Kimberly was bouncing on her heels when I spotted her. She held her purse in front of her, her head swiveling around the perimeter to keep an eye out for me. She had indeed cut her bangs. They were pin straight, hanging off her forehead in a thin wisp. They suited her because of how they drew attention to her eyes. They were always painted in the most bold and intricate eyeliner.

She reminded me of a fox not just because of her long, narrow face but because of her mannerisms. She always seemed like she was up to no good, conjuring up some scheme or trick. Her gaze was almost predatory. It must have been a helpful exterior to have when traveling. No one wants to mess with the woman who looked ready to kill.

All of that bravo wore off when she saw me. She smiled with open lips, displaying a row of shiny white teeth.

"Hey girl!" she said, throwing an arm around me. She smelled like a meadow of lilies. The velvet sleeve of her dress brushed softly against my cheek. "It feels like it's been years."

It was that time in the evening where the sun's orange rays caught on every reflective surface, sending harsh beams straight into our eyes and temporarily blinding us. There was a car parked next to us on the street that was doing just that. I recognized it as Kimberly's jeep. I was jealous of it. It was white with stickers on the back from all the different states she had been to. California, New Mexico, Minnesota, Texas, Ohio, Montana, the collection growing and growing as the months pass. She planned to spend at least one weekend in every state. She was most excited about Hawaii.

"I know, I'm sorry I didn't reach out to you sooner," I said. I could feel a hint of a chill in the air. It was the prelude to nighttime. I glanced at my watch. It was almost eight. We had reservations to make at an Italian place we both had never been to before.

Kimberly patted my shoulder and then started in the direction of the restaurant. We walked side by side and I could see the outline of a line of people formed at the top of the block.

"Don't worry about it. I understand that you needed time after what happened. About that," she paused, glancing at me through the shades she had slipped on, "What do you need from me tonight? Do you want to talk about what happened or would you rather have a distraction?"

This was what I loved about my best friend. Things were always so simple with her. There weren't any weird politics in our relationship, no dancing around awkward subjects or trying to figure out what the other person was thinking. If she wanted to know what I was thinking, she just asked. She never assumed that she knew me better than I knew myself or that she knew what was right for me. She never made me second guess my choices either. Around Kimberly, I felt like my age. It was a whole different atmosphere than the one at my home. It was probably why she didn't like to come over often.

"Distraction," I answered as we took our place on the line outside the restaurant. After my meeting with Vincent the day prior, I craved some easy going social interaction. Rehatching the nightmare that was my sister's wedding didn't qualify as that.

Vincent and I had wrapped up our meeting agreeing to meet again in a few days. He didn't want me to worry about figuring out natural ways to integrate him into my family life. He seemed confident it would happen naturally. We exchanged numbers and he told me if I heard or saw anything that may be helpful to the investigation, to give him a call. He also wanted me to let him know if I heard back from the anonymous caller.

The instructions were simple enough. One step at a time.

Kimberly reached into her purse and swiftly pulled out her phone like she was prepared for my request of a distraction. She typed in her password, her acrylic nails making satisfying tapping noises as she did so.

"Check this out." She held out her phone for both of us to see. She had opened an old social media app we had lived half of our lives on while in college. The color scheme was a bright blue and orange and the font mirroring that of a neon sign. It was a place to share pictures and short videos. The gimmick being that all the editing software you could ever want to work with was already on the app. Kimberly and I would have competitions where we'd see who could distort their face the most. One time, Kimberly had made herself go from Korean to White in the span of ten minutes. It was freaky.

"Ah, I remember this old thing. Do you still have an active account on here?"

"No," Kimberly said, dragging out the vowel sound. "This app is hella dead but I got bored and started looking through all the old accounts I followed. It was like traveling back in time."

She pressed an icon in the top left corner of the screen. A swirling cursor moved around the center of the page as it loaded. Then I was looking at the image of a girl who had been in a creative writing class with me. Nessa, was it? Her hair was blood red and her eyeliner almost as dramatic as Kimberly's. She was posed in an oversized hoodie, her hands completely hidden in the sleeves. She was standing in front of a painting of wings. They looked as if they were attached to her. The caption below it read "Her eyelashes fluttered against my cheek, soft like the wings of a butterfly."

"She married one of her professors," Kimberly said. "I found out because she was following his account and he still uses this outdated app. His last post was of them on their honeymoon last year."

