I shake my head. “That’s not an excuse.”
Just then I hear the slow screech of the bathroom door creaking open. “Shit,” Sean says. He grabs my arm and in one swift motion pulls me into one of the stalls and shuts the stall door behind us. I can smell him, the warm scent of his skin, the slight saltiness of the grease on his lips. I look up, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen someone’s face from this close. I stare at his dark lower eyelashes, at the smooth curve of his cheekbones. His body is radiating heat. I can feel his heart pumping against mine. I start to laugh for no reason at all. Sean clamps his hand over my mouth.
We hear the click-click-click of a woman’s shoes tapping against the tile floor. The rush of water from the faucet and then the creak of the door opening. “You don’t have to hide, you know,” the voice calls on the way out. “You think you’re the first two people to come in here together?” And then the door creaks shut.
Sean looks down at me, and I can feel myself blushing. We leave the stall, go back to the sink. My mouth is still warm where his hand was. I look at Nina’s mark on the mirror one last time, reach out the tip of my finger and trace the lines, following the path she must have followed with her pen. And I notice something that I hadn’t noticed before, there next to the mirror, drawn on as though it is driving up the side, is a tiny little bus, dark deep red, drawn by Nina, with three tiny numbers written on the front: 257.
I hold onto Sean’s arm. I point, suddenly breathless with my own realization. Our eyes meet. And then I am grabbing Sean’s hand, or maybe he is grabbing mine, and we are running back through the dining room, which is almost completely empty now. Through the front window we can see bus 257 starting to pull away. Sean takes out his wallet, tosses a couple twenties onto our table and together we tumble out into the night.
Fourteen
We run, our feet slapping against the pavement, and fling ourselves into the car. Sean peels out of the parking lot and we hold our breath until we catch up to the bus right before it pulls out onto the highway. It is only once we are safely situated behind its giant chrome bumper, that Sean turns to me and shakes his finger, saying, “Well, see? I told you so! There’d be a clue! A clue for which I have now decided to give myself full credit.”
And I grin. “Thank you,” I say. I lean back against the seat. I’m not tired anymore. It’s not an I’ve-gone-to-sleep-and-woken-up kind of awake, it’s an all-this-adrenaline-has-shifted-me-over-to-a-slightly-different-reality kind of awake. I sit back up. “But really, thank you for everything, for all of this.”
“Eh, don’t mention it. I have ulterior motives.”
I feel my face getting hot. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Because there’s nothing I can do to find my brother. So going with you on this trip makes me feel like, I don’t know, like I’m doing something.”
Oh.
“For siblings everywhere!” He punches the air, smiling, like he’s trying to make things light, but his smile doesn’t reach up to his eyes.
My stomach tightens. I’m an idiot. Both for somehow thinking he was flirting with me just now, and for somehow forgetting how hard all this must be for him. Going on a hunt for someone’s sister can’t be easy when a hunt for your brother would only lead you underground.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry that…”
“Don’t.” Sean turns toward me. He reaches out and puts his hand on my arm. “It’s nice that you want to, but you don’t need to.” My skin feels hot where he’s touching it. “We’re the same, you and me.” Something is happening in the car, the energy is changing in here. I hold my breath. We sit there like that, his hand still on my arm, his fingers moving ever so slightly. And then suddenly he takes his hand away.
He clears his throat. “So she was full of surprises, huh?”
I miss his hand. I want him to put his hand back. I shift in my seat. I put my own hand on my arm where his hand was.
“Your sister I mean. She was surprising.” There’s an edge to his voice and just for a second I feel protective of Nina, which is, of course, ridiculous. Sean doesn’t know anything about Nina other than what I’ve told him. And what I’ve told him certainly doesn’t make her sound like a rock of reliability.
Sean is staring straight ahead at the bus in front of us. The taillights are making his face glow red. I lean back against the seat and close my eyes. The images flash through my brain—the red ink on the mirror, the guy’s face, the heart, at once comforting and terrible. Comforting because she was okay, she was happy. She was in love. Terrible because she left us all for a guy and she never looked back. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess she was.”