The Confession Read Free Page A

jogged past the hostess without a word and turned the corner, but the table where Alec had sat was empty.
    â€œJust one, ma’am?” The hostess caught up with me, and as she did, the sounds of the restaurant tumbled past the rushing in my ears. Clanking dishes. Silverware hitting the floor. Laughter and conversation.
    My chest went cold.
    â€œN-no, I’m fine,” I said. She continued to watch me as I scanned the main seating area. “There was a man sitting there a few minutes ago. Do you know where he went?”
    Her brows lifted. “I haven’t seated anyone there since lunch.”
    I looked again at the empty table, feeling the color rise up my neck. Great. I was hallucinating him everywhere now. And even if he
had
been real, what was my plan once I’d gotten here?
Hey Alec, how’ve you been? Anyone you know been tossed off a bridge lately?
This wasn’t a margarine commercial. We weren’t running to each other in slow motion across fields of daisies.
    â€œSorry,” I told her. “My mistake.”
    I’d promised myself I would stay clear of him. For Amy and Paisley. For my own safety. I told myself this like he’d been incorrigible, unable to leave me alone.
    That was most definitely
not
the case.
    I hadn’t changed my number, and he hadn’t called once. I lived at the same apartment, worked at the same salon. He knew where to find me, and he hadn’t.
    There was nothing quite as shitty as realizing you’re easy to get over.
    It was time I got over Alec Flynn.
    I crossed the street, the numbness descending back over my shoulders like the heavy air. I was grateful for it. It was easier to feel nothing than to be constantly aware of the empty pit he’d left inside of me.
    The signs were easy enough to follow once I entered the building. The lobby was clean and painted by a rainbow of colors reflected through the stained glass windows. The dinosaur exhibit in the main room had been pushed aside to create more floor area and thirty or so kids sprawled out across plastic tarps, surrounded by stacks of newspapers.
    It didn’t take long to find Jacob. He was the one with two fingers in his mouth, whistling loud enough to crack someone’s eardrums.
    Making my way across the floor, I waved at his foster mom, chatting with a few other women on the far side of the room. Squares of newspaper immediately stuck to my shoes, a result of the paste that was being used to papier-mâché balloons.
    Jacob’s black hair was sticking straight out on one side. He’d probably touched it with his pastey hands. He gave me a lopsided smile and pretended to throw his heavy balloon, smothered with newspaper, straight at me.
    â€œDid you hear me whistle?” he asked.
    â€œI’m pretty sure people in New York heard you whistle,” I answered, rubbing my ear. “I have a name, you know. People usually save whistling for dogs.”
    He knelt back on the ground beside his little sister, six-year- old Sammy, who was making neat stacks of newspaper rather than attending to her balloon. Her kinky hair was in two puff balls on the top of her head, and her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration.
    â€œStanley showed me how,” he said.
    Stanley was his foster father at the placement where I’d fought for him to live with his sister. I smiled. Maybe things were crap in my life, but knowing Jacob was happy, and that I’d played a part in that, took some of the weight off my shoulders.
    â€œWhat are you making?” I asked.
    â€œHot air balloons,” he said. “Mr. Rodriguez is an artist. We’re making masks like that one.” He pointed to the front of the room, where an elderly man with a long, white beard was showing an intricate tiger mask to a young girl.
    â€œAwesome,” I said. “So how’s everything going?”
    He painted his balloon with enough white paste to drown a horse and then haphazardly