Fragile Facade (Blind Barriers Trilogy Book 1)

  We were still standing like that when my friend, Taylor, suddenly appeared and shattered the illusion.

  “This is my jam!” she exclaimed, grabbing my arm, swinging me around, and forcing me to break eye contact with Blake.

  The world of two that I’d just been living in was gone, replaced by a crowd of people, many of whom I’ve known most of my life but will never feel as connected to as I did Blake in that moment.

  Taylor pulled me to the center of the dance floor. When I looked over my shoulder to where we’d just been, Blake was gone. Shaking my head, I’d wondered if it was even real. Maybe I’d been so desperate for a break from my life that I actually conjured the image of him in my head.

  My skin still tingled where he’d held me. My heart still beat too fast. My head still spun with the intoxicating memory of him. He was real, I decided. Not even my wildest fantasy made me feel so alive.

  I suppressed my unfounded feelings of disappointment at his departure and returned to the wild night my friends were still in the middle of. Though my mind was still with him, on that dance floor.

  Two agonizing weeks later our worlds collided again. My friends and I ducked into the Starbucks across the street from Gracen on our way to an American Cancer Society Junior Committee meeting. And there he was. Sitting in the leather armchair closest to the door, he looked up and gave me a lazy grin when I walked in, but then immediately returned to the book he was reading.

  I was shocked. This was New York with millions of people, of course, but I felt like I saw the same people everywhere. And I’d certainly never seen him around.

  I ordered my coffee in a daze and tried to remain engaged in the conversation about Louboutins the others were having, without looking in his direction. I failed miserably; my best friend Annie caught me when I peeked over for the fourth time in under a minute and raised a questioning eyebrow. I just rolled my eyes and tried to look nonchalant, but Annie knew me better than that. At the time, she’d known me better than anyone. She was good enough to cover for me when Cam demanded: “Lark, you settle this for us. His spring line or fall line?”

  “Oh, please,” Annie quickly interjected. “Totally the fall line. Right, Lark?”

  “Totally,” I agreed having absolutely no idea what we were talking about.

  I gave Annie an appreciative smile, and then flitted my eyes back to Blake the moment my friends’ attention was directed elsewhere. He never once looked up.

  Coffees in hand, I trailed the group out the door, willing myself not to look down as we passed his chair. His hand slipped into mine without a word, his eyes never straying from the book. He pressed a folded piece of paper into my palm and gave it a quick squeeze before letting go. The confidence mingled with nonchalance had me completely intrigued.

  Once outside I coyly glanced at the note. Downtown Downs was all that was written. Puzzled about the meaning, about the entire exchange, I did a quick Google search on my phone, which revealed that it was a coffee and music house just outside of my neighborhood.

  It took me another two weeks to get up the nerve to actually go.

  It was only later that I learned Blake attended Rathbourne Academy, which was why I’d never seen him before. He’d been staking out the most elite of the private schools in the Upper East Side just to find me. Had anyone else done the same I would have immediately labeled them a creeper. But Blake had revealed this in such a matter-of-fact manner that I was instantly charmed.

  “I would’ve kept at it for months,” Blake whispered in my ear, bringing me out of the haze of memories and back to the present.

  “Seriously, how do you always know what I’m thinking?” I asked with a smile.

  “It’s that silly little smile you get when you think about me, along with the faraway look in your eyes,” he teased. “I’m just an excellent deducer.”

  I spooned the marshmallows off the top of the hot chocolate that Shirley had brought me and laughed.

  “You’re going to have to stop doing that, you know. I’m supposed to be mysterious.”

  Dinner was, for lack of a better word, weird. The Ethiopian restaurant, Denbi’s, was a twenty minute walk from the apartment. I offered to drive us down to U Street, but Asher said parking was a nightmare and it would be better to walk. He was a talkative guy, never allowing a lapse in conversation or an awkward pause. I held up my end of the exchange with a lot of “uh-huh’s” and “that’s cool’s”. Normally my social skills were better, but my mind was preoccupied.

