Free The Space Between Us by Megan Hart Page A

didn’t know. It was tucked neatly off a side street and not part of the Second Street strip of bars and clubs, so while I’d been there once or twice, it wasn’t a place I hung out in regularly.
    Meredith did, apparently, based on the way the guy at the door greeted her and the waitress smiled when she showed us to our table. Meredith settled into her seat and pulled off her leather gloves with the sigh of a woman grateful to be out of the cold, while I thought seriously about leaving my mittens on to disguise the sudden trembling of my fingers.
    “Hello, gorgeous,” Meredith said when the waitress had handed us our menus and left. “I love the scarf.”
    It wasn’t anything fancy, just a strip of teal silk I’d tied to one side of my throat above the boat neckline of my peasant blouse. I touched it, though, when she admired it.
    “Very fifties French sailor,” she said. “Very Audrey Hepburn.”
    That had been the sort of look I was going for, with makeup to match. “Thanks.”
    And after that, it was fine.
    Most of it was her way. How easy she made it to be with her. She was different here than she was in the Mocha. A little less bright, a little softer, her voice more a murmur, so that I had to lean across the table to catch what she was saying, though I never had any trouble hearing her laughter.
    I liked making her laugh.
    “See,” she said, when I’d finished describing to her the situation with my brother and his roommate. “You have a great talent for telling stories. I don’t know why you’re so hesitant to join in at the Mocha.”
    “I don’t want to share my secrets with strangers. Then they wouldn’t be secrets anymore.”
    “Why’s it have to be a secret?” She smiled.
    I drew my fork through the mashed potatoes left on my plate. She’d been right about the shepherd’s pie. “I have to face those people every day at work. I don’t want them knowing about my sex life.”
    “We don’t only talk about sex. We talk about lots of things.” Meredith had eaten only half her food, and now she pushed her plate away with her fingertips.
    I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and thought of how she’d left the imprint of her lips behind on the one I’d eventually tossed in the trash. “What is it about secrets and stories you like so much, anyway?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always liked knowing things about people. I guess you could say…I’m a collector.”
    “Of what?”
    “People,” Meredith said. “Interesting people.”
    “How do you do that?” I asked, meaning to sound light, but realizing I was leaning closer again.
    “I watch them for a while, see if they look interesting. You can’t always tell at first.”
    I nodded. “Of course not.”
    “So I talk to them. See if they don’t seem stuck-up. If they’re cool, I get them to tell me about themselves. People like talking about themselves, Tesla.” She paused. Smiled a bit reproachfully. “Most people do, anyway.”
    I thought of the group she gathered around her at the Mocha. I was probably my least interesting at work, where Joy managed to suck the life out of any attempts at creativity. “Did you collect me?”
    “Doing my best,” Meredith said, with another of those smiles that turned me inside out. She cocked her head. “I’m not a stranger, am I?”
    I wasn’t quite sure what she was, but it wasn’t that. “No.”
    She looked around the bar, which had become steadily more crowded as the evening went on, but still offered us a lot of privacy. “And you’re not at work.”
    “Thank God.”
    Meredith was the one who leaned, this time. “So, Tesla. Tell me something.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    She pretended to think, in such an exaggerated way I was sure she’d already thought of what she wanted to hear before she’d even asked. “What’s the best sex you’ve ever had?”
    “You go first.” I made the same offer I’d made the last time I told her a story, but again, she