She clicked a few more buttons and pulled up a page sparsely filled with content. She was right. At the top of the collection of pictures was an image of a man at least fifteen years older than Nessa, holding her hand as they walked down a sandy beach. He had taught a criminal justice course I took my freshman year.

"That's a little icky, isn't it?"

"Tell me about it. How does that even happen in online school? Did he private message her on the grading website with some cringey historian pick up line?" Kimberly mused. She flipped through the rest of the photos on the post. The two had honeymooned in Jamaica. They were all smiles and blushes. "They look happy but I don't buy it. Everyone on this site was constantly posting highlight reels. Heck, if I had a bad day the first thing I did was post a selfie of me smiling with a liter of coffee."

We inched forward in the line to the restaurant, not sparing a moment to glance up from the phone. She was scrolling through the list of suggested people to follow based on the professor's page. A profile photo drew me closer.

"Click on that one," I said, pointing to the tiny icon. Kimberly tapped it and there in all his frat boy glory stood Darren's abandoned account. He was almost unrecognizable. As if to agree with my thought, Kimberly gasped.

He was tan in an orangey hue with his hair reaching down to his shoulders. A pair of sunglasses sat on his head and he wore a stretched out v-neck. The gold chain around his neck was thin and if Kimberly were to zoom into the profile picture I was certain we could confirm that there were hickey's trailing the line of his collar bone. He had his arm draped across someone but they were cut off or cropped out. I could practically smell the beer and marijuna coming off of him.

"Oh my gosh!" Kimberly exclaimed. She shook my shoulder, a teasing smile on her lips. "Are you seeing this?"

"I wish I could unsee it," I said, though I was giggling. The juxtaposition was shocking. My Darren was the one with the wrinkless shirts, perfectly gelled hair, and no cursing policy. He was the man who couldn't sleep unless he had finished all the work he had planned to get done. He would go to sleep at nine pm on the weekends so as to not mess up his sleep schedule. This Darren, he was wild.

Like mad women, we picked apart every single nook and cranny of his profile for more information about this past version of Darren. I couldn't believe he had left the account up. He must have forgotten all about it.

There were more pictures of him in v-necks, ones with a beer in his hand or posing like he was in a playboy magazine at various campus spots. He was more bulky back then, probably a gym rat. He had posts that were pseudo motivational. It was the kind of advice people who had already made it and lost touch with reality gave. Things like "If you aren't able to risk the usual, you'll have to settle for the ordinary." Forget about Nessa and her affair with the professor, Darren's old page was the ickiest.

Not much time had passed between Darren's graduation to when we first met. I wondered what could have made such a striking change in him. Didn't the natural process of maturing take a few years to complete? With Darren, it seemed like he had changed overnight. Then, I remembered, his mother had died shortly before we met.

We never talked much about his past. Everytime I tried to bring it up, he'd say something like "You got to look forward or you'll miss what's ahead of you." Well, with that cliche inspirational advice in mind, maybe he wasn't completely different from what he was like back then.

"Wow, you know I had a feeling Darren might have had a dark past," Kimberly said, wagging her finger at me. "It's in his smile. It's too cheeky and charming, like he's practiced it in the mirror for hours."

I elbowed her side. "He's reformed now. Obviously."

She laughed, zooming into a photo of Darren posed in front of a luxury car that undoubtedly hadn't been his. "I don't know. This lady killer is probably still in there somewhere, on the prowl waiting for his next victim."

Darren and I had met through work. Before I worked for a publishing house, I was writing captions for companies on social media. Darren's startup hired me for a few months and it was within that time frame where Darren made it his life's mission to get a date with me. It was funny to think about it in hindsight. I was so shy and withdrawn, not speaking unless it was about work stuff. I had no idea why Darren had even spared a glance in my direction. He was persistent, finding excuses for us to speak and complimenting me until my cheeks burned and I felt the need to flee. The smile Kimberly described as practiced came off as genuine to me. It broke through all the fear that kept me from considering going out with anyone and wore me out. After my first date with Darren, I knew I could fall in love with him. I knew it would be easy.

We were at the front of the line soon and the waiter walked us to a table at the center of the restaurant. The table cloth was checkered and in the middle of it sat a scentless candle. We picked up the menus and scanned the contents. Our silence indicated we were both feeling the same thing: hunger. Picking what we were going to eat and ordering became top priority.

