FIVE

"So how's it going with your barista boyfriend?"

Kate's eyes flicked up to meet the dark eyes of her medical examiner friend, before turning her attention back to the grilled chicken salad before her. Toying with the plastic fork between her index finger and thumb, Kate reminded Lanie, "He's not my boyfriend. How many times do I have to tell you that before you believe me?"

"I'd believe you if it was true. You hang out with him don't you?"

Kate shrugged. "Occasionally. We've been to a movie. We get coffee."

"You went to that food festival in Brooklyn."

Kate nodded in acknowledgement of the event from two weeks prior. "Right. But none of that is intimate it's just…friendly."

Lanie hummed and pushed away what remained of her quiche. "And he's an extremely handsome guy. Don't deny it–I saw him at that 5K."

Kate cleared her throat and took a sip from her water bottle before looking pointedly at her friend. "I told you: I'm not dating right now. I'm just…not in that headspace. Besides even if I was going to date, I'm not sure I'd be dating Rick."

"What does that mean?"

Oh well now there was a question with a very complex answer. As she had promised to keep his secret, Kate could not reveal to Lanie the full truth about Rick and thus explaining her standpoint was complicated. Even she wasn't sure she fully comprehended where she stood.

Rick was a great guy—a really great guy. He was polite, thoughtful, and kind. She never had a bad time when they spent time together. Therein was the problem—she never had a bad time, but she also never had an amazing time either. Something was just…off. Of course, she had a pretty good idea of what that "something" was. Namely, the extraordinarily traumatic childhood he had, but it showed up in the most peculiar of ways.

For instance, two Saturdays earlier Kate had planned to spend the majority of the day doing laundry, tidying her apartment and perhaps reading a book, but then Rick had called her and asked if she wanted to go to the food festival for lunch. He even apologized for the last minute invite, saying he had just found out about it and thought they could go together. She agreed and the first forty-five minutes were enjoyable. They spoke about the vendors they passed and their food preferences and then seemingly at random, Rick shut down. He only gave one word responses to her questions and seemed generally distant and thus she ended their afternoon together on a disappointing note.

Similar instances did not occur every time they hung out together, but more often than she would have preferred. At the food fair, she almost called him out on it, wanting to know if he had seen or heard something that triggered a negative memory, but she did not want to embarrass or upset him. As long as they were just friends it didn't really matter, however such behaviors did give her pause when considering if she and Rick could ever be anything more—particularly considering that issue wasn't her only reasoning.

"I'm not sure if I'm really attracted to him. He's good looking, like you said, but…you know me–I'm usually drawn towards really driven people, but Rick is so…casual."

Lanie arched a skeptical eyebrow at her friend. "You mean since he's a grown ass man who works at a Starbucks."

Kate bit down on her bottom lip as she gazed across the park where they sat eating their lunch. Such a thought made her feel so shallow, but it was true at least in part. She was driven towards career- and goal-oriented men because they tended to appreciate, or at least accept, that she was also a career and goal driven person. Rick did seem content in his position, or maybe it wasn't so much content as it was safe, and that was fine for him, but maybe not for them.

"It's not that. Okay it's kind of that. But I don't think I know enough about him right now."

"Fair enough, but don't write him off yet, Kate; he might surprise you."

She eyed her friend curiously. "Why are you so excited for me to date Rick?"

Lanie shrugged. "I'm not, necessarily. I'm excited because you seem excited—or, at least interested. When was the last time you hung out with the same man consecutively for two months?"

Kate opened her mouth to respond, but then realized she couldn't because she did not actually recall the last time she had done as Lanie asked. Instead she said, "I…I just haven't been dating."

"So maybe when you are ready again you'll be seeing Rick in a different light."

"Hey…you're early."

"Sorry." Kate apologized as she stepped inside Rick's apartment. She had overestimated the time it would take her to get from her meeting at 1PP to Rick's as she had never made that journey before. As she hated to be late, she saw this to be the preferred outcome; however, it was really only by ten minutes.

"It's no problem. I just lost track of time when I was working on some stuff. Give me a minute to clean up and then we can go."

"Sure; take your time." Kate shut the door behind her and waited patiently as Rick walked over towards the kitchen and the clinking of some dishes and glasses could be heard. Just a few days had passed since her conversation with Lanie. Other than getting coffee before her shift, this was the first time she was seeing Rick since. They were supposed to go to a movie, but she could not help but wonder if she should ask about his plans for his life, the future, or if it was far too soon in their friendship for that.

Before she could think about it much further, she caught sight of a peculiar item siting on the wooden dining table that made her brow furrow and all other thoughts disappear from her mind. "Is that…a typewriter?" She had, of course, seen one before, but it had been quite some time, and they just seemed so out of place.

He chuckled, presumably at her stunned tone. "Yes…go ahead, judge me."

Unable to suppress her curiosity, Kate walked over and examined the device. Yes, it was definitely a typewriter. Judging by the stack of plain white paper beside it, Rick was not just using it for decoration either. "Are you...writing on it? What are you writing?"

He shrugged and gave an evasive answer of, "Just stuff."

Kate pressed her lips together and thought back to her tried-and-true assessment of New York baristas and bartenders. Actors, struggling musicians or playwrights. "Plays?"

"Um no. Novels."

Oh. Well. She hadn't been expecting that. "Really?"

