She took a breath and tried to collect herself. He was a customer like any other, Maddy thought, and he would be treated as such.
“Here you are,” she said, setting the menu down on the table. “I’ll be right back to take your order.”
Jacks slid into the booth and glanced at Maddy as she walked away. She was really pretty, he thought, even if she was just an ordinary girl. As she disappeared into the kitchen, he was surprised to realize he was still watching her.
He pulled out his cell phone and texted Mark his location.
Kevin was hanging up his apron when Maddy appeared. “One more customer,” she told him.
“Really?” Kevin asked wearily. “You didn’t just tell him we were closed?”
Maddy looked down at the floor, thinking about her reaction to the cute stranger. “Uh, he seems a little shaken up. I didn’t want to send him away.”
Kevin gave Maddy a look. “All right, go get his order,” he said, putting his apron back on. “The sooner he gets his food, the sooner we can go home.”
Maddy poured a glass of ice water and placed it on her tray. She headed over. “Long night?” she asked as she set the water in front of Jacks and pulled out her notepad.
Mark’s text came in. Jacks glanced at it: STAY THERE, COMING TO YOU. Jacks flipped the phone over on the table and looked up at Maddy.
“Something like that. I just needed to get off the road for a second.”
“Well, you came to the right place. What can I get you?”
“Ah,” he started, then stopped. Maddy waited. His gaze had drifted outside. Maddy looked up. Two ACPD cruisers had just pulled into the parking lot.
Jacks picked up the menu. “What do you recommend?”
As Maddy ran through the specials, Jacks’s eyes darted outside again. The cruisers had parked in the lot, and two policemen stepped out.
“Any of that sound good?” Maddy asked, and waited for a response. Jacks watched as the officers examined his Ferrari with flashlights. At once they turned and looked in the direction of the diner. Jacks instinctively sank down in the booth, his mind racing. “The meat loaf’s good too,”
Maddy continued, trying to spur a decision, starting to feel guilty that she was keeping Kevin.
“Actually. .” Jacks said, trailing off. And then he noticed it. There was a sign in the window. Even facing away from him, he could still read the red lettering: HELP
WANTED, and below that, scrawled in black Sharpie, Part-time position available. Jacks looked at Maddy. “I’d like to apply for a job.”
Maddy blinked. “Okay, I’ll bring back an application with your food.”
“I was actually hoping I could apply right now,” Jacks said, a little urgently.
“All right,” Maddy said, a little surprised, “I’ll bring you the application.” Maddy turned to go in the back, oblivi-ous to the officers approaching just outside the window.
“Miss?” Jacks called. Maddy turned. “Isn’t there someplace we could go in the back? So you could interview me? I’d like to get that part out of the way.” His eyes flickered to the door, where the police were just entering, their hands were on their holsters. He looked back at Maddy.
“Please.”
There was something different about him, Maddy thought. Something beyond the obvious good looks. It was in the way his eyes caught the light. The way he looked at her. They way he held her gaze. The funniest thing was, it made her want to trust him.
She was surprised to find herself speaking.
“Okay, follow me.”
Jacks jumped to his feet and followed Maddy around the counter and into the back. He couldn’t believe she didn’t recognize him, but at this point he didn’t care. He wasn’t concerned with anything except getting out of the dining room.
Maddy’s uncle was cleaning the griddle as they passed. Before Kevin could look up, Maddy had taken Jacks into their tiny office and closed the door.
The room was dingy and cramped. A battered metal desk was covered in piles of receipts and bills, an old picture of Maddy and Uncle Kevin in a frame poking up out of the mess. Maddy’s backpack, exploding with textbooks and college brochures, sat on the floor. She smoothed her uniform and found an application among a stack of forms. Jacks took a seat in the creaky chair opposite the desk and pulled his hood back.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Sure.”
Closed in the small room with him, the fact struck Maddy that this boy’s beauty was nearly overwhelming.
Who was this guy? It didn’t even seem real. His pale blue eyes were piercing under strong, dark eyebrows, and his model good looks sat on a sturdy face, giving him a slightly rugged quality.
“Okay,” she said, assembling her thoughts and grabbing a pen out of a nearby coffee mug. “I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Ja. . Jason.” Jacks looked over to a newspaper sitting on the desk and read the headline: STOCKS SLIDE
AGAIN. “Jason Stockton.”
“Okay, Mr. Stockton,” Maddy said, “do you have any prior experience in serving?”
“No,” Jacks said. Maddy looked up at him.
“Any experience in the restaurant industry at all?”
“No.”
Maddy sat back in her chair. “You know, Jason, to get a restaurant job in Angel City it’s pretty much required to have some experience serving.”
Jacks’s lips pulled up into a half-grin. “Well, how are you supposed to get experience if you can’t land a job to begin with?”
Maddy folded her arms and leaned over the table. She was trying not to flirt, but she almost couldn’t help herself.
“Okay, then, why should I hire you?”
Jacks looked for something, anything, that would keep him safely in the back room. His eyes drifted down to Maddy’s backpack and a college brochure sticking out between two textbooks.
“To save money for college,” he said, improvising.
Maddy paused, her expression softening. Jacks looked at the image of the leafy campus on the brochure’s cover.
“Somewhere back east, actually. Away from Angel City.”
“Really?” Maddy said, her interest piqued.
“Yeah. .” Jacks said unsteadily. He took a deep breath and lied. “It’s always been my dream. Problem is my family, well, we don’t have a ton of money right now.”
Maddy shook her head in empathy. “I know how that is. Did your dad lose his job or something?”
“Actually, he. .” Jacks trailed off, searching Maddy’s eyes. He was surprised she had unwittingly brought him back to the truth. “He died.”
Maddy flushed. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
Jacks shrugged. “It’s okay, I was young. I never really knew him at all.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it any easier,” Maddy said, her defenses collapsing with startling quickness. “I mean, I know just how it is. Both my parents died when I was just a baby. I never knew them either.”
“Wow, I’m sorry. I thought I had it rough.”
“It’s okay,” Maddy said, looking away. Jacks watched her. He felt a sudden urge to share something with her that he’d never told anyone.
“You know what? This might sound crazy, but I have no memories of him, right?” Jacks said. “So one day I just started making them up. Making up things we did together, places we went.” He laughed in embarrassment, shaking his head. “Pretty stupid, right?”
Maddy was quiet for a long moment, but her eyes had returned to Jacks and studied him.
“At the park,” she said finally.
“What?”