Cold Kiss

cookies off the counter. “Can I make us some mochas or will Trevor have a meltdown?”
    “Loverboy’s too busy with chapter whatever the hell it is to do much of anything today but glare at decent paying customers. Go for it.” He winks when I grin, and I can hear him humming something as I walk out front again.
    I set the plate of cookies in front of Darcia, who’s hiding behind her hair and her earbuds from Trevor’s suspicious glances. I’ve told her a million times that he’s, well, not nice exactly, just permanently cranky, but she always gives him a pretty wide berth anyway. I’m used to him, since I’ve been working part-time at Bliss for more than a year, and Geoff has taught me every trick in the book for handling him.
    “Mocha?” I ask her, removing one earbud.
    She bites into a cookie happily and nods. With her feet tucked up beneath her in the window seat, she looks exactly like the Darcia I’ve known for so long, and I feel relief bubble up inside me again. The zydeco coming out of the café’s speakers swells higher for a second, and Trevor looks up and frowns.
    I manage to tamp it down and walk behind the counter to start the mochas. The only other customers in the café are two soccer moms who seem to be coordinating some kind of playdate on their BlackBerrys, and a college kid who’s deep into The Riverside Shakespeare and keeps mouthing the dialogue as he reads.
    It’s good. It’s right, to be here with Darcia, with Trevor scowling and Geoff baking, and for once I feel like I used to. Normal, or as close to it as I ever get.
    But when I sit down, sliding Darcia’s mocha across the table toward her, I realize I have no idea what to say. I don’t know what she’s been doing since school started, if she’s still taking guitar lessons or if she ever talked her mom into letting her get a job. I don’t know what new bands she’s discovered or what boys she’s crushing on, and there are always a few, all admired from afar.
    Even when Danny was alive we spent most of our time together. Even when Jess was dating Tyler Ford or that asshole J.D. Springer, and Dar was starting to worry about getting into college. We’d started having weekly sleepovers when we were still young enough to be thrilled that Jess’s mom had made Rice Krispies Treats and when staying up past midnight was still a big deal. By the time we were in high school the only difference was that we were talking about how J.D. didn’t know that tongue in a girl’s ear wasn’t a good thing instead of which one of us was going to marry the lead singer of Fall Out Boy one day.
    I knew when Darcia got her period, and she knew the day that Jess and I tried smoking. Jess heard all about the time I threw up wine coolers on Will Zorger’s shoes, and Dar confided to us that she stole a lipstick from the drugstore downtown. Despite all that history, I suddenly have no idea what to say to her.
    I can tell it’s not any easier for her. She’s put the iPod away again, but she’s got her lit notebook open on the table like a shield, and she keeps doodling in the margin instead of looking at me. When she speaks, it’s such a surprise I almost spill my drink.
    “So you’re doing better now?” Her voice is soft, as tentative as always. “About … Danny, I mean?”
    And there it is. The reason everything is different, even if she doesn’t know just how true that is.
    “I guess?” I can’t help making it a question, because I don’t know what else to say. I can’t tell her it’s really so much worse now.
    “I’m sorry.” She swallows, looking anywhere but at me, a half-eaten cookie in her hand. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s okay now, or that you’re okay, that’s not what I meant.” Her words hang awkwardly in the warm, mocha-scented air. She looks miserable.
    “I know what you meant, Dar,” I tell her, even though I can feel the sharp edges of all the words I can’t say, jagged and painful in my throat. “I’m trying.”
    That’s the truth anyway.
    “I know you loved him,” she says, and puts down the cookie. It lies like a dusty half-moon on the plate. “How much you loved him. It’s not a question of that.”
    I blink at her. “I never thought it was.”
    “I know!” She’s flushed now, cheeks hot and pink. “I just meant…”
    “You meant it’s a question for Jess because she saw me at lunch with Gabriel.” It sounds so stupid out loud. A boy sat with me at lunch and suddenly I’m on