"Is it me or does everything on this menu sound like the kind of disgusting stuff rich people eat and pretend tastes good?"

I lowered my menu slowly. I hadn't wanted to say anything since she had chosen the place but I had been thinking the exact same thought.

"Yeah. This would better suit my sister's interests."

At the reference to my sister, Kimberly pretended to gag. The two were notorious for getting into arguments. Two passionate people unafraid to say what they thought could lead to either really productive conversations or really explosive ones. The two of them produced the latter. Nancy was too bossy and Kimberly didn't like anyone thinking they could step over her. I wished I could have borrowed some of my friend's nerves.

Wanting to sneak a peek at someone else's dish to see if the food looked appetizing, I glanced around the restaurant. Everyone around us must have been seated recently because their tables were empty or only housing drinks and appetizers. Everyone except for a table in the right hand corner.

I saw the plate of food first. It was a slush of orange and red with soggy chunks of pasta. It was more of a representation of how pasta looked chewed up in your stomach rather than how it looked on its way into your mouth. A fork was being raked through it, stirring the sauce and scattering pieces but never actually scooping up the food.

I followed the fork up to the person's arm and then their face. I sucked in a breath.

Vincent.

He wore a white button up with black slacks. He had a mild look of disgust as he stared down at his plate. Then, as if he could sense me, he looked straight at me.

I didn't know what to do. The normal thing to do was to say hi but Vincent seemed so unapproachable. If I waved I'd probably be met with a curt nod or no response at all. And was I supposed to acknowledge his presence? We were going to be pretending to be coworkers. This wasn't a coworker kind of situation. But coworkers could run into each other while out and about. A real co worker would at least say hello to their fellow employee.

Oh gosh, I was spiraling.

"Who is that?"

"Huh?"

"The person you're having a staring contest with."

I tore my gaze from Vincent's to see Kimberly's humored expression. She leaned her elbow on the table, her chin resting in her palm. Her nails tapped along her cheek as she waited for my response. Suddenly, the restaurant was too quiet, quiet enough for Vincent to hear me from across the room.

In a hushed voice, I answered, "My new client needed two editors for his book. He's my coworker."

"Okay so why aren't you saying hi?"

Wiping off my sweaty hands on the back of my pants, I approached Vincent's table. He hadn't taken his eyes off of me from when he first noticed me. I felt itchy in my mini dress as I walked over, looking anywhere but at him.

"Mickey," he breathed out before I even had a chance to get a word in. "I didn't think I would see you again so soon."

"Hi." The single syllable was supposed to be an attempt at stalling until I could line up my words and figure out what I wanted to say. "I was just having dinner with my friend Kimberly."

I gestured to her. She was watching from the table and waved cooly when he glanced back at her. She was so much better at these things than I was. She could make any situation comfortable.

"You live around here?"

Vincent nodded. "Not too far. I heard this restaurant was good."

"Is it though? You don't seem to be making too much progress on that . . ." I trailed off, not able to identify what exactly was on his plate. Lasagna? Chicken and mashed potatoes?

He bit his lip, as if thinking of a polite thing to say. Then he shook his head violently. "No. It's horrible. I can't bring myself to eat it."

Kimberly snuck up behind me, grimacing at the food on Vincent's plate. "Does everything on the menu look like that?"

"If I were you two, I'd leave while I still could. The interior decorating is great but that won't save the food."

"Bummer. Why don't we go to the old reliable instead?" Kimberly suggested. She turned to Vincent. "You could come along too. We promise the food there is great. A bit of a different vibe though."

"Old reliable, huh?"

I smiled at Vincent though I was certain my nerves were palpable. The longer he stuck around Kimberly and I, the longer my lie stretched out. I knew working with Vincent meant I would have to deceive but I wasn't prepared for it so soon. I didn't even think it would reach Kimberly.

"Sure, I'll join you two," he said. "As long as Mickey doesn't mind. I don't want to intrude."

He peered at me from under his eyebrows. He knew how uncomfortable I was but yet he put me in a position where the only thing I could do was accept. He was pushing me. I couldn't decide if that made him a jerk or a good partner.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was determined to keep him from knowing he was getting to me. I wanted to prove to him I could deal with this police business. I was strong enough.

I imitated the confidence that often dripped from Kimberly's voice like honey and said, "Please, join us."

