Page 4 of The Shadows We Keep
“Umm, I need this taxi,” she says.
Her raspy voice makes it sound like she’s just waking up from a night out and needs a glass of water. I don’t respond, instead I continue staring at the golden eyes that are all too familiar.
“Look, I’m late for work. I need this ride,” she says again.
Her brashness brings me back to reality, Alina never would have talked to me like that.
“Hey lady, I called this taxi. I know you saw me standing here on the curb waving my hand in the air. Don’t act like you did the same. This is my ride and I’m running late for my flight.” She stops her huffing at that.
“Where are you flying out of?” She doesn’t have a New York accent. I can’t help but wonder where she came from.
“JFK.” I throw over my shoulder, climbing into the cab. When I reach out to swing the door closed, her big bag thrusts between us, keeping the door ajar.
“Scoot over.” She urges and pushes against the side of my body with her slight frame. But I don’t budge.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“So, turns out we’re both going to the same place. I’m headed to work at JFK. We might as well share a cab and split the fare; it won’t be cheap.”
I think about her proposition, not that the money matters. “What the hell? Why not?”
The door shuts behind her. She leans forward against the partition to tell the driver where we’re heading. The hem of her black shirt rises and the hint of a purple swirl against her skin draws my attention down. Unfortunately for me, she catches my stare.
Her icy gaze bores into me. “It’s a thirty-minute drive. Try not to be a fucking creep, would you?”
I smirk at her bite, the girl has sass, and it’s caught my attention. Not in the typicalfuck this bitch is crazyway, but like a magnet that pulls out the inner asshole in me and makes me want to spar with her. The fact that she’s a carbon copy of my dead girlfriend has very little to do with it. Or so I keep telling myself.
“So, what takes you to JFK?”
“Work.” Her uninterested tone makes it clear she doesn’t want to chat it up with the rando she’s sharing a car with.
“Yeah, I gathered as much from your introduction.”
She scoffs. “I work at the airport.”
“Uh, huh. Got that too. Want to expand on that?”
“Why can’t you just be like any other normal New Yorker and sit there, shut up, and stare like a zombie at your phone? I’m really not in the mood to make small talk.”
I nod. Her message received loud and clear. I pull out my phone, skimming through the unread texts that I’ve ignored for the last few days, emails that went straight to the trash folder. Finally, ending up scrolling through my photos.
I had to double check. Maybe it’s just my mind’s weird way of connecting with this person. Maybe she doesn’t really look like Alina’s doppelgänger. Unlocking the hidden folder I’d moved all our photos to months before, I open one. Alina’s spread out on my bed in nothing but my tee shirt. Her hair was a mess, thrown haphazardly across my pillows as she smiled up at me.
I examine her every feature, then glance sideways at the woman sharing the bench seat with me. Their noses are both thin and straight, a small slope up when you see them from the side. Golden brown eyes the color of fall leaves, with tiny flecks of green. I figure it’d probably freak her out too much to stare that closely to tell. Their lips are both full and round. How could this be?
Alina didn’t have any family outside of California, so they couldn’t be related. I try to pinpoint the differences. Where Alina’s hair was long and blonde, professionally highlighted to cover her natural brown, this girl has deep brown hair with a slightly red tint that only shows through when the light hits it. Alina’s skin was golden brown, but in California, that’s most of the population who spend any amount of time outside. But this stranger is pale, skin lightly dotted with freckles.
I look over again to compare. This time, our eyes meet, and my fingers quickly turn off the screen of my phone.
“Baggage,” she mutters.
“Excuse me?”
“I work in baggage claim,” she reiterates.
Oh, so now she wants to talk. It’s about time. Sitting in a taxi, next to someone you don’t know in an awkward silence, could only last so long.
“Where are you headed?” she asks.