  I kept thinking about the journal I’d found. Despite my resolve to quell my curiosity and not invade the journal owner’s privacy, my fingers practically itched to do just that. Since I’d started keeping a journal myself, I wanted to know what deep dark secrets this person wrote about.

  I’d decided the journal belonged to a girl. No real reason for my assessment besides the fact that no boy I knew kept a journal. Were her mental ramblings as incoherent and boring as mine? Did she write about eating granola bars on a park bench? Or was her life full of interesting adventures? Maybe she was a world traveler and her journal would be a log of exotic locations like the ones celebrities visited. Maybe she was a bored housewife who got busy with the pool boy while her preoccupied, workaholic husband was away on business and her kids were at their overpriced private school. Then again, maybe she was a cutter and the entries would have detailed accounts of the pains she took to hide the thin, angry red lines the razor blade left on her inner thighs or the sensitive skin in the crook of her arm. Depressing thought.

  “What do you think?” Asher was asking.

  I blinked behind my oversized sunglasses. What did I think about what?

  Frantically I racked my subconscious for a clue as to what he’d been saying while I’d been daydreaming about another person’s life.

  “Tax law sounds boring, I know,” Asher continued. “And I’d probably have to get an LLM, which is another year, minimum, after law school. But it’s stable work, so I’ll never have to worry about a job. Criminal law sounds exciting, but in working for a DA’s office you do mostly DUI cases. Most of those people plead out, so my time in court would be minimal.”

  “If it were me, I’d want to do international law,” I said decisively. “Work for Amnesty International. Or maybe try war crimes at The Hague.”

  This admission surprised me for a number of reasons. First of all, I’d never considered going into law and, therefore, had never thought about what type of law interested me. Then there was the fact that I wasn’t exactly a poster child for charity work. I knew next to nothing about Amnesty International, except that there was some politician who was making news lately for his involvement with the organization. The Hague was in the Netherlands, that much I knew for sure. Ask me to find the Netherlands on a map, though, and, well, it wouldn’t happen.

  “I’ve thought about that,” Asher replied, smiling as he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. The smile faltered a second later. “My dad does international and environmental law. Not the good kind, though.”

  “Is there a bad kind?”

  For the first time on our walk, Asher was quiet. I feared that I’d somehow managed to upset him. For the life of me, though, I didn’t know how.

  “Yeah,” he finally mumbled, “there is.”

  “Environmental law would be cool. Alternative energy sources, preserving the world for future generations and all that,” I said to cover the awkwardness.

  A twenty-something man in a Penn State t-shirt and red mesh shorts was jogging towards us on the sidewalk. He had earbuds in and was lip-singing along with a song only he could hear. Asher and I stepped onto the grass strip that separated the street and the sidewalk to let him pass. A young couple whizzed by on their bicycles to our left, the boy shouting to the girl over his shoulder.

  “Why do people roll only one pants leg up when they ride a bike?” I asked Asher, pointing to the boy whose jeans were rolled up to the knee on one side.

  Asher lau
ghed, a deep, rich sound that reverberated through his entire body. I wondered what it would be like to lie on his chest, my ear pressed to his heart, while he laughed just like that.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, giggling to cover my confusion.

  “I figured a do-gooder environmentalist like you would know,” Asher joked.

  “I never said I was a do-gooder,” I protested, suddenly defensive.

  Asher sobered instantly at my haughty tone. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “The chain. People roll their pants so the chain doesn’t rub.”

  “Oh.”

  “Here we are.”

  We were standing on the corner of U and 10th Streets. A blue awning with “Denbi’s” printed in white block letters hung overhead. The sign on the glass door was flipped to “open.”

  Asher grabbed the door handle and motioned for me to go first. A bell tinkled as I crossed the threshold, signaling our arrival. The hostess stood behind a wooden podium playing with her iPhone. Her milky-white cheeks puffed with annoyance at our interruption. Apparently her text conversation was more important to her than her job.