__________________

The booths of the waffle house were almost completely filled up. It was a testimony to how great the food was. Unlike the last place, the menu was never disappointing. Plastered on posters that marked nearly every square inch of wall were different waffle variations coupled with a picture that was guaranteed to make your mouth water. From the booth we were sitting at, I could see the strawberry shortcake waffle poster and the banana foster one.

Vincent ordered the oreo crumble waffles which surprised me. I was guessing he would go for something more tame like blueberry or plain. Something more stiff like him. Actually, I was shocked he hadn't bolted once he saw the place, making some excuse about watching his sugar intake.

"Oreo Crumble is my usual order too," I said as the waitress took our menus.

"Ah, so you're spicing it up with the cheesecake order today?"

"Yeah, I'm feeling a little adventurous tonight." I wondered if Vincent's detective radar could pick up that the cheesecake order was the equivalent to taking vodka instead of a beer. I was desperately trying to take the edge off.

Vincent sat across from Kimberly and I. He was less stoic than he was with me yesterday morning. He was smiling at the right moments, ditching his monotone voice for a friendly one and doing his part to keep the conversation going. It put me at ease on the surface, seeing that things weren't horribly awkward after inviting him along. On a deeper level, this change in personality was off putting. One of these two variations of Vincent was the real one and I had a feeling it was the one he was when he wasn't actively undercover. Forget being a detective, he should have been an actor. He was great at pretending he actually wanted to be here.

"Since you're also a book editor," Kimberly said to Vincent, "what is your favorite genre of books to edit versus your favorite books to read?" As soon as the sentence left her mouth, I thought about excusing myself to the bathroom and escaping through a window. I tried to have faith Vincent would remember what I told him about my work and that he did research of his own.

It was one thing to have a cover story in case questions were asked about the two of us but having it be directly challenged was intense. The lie was demanding for more lies in order to be kept up. By the end of this partnership, I was going to be caught in a web of them.

I stared at Vincent, my palm squeezing the foamy cushion of the seat beneath me.

"I like a good psychological thriller - both to read and to edit." When he finished the sentence, his eyes trained themselves on me steadily.

There was a message hidden in them. It was something like Calm down.

Kimberly poked my arm. "Now I see why you two would get along well. I'm sure she's told you but Mickey loves those sorts of things. She used to want to be a detective when she was little. Or was it a police officer?"

My cheeks were lit aflame. Vincent stifled a laugh. I guessed it was a genuine one. The irony was not lost on him.

"Officer Morales," he said, testing the sound of it. His eyebrow cocked up. "Not too bad."

"I was a kid. I wanted to be a princess at some point too," I quickly clarified. Now he was going to think that I would be overzealous in our partnership on Adonis's case. The police were only involving me because I had a connection to the anonymous caller which presumably had a connection to drug trafficking. I was just barely significant enough to be involved.

"I didn't know that about you. Moving away from books, if you like thrillers, what kind of shows do you watch?"

The switch in the direction of the conversation was like a burst of cool air after struggling to breathe. Maybe Vincent could read the discomfort in my expression or maybe he was actually interested in the conversation. Either way, I latched on to the escape.

Turns out that Vincent watched all the same cop shows I watched growing up. While we talked about them, complaining about bad storyline decisions and reminiscing over great episodes, I felt more comfortable with Vincent crashing our hang out. Kimberly was the kind of person that couldn't watch something while it was popular so she delighted in getting recommendations for shows that debuted so long ago they were nearly forgotten.

It was when we were parting ways that I got a moment alone with Vincent. I was glad I did. I needed to debrief what just happened.

"It's a coincidence that we bumped into each other."

I watched his face carefully. Nothing shifted. His lips remained in a straight line and his eyebrows relaxed.

"It is."

I was beginning to gather Vincent was not the one for games or dilly dallying. I cut to the chase.

"Are you following me?"

It was something that had been lingering in the back of my mind throughout the night. I had never seen him around before yesterday but today I happened to run into him? He was also so smooth tonight, too well rehearsed and prepared. Again, I was reminded of an actor. He had all his lines memorized and the scene blocking.

His expression shifted at the question. It was a smirk that morphed into a full out grin. He laughed me off.

"No. Like you said, this was a coincidence."

I locked eyes with him. He was unflinching.

"If you say so," I said.

Translation: I didn't buy it.

Author's Note: Remember to vote and comment! I love hearing from you all.