If I Stay

Four

My coworker Genevieve half-rose out of her chair to wave at us from across the restaurant, her smile bigger than ever. "So this is Andy," she said, when we met her at the table. Her gaze swept from Andy's eyebrow piercing and the gauges in his ears to the long-sleeved T-shirt with a race team logo emblazoned on the chest.

"This is Andy." This is my best friend in the world, who I've just been kissing in the park. "Andy, this is Genevieve, who sits in the cube next to mine. And Ara and Timothy, who are across the hall from us."

I glanced at him, but his worried expression from earlier had vanished, and he now seemed perfectly at ease, just like he always did when he was at work: brisk and confident. He struck up a conversation about Timothy's Bloody Mary as we took our seats, and somehow everyone was instantly engrossed in the finer points of Bloody Mary recipes.

"That's right, you work at a bar, right?" Timothy said suddenly, once they'd agreed that at least two olives were a must and horseradish should be to taste. He waved his cocktail straw in Andy's direction. "Sounds fun. Probably a lot less stressful than our job, too."

"Andy is pretty unflappable," I interjected, hoping Andy didn't think Timothy had just insulted him. So what if Andy wasn't a journalist? It didn't make his work worthless.

Andy cast me a quick, scrutinizing look.

"I bet working at a bar is stressful in its own way," Genevieve said. "Aren't you the boss, Andy?"

"I'm the assistant manager."

"But Bill, the owner, is practically semi-retired," I said, "so Andy does a lot."

Timothy, who had gone back to stirring his drink, shot Andy an appraising glance from under his eyelashes. "So if someone is making a scene, do you throw them out yourself or what?"

"I've never had to throw anyone out," Andy said. "Most people will listen to reason if you give them a chance, in my experience."

"You guys don't have bouncers or anything?" Ara asked. When he shook his head, she whistled. "Different in the 'burbs, isn't it? We just scooped a story about a bar fight the other day, and it was massive. Spilled out onto the street and went halfway up the block, with people still trying to hit each other. It took two police departments to split it up."

"Fall Island isn't really a suburb," I reminded them. I had tried to explain what the island was like once or twice before, but people who had never been there could not understand: the island's remoteness was both comforting and isolating. I had loved it there, but I had hated it, too, in equal measures.

Genevieve smiled mischievously at me. "The way she describes it, Kaye's practically from outer space."

"Guess that makes me a Martian, too," Andy said.

I grinned at him, a little bit of relief prickling in the tight muscles of my neck.

"How are you acclimating to being on Earth, Kaye?" Ara asked.

"Kaye likes the city, now that she's stopped getting lost," Genevieve interjected, before I could respond.

"I didn't get lost that often."

"She used to call me from the T station all the time when she first started," Genevieve told Andy. "She kept getting nervous and jumping the gun—getting off at the wrong stop."

"Fall Island really only has two roads," Andy said, shrugging. "A city would be a lot to acclimate to."

"She's doing okay now, though." Genevieve cast me an affectionate glance. "You'd think she'd grown up chasing down food trucks, to be honest."