August unravel when Luke disappeared.

Now she had a front seat to this latest dumpster fire and probably thought she’d earned the right to wear that “I told you so” grimace on her face.

August loved her, but they had become friends the same way most cousins in small towns did: by default.

They had nothing in common. Mavis was soft-spoken and well behaved, while August never saw the point of being either.

There was always a hint of judgment on Mavis’s part, starting when she’d been plopped into August’s childhood bedroom and forced to share her dolls.

They were never clean enough or cute enough for Mavis to sink comfortably into make believe.

August could sense her cousin’s snobbery and would punish Mavis by putting the dolls’ clothes on backward or giving them ridiculous names that made her cousin tongue-tied when she tried to say them.

That was most of their shared childhood, a discordant dance of mutual antagonism.

But sometimes fun would find them unexpectedly.

One of August’s jokes would land, Mavis would start laughing, and her cousin would transform into a regular girl, one who found terrible puns funny and was secretly afraid she would never be as perfect as their family needed her to be.

That was who August tried to reach now. The insecure little girl who snort-laughed when she learned Russian dolls were full of themselves. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I just want to sing.”

Mavis shook her head with an exasperated sigh August had heard a million times. It said: Why are you like this? Why are we related? And why can’t I bring myself not to care? “If Birdie were still here, she would—”

“She’d want me to sing,” August interrupted.

“She always wanted that, even when she couldn’t…

” Her words trailed off as the memory took hold.

On Birdie’s worst days, music could sometimes bring her back to herself.

August would sing “A Song for You” and Birdie’s eyes would uncloud, her lips curved into the coy smile of a woman with secrets.

But Mavis wouldn’t know that. She’d cared for their grandmother from a distance: dropping off meals, researching clinical trials, and harassing the nurses Jojo hired into quitting out of frustration.

Micromanaging Birdie’s care had been her only coping strategy.

She couldn’t sit still with the pain of losing someone slowly.

Mavis looked away, blinking rapidly. “Phillip doesn’t want you at the service. It’s too distracting.”

“Oh. That’s who this is about.” August had never liked Mavis’s husband.

She blamed him for Mavis’s decision to abandon her career and become a full-time first lady.

He and Mavis went to law school together at Emory, and he’d opened a small practice in his wife’s hometown instead of joining the big private firm in Atlanta where he’d clerked.

Phillip was young, devout, and charismatic, which thrilled their aging congregation, but made August uneasy.

For someone so ambitious, he’d slid eagerly into Mavis’s small-town life as if he’d wanted something easier to conquer.

That included her cousin, who he constantly browbeat with Ephesians 5:23 if Mavis said anything about going back to work.

“What am I supposed to do?” August stared at the closed door. “I can’t change what happened. And you know how stuff like this goes. Everyone’s excited, but it’ll die down, eventually.”

Mavis said, “I’m sure you’re right.” But she didn’t sound convinced. “Still, it’s probably best to skip Sunday service for now. At least until Terry stops coming.”

It took a moment for Mavis’s words to sink in. “You’re banning me?”

“No, you are not being banned. Take a break. Go to Zion Temple across town.”

“It’s in the old Dollar Tree. They wear jeans to service.” They also played music on a boom box from a CD collection they hadn’t updated since the nineties. The service was an endless loop of God’s Property and Kirk Franklin. “They don’t have a choir.”

“I’m sure they have a microphone and a stage.”

A small one. She’d be up there alone, staring at a sea of fidgeting congregants who wondered why they were being subjected to her failed dreams. “It’s not about that,” August said, tempted to admit the truth. Luke was coming. She couldn’t face him empty-handed.

Mavis gripped her shoulders and leaned down to look August in the eye. “Take a break. Breathe. Have you cried once since we lost Grandma?”

“There’s no point,” August said, because she hadn’t. Not since they really lost her, which was long before Birdie stopped breathing. Now her grief would only sting and prickle, like a limb that had fallen asleep.