He walked over to the table, picked up a typewriter cover from one of the mismatched chairs, and draped it over the machine. "Don't get too excited—they're not that good."

"Oh I'm sure that's not true," she said on instinct.

He turned around and eyed her skeptically. "Remember me? The kid that didn't have school past fifth grade?"

At the mention of his less-than-typical past, Kate thought back to the conversation she had with her mother many years earlier. As the missing boy had not been able to attend the majority of his schooling years, her mother had speculated that schooling would be near the top of his "To do" list upon returning. Judging by the way he spoke and acted, she could not imagine he had not completed high school in least some form. Plus, she very much doubted Starbucks would hire someone with only a fifth grade education. "You have your GED, don't you?"

"I do."

"Then you had school past fifth grade."

He quirked his head flippantly. "But not in the traditional way. Nothing about me was traditional, actually."

"Including how you write?" She offered, gesturing towards the covered typewriter. Then, before he could react, she thought better of her statement and apologized. "Sorry I don't mean to tease."

Rick appeared unfazed. "Oh no, tease away—my mother does. Bear in mind she's a borderline Luddite who calls smartphones 'newfangled things' but this she makes fun of."

Kate laughed and waited patiently as he retrieved a pair of sneakers from beside his bed and sat down to put them on. As she drifted towards him, she asked, "Do you have a super artsy reason for the typewriter?"

"Not at all; I have a super sad one. My laptop blew up and I haven't had the money for a new one yet. Always had the typewriter so I thought I'd give it a whirl. It's…fun actually. Makes me feel a bit old timey. It feels grittier."

"Do you write gritty things?" she asked in response without thinking.

He stood up and looked her directly in the eye. "I write dark things."

Kate felt the hairs at the back of her neck prickle and she silently hoped the fact that his writing favored the dark was not because he had not had any good things happen to him. Quietly, she said, "I would think you'd want to write happy things."

As though he'd heard her inner thoughts he responded with, "I don't know happy; I know dark."

After exiting Rick's apartment, they walked down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk in silence. They'd gone only half a block towards the theater when he said suddenly, "Sorry…did I make things weird?"

"No. I just…I'm not always sure what to say when you bring up your past." She told him honestly. "I want to ask a hundred questions—the investigator in me wants to ask a thousand—but I don't want to upset you or dredge up old memories. But…right now I'm just trying to wrap my head around the concept of only knowing about dark things, not happy ones, and I don't think I can."

Yes, her mother's death had spurred a very dark turn in her life. In the immediate aftermath, she had spiraled into a deep rabbit hole, parts of which still affected her to that day, but in the nineteen years before that? Her memories were overwhelmingly happy. The more she distanced herself from the death of her mother, the easier it was for her to recall those joyous times with a smile and not heartache. To not have those moments—to never be able to come across a photograph or something else that triggered a memory that resulted in a laugh—was unfathomable.

"You shouldn't—no one should. When I got back, it was….well, difficult would be putting it mildly, as I'm sure you could imagine."

He glanced over to her and Kate nodded, patiently waiting for him to continue.

"I didn't speak much. The therapist said that was completely normal. I just…wasn't used to talking to anyone since I spent most of my days alone. The therapist encouraged me to write if I wasn't going to speak—to keep a daily journal, so I did. I wrote and wrote and it felt good; comforting. I wrote about what happened, how I felt about it, and how I was adjusting, the things I did day to day."

He stopped speaking when they had to hurry across a busy street. When they were walking side-by-side again, he slipped his hands down into his jean pockets with a sigh. "I was always a curious kid—curious and mischievous. I asked a lot of questions. One of the questions I persistently asked my mother, my therapist, and the social workers who came to see me was: who were the women? Did they have families like me? Were people missing them too? But they wouldn't tell me because of privacy and the ongoing investigation or maybe just because they thought I'd already seen too much. That's when I started writing fiction; I wrote their stories. Didn't matter if they were true or not, but it…helped me process."

When he finished his explanation, Kate took several moments to process all that she had heard. It certainly was not the direction she had expected their conversation to go, but she was extremely glad that he had shared it with her; it made so much sense. Despite the horrors he had witnessed, through his trauma Rick had discovered a passion for something he might not have found otherwise. Of course, ideally he would not have been traumatized at all, but at least there was a small silver lining.

"I'm happy that writing has helped you, Rick; that's excellent. Would I be correct in assuming you've moved on to writing about stories other than the histories of those women?" When he nodded, she asked, "Have you ever published anything?"

"Oh god no!"

From his tone, one would have thought she suggested that he jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. "Did you ever try?"

He shook his head. "I don't really show them to many people."

Kate considered this. Given what she knew about him, she thought that perhaps the reason he had not shown his works to many friends or tried to get them published was a lack of confidence. Perhaps all he needed was some positive reinforcement, which she would be all too happy to give. "May I read something? I like a good dark story now and then."

He glanced over to her, parroting back her earlier statement to him. "And here I'd think you would want a happy story."

She folded her arms over her chest and gazed out across the sidewalk before them. "Happy stories aren't reality." Reality involved gruesome murders committed for reasons unknown. Reality was cruelty to others that made little sense. Reality wasn't fluff or Disney endings; it was gritty and dark, but in literature that often came with reason, and she liked that.

He was silent for a moment before saying, "I'll, um…maybe."

Her tone returning to a lighter one, she nodded to him. "Sure. No pressure. Just think about it."