  “Two?” she asked, sounding bored.

  “Yep,” Asher replied. “Can we sit by the window?” He turned to me. “People watching is great here.”

  The hostess grabbed two menus from the podium and motioned for us to follow her. Asher placed his hand on the small of my back and applied the lightest of pressure, just enough to let me know he was there. A chill ran down my spine. I liked how reassuring his touch was. He probably meant nothing by it, but I felt calm and safe for the first time since coming to the city. Too bad my back was slick with sweat. Hopefully he couldn’t feel that through the thick cotton of my polo.

  The table the waitress showed us to was cheap green plastic. Two matching chairs sat on either side with surprisingly comfortable green-and-white-striped cushions. A single fake, white rose was plunked in a small glass vase next to a silver napkin dispenser. Oddly, the round bottom of the vase was full of water.

  “I’ll get your waiter.” The hostess placed our menus on the table and resumed texting as she walked away.

  “What’s good?” I asked Asher.

  Only a handful of the menu items had English descriptions beneath the entrée names.

  “Depends,” Asher shrugged. “Do you have a meat preference?”

  “No beef tongue. Otherwise I’m game for anything.”

  “Beef tongue is actually very good. Have you ever had it?”

  “Once,” I admitted.

  “Not a fan?”

  “I couldn’t get past the tongue thing.”

  “Fair enough.” Asher returned his attention to the menu. “How do you feel about lamb?”

  I shrugged. Lamb wasn’t my favorite, but Ethiopian was so spicy that I doubted the taste of the meat would come through. “I could do lamb.”

  Our waiter appeared next to the table, placing two large glasses of ice water down followed by napkin-wrapped utensils he pulled from a small black apron around his waist. I was relieved to see that our waiter was dark-skinned with sharp cheekbones. The pasty-white hostess had made me dubious. I liked my restaurants authentic. I only ate sushi if the chef was Japanese. Mexican food was only acceptable from hole-in-the-wall dives where the wait staff spoke Spanish. I wasn’t 100% positive that our current waiter was Ethiopian, but if I had to guess, I would say he was.

  “Something besides water?” the waiter asked.

  Asher glanced up, inviting me to answer first.

  “No, thank you,” I replied.

  “Bud Light,” Asher said.

  The waiter nodded and didn’t ask Asher for ID. I considered amending my drink order to a glass of wine, but then decided against it. It would be just my luck that the waiter would ID me, and I didn’t have a fake.

  “Do you need some more time with the menu?” the waiter asked.

  Again, Asher looked to me for the answer. I shrugged in response.

  “Do you trust me?” Asher asked.

  The question caught me off guard. Sure, he was talking about the food, but I found myself contemplating his words. Did I trust him? I’d known him for an hour. Yet, he put me at ease, relaxed me. Trust wasn’t something I gave out lightly. Too many people in my life had let me down.

  I met Asher’s gaze and smiled. “I do.”

  Asher grinned. “We’ll do the lamb wot and the doro wot fitfit, spicy,” he told the waiter.

  We handed our menus to the waiter, who took a second to write our order on an old-style guest check pad before tucking them underneath one arm.

  I took a moment to really observe my surroundings. Denbi’s looked as if a rainbow had exploded inside. The tables lining the window were the same green as ours. But the rounded booths were decorated with bright yellow, red, and orange pillows atop brown leather benches. Strands of Christmas lights hung from the ceiling, winking on and off, on and off. Curtains that had probably once been red, but were now faded to pink, were pulled back from the window with braided gold cords. Painted beads dangled from a door frame that I assumed led to the kitchen since our waiter disappeared through it.

  I liked the décor, I decided. The color palate made me think of Mardi Gras. We were the only patrons, but it was early for dinner, and I could imagine the atmosphere was extremely festive at peak hours.

  “Did you get settled in?” Asher asked.