Luke was relieved to discover that King’s Kitchen smelled the same as when he’d left Arcadia, like burned coffee and bacon grease.

It never mattered what time of day it was or which meal the kitchen was churning out at a rapid pace.

Those two scents would prevail, seeping into the wood-paneled walls and parquet floors from open to close.

Luke had assumed, at a minimum, the quality of the appliances would have improved over the years.

The coffee maker was famous for scorching and underheating its contents simultaneously.

He remembered stumbling inside, exhausted and starving after a long night dealing with his mother and being offered a tepid mug along with a Sundown over-easy breakfast on the house.

August would ignore his promise to pay the bill, grumbling about overinflated prices while sneaking extra bacon onto his plate.

For the first time since Luke reached the city limits, his stomach wasn’t filled with dread.

He’d driven into town with a lead foot, praying no one would recognize him, but his mood improved at the sight of the old restaurant.

He knew he’d have to face people eventually.

But he needed something to make it all go down easier, and the familiar walls of one of his favorite places seemed like a smart way to ease back into his hometown.

“You waitin’ on a hostess or something?”

A grizzly, gray-haired Black man sat at a nearby table, a fork raised halfway to his mouth. Luke froze for a second, as he always did when a stranger recognized him, but the man looked idly curious at most, like his open newspaper wasn’t interesting enough to keep his attention.

Luke smiled. “No, sir. It’s been a while since I’ve been here. Got lost in the moment.”

The man huffed, bored by Luke’s answer. “Well, you’re blocking the door.” He refocused on his meal, dumping maple syrup over his already soaked plate.

Luke grabbed a menu even though he didn’t need one.

If the smell was the same, the food probably was, too.

The left side of the dining room was dotted with customers, but the right was empty.

He strolled to the right, not looking to get drawn into another conversation, but then heard another grumpy huff that stopped him midstride.

“Where do you think you’re going, son?” the old man chided.

“Leave him alone, Clyde.”

Luke’s defender was a young, blue-haired white woman wiping down tables.

“You know who’s working those tables. I’m trying to help the man, Gemma.

” Clyde gestured toward the empty tables.

“You plan on eating something?” Luke nodded.

Clyde lifted his coffee mug and took a dramatic, leisurely slurp before answering.

“That girl is in a mood. I wouldn’t sit over there if I was you. ”

A different customer snorted, which set off a ripple of muffled laughter. Gemma sighed and waved at a table to Luke’s right. “Go on and sit down. She’ll be with you in a second.”

He didn’t slide into the booth with the ease he would have five seconds ago. A quick menu scan confirmed they still had the same numbers assigned to the same dishes. “Sundown with bacon,” he whispered.

“Just use the numbers,” someone mumbled.

It was exactly what August would have said.

She’d given him so much grief about not using the menu’s shorthand that he came up with fifty different ways of ordering, just to watch her blood boil.

He grinned up at his server, the story on the tip of his tongue, when a familiar gaze met his, and the world tilted.

“August?”

He stared, not quite believing his eyes.

After a decade of pining over her memory, he could still see that version of her clearly—the large eyes, the cupid’s bow mouth, umber skin inviting as velvet.

But now her hair was a cloud of curls instead of pressed straight.

Her body was fuller, jarringly lush under her minidress.

That beautiful girl had become a woman. The kind that made you crave things.

Luke moved to touch her arm, but she jerked back with a horrified expression that made him feel like shit.

Of course she wouldn’t want him to touch her.

All he could do was say her name again, like that would fix something, but it only seemed to make things worse.

Her face shuttered, and she mumbled words he couldn’t make out. “What’d you say?”

She pulled her lips into what she probably thought was a smile. The process looked painful and made him want to slide all the sharp objects out of her reach. “I said,” she gritted out, “Order. Something.”

“August. I wasn’t expecting—”

“Stop saying my name.” She grabbed the upside-down coffee mug and set it right side up with so much force he was surprised it didn’t crack. “Order so I can leave.”

