The new promotion was nice. I had more freedom over my hours and I didn’t have Mr. Hudson breathing down my neck. In fact, I was his boss now and he had to report to me. I was lenient with him, but I knew there’d be a day when I would enforce those duties. However, that day wasn’t now.

I worked closely with Theresa on the new account. Her excitement had waned, which made sense and I didn’t take offense to it. That meant that she had listened to Noah’s pleadings. One time I asked Carter if he still sparred with Noah in the mornings and he surprised me when he said he did. I thought their friendship would be strained, but it seemed like they went on as if nothing had happened.

It was the end of a week and I was about to leave. But as I stepped outside and saw the car waiting for me, I turned to Mike. He and Thomas stayed with me. They were the regulars. There were others, but I liked knowing who guarded my life the majority of time.

His hand fell away from the car door. “Maybe coffee today?”

I nodded and turned back inside. I went through the front lounge and headed for the café. Carter was gone again. Unlike the last couple times when he never told me where or why he was leaving, he explained to me the night before that he was going to Japan. He was brokering another business merger for a new website program. I nodded. I only cared about when he was coming back and I knew it would take at least a full day. It would be the longest we had been apart since the night he killed Scott Graham.

When I went inside the cafe, Amanda was behind the register. She signaled for someone to take her place and gestured towards a back booth. It was our old booth. When I saw that she grabbed two mugs and a coffee pot, warmth flooded me. It felt good to be falling back into our old routine. It made me feel like I still had one other friend.

“New threads?” she asked as she slid into the booth.

I waited as she filled both mugs. “I got a promotion. It requires better clothes.” That was half true, but I wore the clothes Carter bought for me when I first went to live with him. After making love one time, I asked where the clothes had come from since they all fitted me perfectly. He said he ordered them when I came to him at Octave. He had known even then that I would be with him. My response was to pull him back down to me and it hadn’t been long until he slid back inside of me.

Thinking about that night sparked desire within me. We hadn’t slept much.

“So are you going to tell me about the new man in your life?”

I almost dropped my mug. “Excuse me?”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “Please, Ems. It’s all over you. Even now you’re blushing. I’m not an idiot. Who’s the guy?” She shook her head. “Please tell me it’s not Ben.”

I grinned. “I’m going to have nightmares now. Can you imagine? Waking up and seeing him strutting around the apartment?”

She giggled. “With nothing on except his boxers?” She pretended to stick out her gut how Ben always would. He would rest his hands on the back of his hips and stand, trying to make his gut look bigger than it did. He was always trying to convince us that he wasn’t just skin and bones.

Both of us groaned. I shook my head. “I think I threw up in my mouth just now.”

“Me too.” She giggled some more. “Remember the time he told us he could join an MMA fight club but didn’t because he didn’t want to harm any of the other fighters?”

“You’re right. He said it wasn’t fair to the humanity of the MMA standards if he fought.”

As she sipped her coffee, she shook her head. “He was such an idiot.”

“Pretty much.”

Then she sighed, “Am I pathetic for missing him?”

All of the amusement fled and I was left feeling empty. “I miss Mallory.”

Amanda closed her eyes and lowered her head. She put the mug down on the table as she cleared her throat.

I heard the emotion there. I felt some of it as well.

She said in a quiet voice, “Mallory changed, Ems. What he did to her and what you did in front of her, I think it changed her. She wasn’t the same Mallory before they disappeared.”

Anger speared me. Mallory would’ve never left without a word before it happened. But I left first. I had no right to be angry with her. Then I admitted, “I think that changed all of us.”

She wiped a tear from her eye. “It’s never going to be the same, is it?”

Her eyes held mine. There was a spark of longing in them. She wanted me to tell her everything would be fine. The gang would be back to normal, but it wasn’t the truth. I couldn’t think of a way to lie to her and make it sound convincing. All I could say was, “We can still be normal.”

Her eyes closed in defeat. “You’re different, Ems. We can’t be normal. You’re not normal anymore. I think what you did changed you too.” She opened them again and frowned at me, chewing on her lip for a moment. “It’s like a part of you died.”

A part of me did die. “I think that happens when you kill someone.”

She wiped another tear away. The coffee had grown cold by then. “I’ve been thinking about moving, leaving this place.”

“Where?” A pang stabbed me.

She shrugged. “Maybe back home. They offered me a teaching position and I could take care of my mom. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything here for me.”

I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want to lose another friend, another part of my old life.