No Tomorrow, Part 23

7:00 a.m. – continued

She considered texting her parents to let them know she would be home soon, but she thought it might be nicer if she surprised them instead. Of course, they were expecting her, but she wasn’t supposed to arrive until closer to her cousin’s ten-thirty wedding. Surprising them might be nice, something nice for the last day. They needed that, especially since it was highly unlikely Cooper would be coming home. 

No, she would surprise her family after relaxing a little in the coffee shop. It had been a long drive and she didn’t want to dive headfirst into her family. Besides, she was still caught up with little Iris’s family. She had loved that little girl as though she were her own. And Rose and Nick had always been wonderful to her, just too busy as an engineer and high end interior designer to spend much time with their daughter. But the job did help her through college, so a part of her was happy the little girl’s parents were always away. And Iris adored her.

Poor child. She had cried like crazy when Abigail had said it was time for her to leave that morning. Little Alice had looked devastated, too, but was much better at keeping herself together. Iris fell apart easily, but Abigail suspected it was more due to wanting to get her parents’ attention. It was a hard habit for an eight-year-old child to break.

While Abigail was toying with her phone, clicking around on it with her eyes focused on the screen, the young man in front of her was eyeing her out of the corner of his eye. Grant was sure he’d seen her before, but he had seen and met so many beautiful girls that it was getting hard to keep them all straight. Still, her soft auburn hair and deep blue eyes should have been something he would remember.

He mentally shrugged to himself and yawned. Neither he nor Rob had gotten much sleep the night before. They’d watched the sports channel most of the night and drunk beer, though Grant didn’t care too much for either. He’d kind of dozed off at around five, but was wide awake at six-thirty. Rob was out cold when he’d slipped out the door, having fallen asleep at around six. His snoring had kept Grant awake for most of the next half hour before Grant had decided he wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep and maybe he should get some coffee.

Abigail looked up while he was surreptitiously studying her, shoving her phone back in her bag. Their eyes met and he gave her a sheepish look while her eyes had gone a little cold.

“Sorry,” he said. “You just look familiar.”

She gave a one shoulder shrug and folded her arms. “How long have you lived here for?” She wasn’t exactly unfriendly, but she really didn’t like being stared at, either.

“All my life. Well, most of it, anyways,” he said with a shrug. “I was born in the city, but moved here when I was two. So, I’ve been here for about twenty-five years, I guess.”

“So, I guess you must have gone to the schools here?”

He nodded and gave a short laugh. “Yeah. That was a while ago.”

She gave a sharp nod. “We must have seen each other around there, then. I was born and raised here. I’m about three years younger than you, so we were probably at some of the same schools at the same time.”

“Probably.”

The man at the front of the line finally gave his final order and moved off. The next two customers, having had plenty of time to contemplate their orders, gave theirs in clipped tones. Grant and Abigail then gave theirs in rapid succession and moved off together to wait by the side, even though there hadn’t been anyone standing behind Abigail.