  “I guess,” I replied. “I don’t have a lot of stuff, so there wasn’t much to put away.”

  “You’re from Pennsylvania?” It was a question, but one that he clearly thought he knew the answer to.

  I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “What makes you think that?”

  “You have PA plates on your car.”

  I sipped my water, silently admonishing myself for the brief moment of panic.

  “The car is new,” I said. “Well, new to me. I bought it just before heading down here.”

  “Guess I know where to go when I need to mooch a ride.”

  “Only if you promise to be my tour guide,” I said.

  “It would be my pleasure.” Asher grinned and butterflies invaded my stomach.

  My agenda didn’t include meeting a guy, but if this was the hand that fate dealt me, I’d take it.

  The food was not bad. Better than I remembered Ethiopian being anyway. Even the grey pancakes tasted better when I shared them with Asher.

  On the walk home we stopped by Frozen Dreams, a pay-by-the-pound yogurt shop. Asher insisted on paying for my dessert, which, after I loaded it down with chocolate chips, waffle cone bits, and gummy bears, came to almost ten dollars. Thankfully, Asher had a sweet tooth too, and his sundae rivaled mine in weight.

  “You don’t talk about yourself much,” Asher noted as we sat in the high-backed bar stools at my kitchen counter.

  We’d both managed to consume half our yogurt cups, and I was now swirling the melting remains with the plastic spoon.

  “I’m not all that interesting,” I replied. I wasn’t trying to be self-deprecating. My life wasn’t very exciting. Moving here was the biggest adventure I’d ever been on. I hadn’t traveled abroad. I barely read books. And couldn’t recall the last movie I’d seen.

  “I seriously doubt that,” Asher laughed. “That head of yours is probably full of secrets.” He tugged a strand of my short, dark hair.

  Instead of responding, I resumed eating my frozen yogurt, which had turned into a chocolate soup. The remaining gummy bears bobbed their heads above the surface like tiny drowning men waiting to be rescued.

  “Who do you know at The Pines?” Asher asked after several long, awkward moments.

  My head whipped up. “What?” I stuttered.

  The journal I’d found in my trunk was sitting on the kitchen counter, the key card poking out from beneath the pages. I could’ve sworn that I put it back in the envelope.

  “The Pines,” Asher held up the white key card. “That place is nice. Too rich for my blood.”

  “
The Pines is here? In D.C.?”

  “Yeah. It’s new. Just opened last spring, I think. One of those state-of-the-art places. Marble countertops, stainless steel appliances, bamboo floors, the whole deal.”

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Florida and W area. Not far from here. You could walk if you wanted.”

  I held out my hand, silently asking for the key card. “I found it, actually. I was going to return it tomorrow.”

  As soon as I said it, I knew it was the first thing I would do the following morning. Though the key card’s owner had probably gotten herself a new one by now, I was sure she’d still want her journal returned. At least I would, if it were me.

  “I don’t have plans, if you want company?” Asher offered.

  I almost said yes, but then decided against it. Asher was a nice guy, and I enjoyed spending time with him. But I wanted to return the journal by myself.

  “Thanks, but I don’t want to put you out,” I said instead.

  “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  That I do, I thought with a smile.

  By the time Asher left, I was exhausted and had a horrendous headache. Hitting my head not once, but twice, on the trunk had probably given me a concussion. The sun had finally set, bringing the temperature of the apartment down from unbearable to only slightly miserable. I’d turned the air conditioner on before dinner, but it had done little to cool the tiny apartment. Stripping down to only my tank top and underwear, I climbed into bed. Normally, I liked to fall asleep to the television; too much quiet put my nerves on edge. Instead, I took the journal to bed with me that night.

  I still found reading the contents intrusive, but could no longer suppress my curiosity. What were the odds that the car I bought in Pennsylvania had the journal of a girl who lived in D.C. in it? Probably astronomical. Maybe I should buy a lotto ticket at the corner store while I was out the next day.