Page 142 of Moonlight Hearts

“I’m not sure Dwayne’s going to be on board with blue pancakes, to be honest with you.”

Echo smiled at me.“It doesn’t matter what Dwayne thinks.It matters what you think.Dwayne trusts you.”

I frowned.“Do you really know all that or did you make some of it up?”

Echo carefully drank some of his latte before answering.“You’ll only know once you get there, won’t you?That’s really how this works anyway.”

“I see.I was glad to hear you’d be okay.Soyer said you broke your neck?”

“Yup.”Deep sadness passed over his face, the kind that makes you cry spontaneously, but he reeled it back in.“I knew that might happen.It’s fine.At least I saw him this one time.”

“Who?”

Echo turned his cup on its plain white saucer, and for a moment, nothing but the sound of glass against ceramic filled the silence between us.

“In another reality, Cecil and I found each other.It didn’t start out as love, but that’s what it turned into.He was different there, just a man, but not the kind you want to be friends with.But then he changed… It doesn’t matter.”He turned his cup again.“In a way, it’s like he was my ex before he was anything else.That’s what it feels like, I think.Just raw.”

I had trouble wrapping my head around this, with the idea there’d ever been a possibility that Cecil might care about someone else.True, I’d not known him before that creepy and unplanned meeting, but I’d seen his cruelty through his actions, and I’d recognized the egotistical side of him.It didn’t line up with what Echo was saying.

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

Echo sighed.“That doesn’t matter.It has no bearing on this reality whether you do or not.”

“If you believe it though, if it’s real for you, I am sorry you’re hurting.”

He smiled and took another sip of his coffee.“That’s why I like you.You don’t judge me for not hating a man who was objectively vile.I’m grateful to have you as a friend.”

I cleared my throat.“I still mostly don’t know you.”

“Isn’t having coffee together the start to being friends?”

I ate some of my pie.It was perfect.Soyer would like it when he came in later.

“I suppose it is.But I don’t know how Elias is going to feel about me making other friends.”

“I’ll tackle that once my neck is fully healed.Only one kind of trouble at a time, you know?”

I gave him my widest grin.“Elias isn’t trouble.But he is my best friend.Soul twin, he says.”

Echo bit his lip.“If only you knew.”

We finished our coffee and pie.Talking to Echo was odd, with the non-linear way he brought things up, but it really wasn’t that much worse than denying my soul twin his chocolate milkshakes.

Not long after Echo had left, the door opened, and on a gust of cold air and a scattering of snowflakes, Soyer walked in.

“Welcome to the Moonlight Diner,” I said from where I’d been refilling our saltshakers behind the counter.

“Hi.Cute place you got here.Really blue.”

“The co-owner likes it that way.He has a blue kitchen at home as well.”

He frowned.“It’s notthatblue.”

“It sort of is though.”

He dismissed my argument with a regal wave of his hand.“Forget about my kitchen.You’re leaving early today.You have a thing.”

“I have a thing?”