And I thought that was the end of it.

I could not possibly have been more wrong.

Chapter 7 — The Morning Call

My phone rang the next morning, hours before my afternoon shift was supposed to start, and Julian’s name was on the screen, which had never once happened before.

My first thought, my tired reflexive thought, was that something had gone wrong and I was somehow going to be blamed for it, because that was the shape my life had taken at that restaurant.

I almost did not answer.