“I didn’t know you still worked here. Au—Wait, why can’t I say your name?”

“I hate the way you say it. Overly familiar. Like it’s yours.”

He went still and tucked his hands beneath the table like she’d caught him stealing something. He’d forgotten how good she was at parsing people’s bullshit.

She tucked a curl behind her ear, impatient with his silence. “You want the Sundown, right?”

Luke watched her scribble on her notepad and caught her gaze when she looked up again. “You remember that?”

She rubbed her arm like the question made her itch. “Could you just place an order like a normal customer?” She propped up her pen and schooled her face into something politely bland. “Bacon?”

Her name nearly slipped out again. But a quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that half the restaurant was watching their exchange like a tennis match. He stared blindly at the menu and muttered, “Yeah, with bacon.”

She pivoted and practically sprinted away.

Luke watched her slap the order down at the kitchen window and then reach for an ancient coffee carafe.

He shouldn’t stare. People would notice, and once someone figured out who he was, Luke Randall’s leery eyes would be the topic of conversation in every corner of town.

Still, he couldn’t look away. It had been years since he had the luxury of staring at August Lane. She still had that constellation of freckles on her calf. He’d traced it in his mind a thousand times.

“They’re working on it,” she said when she returned to fill his coffee cup. “That’ll be $893.67.”

Luke blinked. “Excuse me?”

“For all the free food you ate here. It’s time to settle up, don’t you think?”

He watched her grab three sugar packets and rip the tops away. “That’s a really specific number,” he said slowly. “Did you keep track?” The thought of her petty bookkeeping shouldn’t please him as much as it did.

She dumped the sugar into his cup. “Don’t you think a guy who runs off and gets famous should at least send a check for all his unpaid orders? Plus twenty percent for the poor person who had to wait on him for nothing?”

“How do you know I didn’t send a check?” Luke leaned into the table and tried to make eye contact. He was slipping into something, falling through the blurred gaps between then and now. August met his eyes, and he grinned. “You been keeping tabs on me?”

“Why would I bother?” She grabbed a jar of creamer. “You haven’t been interesting in years.”

The insult was a face full of cold water. Luke sat back and tried to anchor himself to the present. “I need to talk to you.”

“We just talked.” She set the creamer down. “Now we’re done.” She pointed to his mug. “Coffee’s getting cold.”

Luke glanced down at the cup. “I take it black these days.”

August stared at the mug, confused, before her expression darkened to fury. “Well, that happens when you disappear for thirteen years. No one knows what the hell you drink anymore.”

“August—”

“Stop saying my fucking name!” Her voice ricocheted throughout the room, and she glanced at the startled customers. “Why are you here?”

Luke started to speak but faltered. The words wouldn’t come.

Not good ones, anyway. It didn’t matter whether he’d intended to run into her or not.

She felt ambushed. Unlike him, she hadn’t been picturing different versions of this day every time she sang their song.

She’d probably been grateful for his absence.

Hell, she might have been pretending they’d never met.

“I’m—” He moved to stand because it felt appropriate to give the moment its due respect. The contempt that flashed in her eyes kept him pinned to his seat. “I need to apologize for… what I did.”

She went still for a moment and then laughed—a sharp, high-pitched burst that made him flinch.

He was so startled that he didn’t notice the mug sliding across the table until it was too late.

She nudged it over the edge, and a wave of sugary coffee doused his crotch in heat.

He shot up and yelped. Maybe screamed a little.

Not in pain, but with the mental torture of what-if.

What if that goddamn coffeepot had worked the way it should?

Luke grabbed a handful of napkins and started wiping his jeans. When he looked up, she was on her way to the door. “August! Wait!”

She jerked her apron off and threw it at Gemma, who caught it with one hand. The door swung open with a loud creak and slammed shut behind her. Clyde stood and stared at Luke with wide eyes.

“Damn, boy. What the hell did you order?”