agreed to talk with me. But when I got to her apartment, it was vacant, and the landlord said that Brooke hadn’t left a forwarding address. Great, now what was I supposed to do?
“Hey,” I said into my phone as Max picked up my call.
“Don’t tell me I forgot something,” Max said. “I am not coming back into the office tonight. I don’t work that way. Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “I can’t find Brooke.”
“What do you mean you can’t find her? Is she lost?”
“Her apartment is vacant, she’s blocking all my messages, and the only place of employment that I knew of where to find her, was my own company when she worked for me. How the hell am I supposed to find her now?” I asked in frustration.
“Well, start by calming down. You don’t want to find her while you’re all agitated anyway, or else you’ll say something stupid that you won’t be able to take back,” Max said. He was seriously good at talking me down off a ledge.
I was surprised that he didn’t have a girlfriend. I bet women would love him if he ever came out of the wilderness for more than a day or two at a time.
“What about her friends and family? Know any of them that you can call?” he asked.
“I didn’t really know anything about her family.”
“Dude, how long were you dating her for? You guys were together for a least a few months, and you’re telling me you know nothing about her family? That’s kind of messed up.”
Criticism was not what I needed right now. What I needed was a way to find Brooke.
“Wait a minute,” I said as I remembered something, “She did have a friend who worked at one of the coffee shops downtown. I think her name was Kate.”
“Do you know which coffee shop it is?” Max asked. “There are tons.”
I thought for a few minutes as I tried to remember it from the couple of times that Brooke and I went there for lattes and her friend poured our coffee. I pictured it in my head, and when I did, Kate’s apron came into view in my mind. Not only did it have Kate’s name on it, but it also had the name of the coffee shop, CUPS.
“Just remembered which one it is,” I said hastily on the phone as I went back to my car.
“All right, man,” Max said. “Good luck!”
There was no parking once I get to the coffee shop. Downtown was a beast when it came to parking spots. After a few times of circling the block, a spot opened up, and I pulled in. The walls of the coffee shop are glass, so I could see who was sitting in the café and who was standing in line. At first, I didn’t see anyone that I recognize, but then I saw Brooke’s friend, Kate, sitting down at one of the tables. I couldn’t mistake her short, punky haircut. There was a guy sitting next to her who had his hands all over her, and she seemed to be enjoying it, so I assumed that was Kate’s boyfriend. Across from them, with her back turned to face the window, was Brooke.
I walked quickly from the car to the coffee shop and then around the outside of the building and straight into the café. I weighed the idea of whether I should stand in line and order something to make it look more like I was just running into Brooke instead of the fact that I had traced her here like a creeper but decided that would be a waste of time and that I just needed to do what I came here to do—talk to her.
As I walked up to the table, Kate noticed me and locked eyes with mine. I wasn’t sure if she was on my side or Kate’s, although obviously, it would have made more sense for me to predict that she sided with her best friend. Yet still, she didn’t warn Kate that I was here. Instead, she made a small shooing motion with her hand under the table, which looked as if she were trying to send me away. Brooke picked up on where Kate was staring and turned around to look straight at me.
Before I could even open my mouth to say anything, Brooke got up and ran behind the coffee shop counter and into a back storage room. The