Read Online We Were One Once Book 1 by Willow Madison - Free Book Online Page A

and
curls. Her face looks smaller left out in the open, her dark eyes
even bigger. She’s in her usual red. This time it’s a tight pair of
jeans, faded red. I watch her walk by the sign saying she should
wait to be seated, as she always does. I smile, watching her sit at
a table—same spot I’ve watched her take for four days.
    I wait for the waitress to
take her order before walking over. I wait until she’s picked up
the crayons and started coloring the paper placemat in front of her
before walking over. It’s her routine. She doodles until the
waitress brings her food.
    “Hello, Red.”
    She doesn’t look up, not
right away. Her shoulders come up, and her chin goes down. Her
whole hand squeezes around the orange crayon, she breathes in three
times rapidly through her nose, and she quickly drops the crayon,
letting it roll off the table like I’ve caught her doing something
wicked.
    Then she relaxes, softens.
Her eyes are the last part of her to raise to me. “Hello, Trust.
How nice to see you again.”
    I don’t sit down. I just
lean over the booth. “Wanna join me for breakfast?”
    She smiles. “Sure.” She
grabs her purse off the seat and slides towards me. “But if by
breakfast you mean a quickie after pancakes, then I’m going to have
to pass for now. Busy day.”
    I laugh. She’s full of
surprises. “Just breakfast, sweetheart.” As she walks by me, I
glance back down at her table. The placemat is full of jagged
orange lines, like sunrays slashed across the center. It’s not so
much a doodle as random, angry lines.
    Sitting back at my booth, I
motion to the waitress that I’m ready to order. I can see that
Grace keeps fidgeting with her hands on the edge of the table,
bouncing her eyes from the small box of crayons and her placemat.
Yet I’ve been told I’m obsessive?
    “You want coffee, or have
you already had too much?” I nod towards her hands.
    She doesn’t answer me, just
looks up at the waitress. With a soft, almost girlish voice, higher
pitched than her usual, “Milk…please?”
    I laugh again as the
waitress walks away. “Does a body good?”
    “What?” Her expression is
clouded.
    “Milk?” I’m sarcastic,
watching her fidgeting increase.
    “Oh. Um. Yeah.” She looks
down at the napkin she’s twisting and almost throws it to the edge
of the table. She shakes her head, even lowers it a little for a
moment. I just sit, frowning. Throwing her off routine really seems
to do a number on her. Good to know.
    I realize how little I
actually know about her. I watched her for four weeks last year,
but I learned almost nothing except that she likes her little
rituals. She sticks to them religiously. We’re alike in that way. I
appreciate this about her.
    She just doesn’t know that
I’m about to turn her little life upside down.
    “Ya know, Trust…I’m sorry,
but I just remembered...” And just like that, she jumps up and
tries to get away. She nearly bumps into the waitress and topples
the plates of food. She sits back down hard to avoid it.
    As the plates are set in
front of us, I can see that she’s only getting more agitated, ready
to run again. As the waitress walks away, I grab her hand from
across the table and without letting go, I move to come over to her
side. I force her to slide further into the booth and block her
escape by sitting down.
    “You okay?” I can add a lot
of fake concern when I need to, but I am actually worried about her, a
little anyway. She looks scared. I only want that look to be in her
eyes when I put it
there.
    She takes one big breath,
steadying again, but doesn’t make eye contact with me. “Look. I
don’t mean to be rude...”
    “So don’t be.” I add a
little anger, just to see her reaction. It’s not good. I was hoping
for a quick backing down.
    Instead, she turns to face
me more, aggressive with her head cocked to the side and a half
smile now on her face. “I was going to say that breakfast is sort
of a ritual for me. I like