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    Breakfast at Midnight
    Breakfast at Midnight
    Breakfast at Midnight
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Breakfast at Midnight

    By Kim Dias

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Hope can be found in unexpected places.

    Lonely, still struggling with his divorce, and suffering from writer’s block, successful thriller author Fred spends much more time in an all-night Denny’s than is healthy for any man. It’s the last place he thought he’d meet someone like Callum, who has literally run away from the internationally famous boy band Leos.

    Despite their age difference, the two become friends, and their long nights of soul-searching might help them find the courage to face their problems: Fred’s deteriorating relationship with his daughter and Callum’s career issues. It’s easy for their lives to tangle together, and each might provide the other the means to move beyond the past—even if it’s not a journey they can take together.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateOct 11, 2017
    ISBN9781635338997
    Breakfast at Midnight

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      Book preview

      Breakfast at Midnight - Kim Dias

      Table of Contents

      Blurb

      Dedication

      Text

      About the Author

      By Kim Dias

      Visit Dreamspinner Press

      Copyright

      Breakfast at Midnight

      By Kim Dias

      Hope can be found in unexpected places.

      Lonely, still struggling with his divorce, and suffering from writer’s block, successful thriller author Fred spends much more time in an all-night Denny’s than is healthy for any man. It’s the last place he thought he’d meet someone like Callum, who has literally run away from the internationally famous boy band Leos.

      Despite their age difference, the two become friends, and their long nights of soul-searching might help them find the courage to face their problems: Fred’s deteriorating relationship with his daughter and Callum’s career issues. It’s easy for their lives to tangle together, and each might provide the other the means to move beyond the past—even if it’s not a journey they can take together.

      For Mom, Dad, Kevin, Robyn, and Rae, because without your love and encouragement and blatant mockery, I’d never have made it here.

      FRED NOTICED the kid right away. Of course he did. It was 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday night in a roadside Denny’s; it wasn’t exactly teeming with people.

      The kid stood pigeon-toed, shuffling on his feet as he waited at the hostess station until Leslie called, Sit wherever you want, hon. I’ll be with you in a sec. He was wearing those—what did Amira call them?—skinny jeans and a hoodie. He kept his hands tucked in the hoodie’s front pocket as he slipped past Fred’s table and into a corner booth.

      For lack of anything better to do, Fred watched him. Leslie handed the kid a menu and, without looking at it, he asked for a coffee. She nodded—Sure thing, honey—and left him to it. The second he took his hands out of his pocket, Fred could see why he had kept them in there. They were jittery, agitated. They flipped the menu’s pages back and forth, bent them, picked at the corner of the paper tent that advertised the specials.

      Fred used to do this all the time, sit and watch people, quiet and unobtrusive. Sometimes he scribbled the traits of the more interesting ones in a notebook: bounced in his chair whenever he spoke… smelled like bubblegum when she walked past… added five sugars to her tea….

      James used to laugh about it, used to tease, I married such an artist. That was when they still laughed together, when they could still tease without the words being tight around their edges.

      Fred pushed the thoughts out of his head. It was too easy to get maudlin on these late nights when he couldn’t sleep, and that made it too easy to forget to take his meds.

      Fred pulled himself out of his thoughts when Leslie delivered the coffee to the kid’s table. The kid poured in two sachets of sugar, two creams, and then proceeded to rip the sugar packets into smaller and smaller pieces while he perused the menu. Reading? Or zoning out? His gaze looked too vague to be focused.

      More coffee?

      Fred looked up into Leslie’s gaze. Yeah, he said, please, and pushed his mug to the edge of the table.

      Your food’ll be right out, she said as she poured. You want jam? She asked that every night he was here, even though his answer was always—

      No. Thanks. I’m good. Just ketchup.

      She nodded and walked away, leaving him to his thoughts. His thoughts and his book, which he hadn’t opened the last two nights he’d been here.

      He looked at it. Flipped to his bookmarked page—page 36—and read a line. Two lines.

      Snapped it shut.

      The kid raised his head at the noise, which had been louder than Fred intended. Their gazes met, and Fred’s breath caught at the deep green eyes that stared back at him. A smile that seemed more automatic than genuine flitted across the kid’s lips, a learned and practiced response. Fred blinked, too startled for a second to respond—people rarely made eye contact with each other here, and when they did, they never smiled. By the time he’d told himself to smile, idiot, that’s what normal people do, the kid had looked away, his head ducked over his coffee cup.

      Gut clenching with embarrassment, Fred tore his gaze away. He wanted to keep watching. It wasn’t just the smiling. Nothing about the kid fit in here. The usual crowd was made up of truckers, insomniacs reading books with red eyes, and Fred, who fit in more with the latter group than the former. The kid was too… too pretty to fit in, with his messy brown hair and beautiful eyes.

      Why, why had it taken him so long to smile? He guessed that’s what happened to your social skills when most of your life took place in a Denny’s after midnight. It was only when Leslie came by with his plate that Fred braved another glance at the kid.

      He was gone. The only traces left behind were a coffee cup, the confetti of two ripped sugar packets, and a ten-dollar bill.

      THE NEXT morning, Fred felt hungover. He wasn’t; he hadn’t been drunk in years. He was just tired, but it felt like a hangover: the heavy limbs, the head filled with bricks and cotton wool, the sandpaper in his throat.

      It didn’t help that his phone rang at 7:36 a.m.

      He groped for it. Finally found it on his bedside table and brought it to his ear. ’Lo?

      Hey, Daddy. Amira. Bright and chipper, as if she had never heard the words too early in her entire life.

      Hey, Fred rasped. Hey, Amy. Hey. Hi.

      Hi, she echoed. Did I wake you?

      No, he said automatically. Well. Yes. But that’s okay, it’s fine.

      I’m sorry.

      No, he said, and instantly regretted not saying don’t be, the way a normal father would have, the way James would have wanted him to. What’s up, hon?

      Well, she said, and the way she slowed down made his skin prickle with anticipation. It’s my birthday soon—

      I know.

      I know you know, she replied, her words still too slow for his comfort. And I’m putting a party thing together. Nothing huge, just a… thing. And I thought…. She sped up so suddenly he almost missed her next words. I thought it might be really nice if you came.

      Yeah, he said. Of course. Where’s the but? he wanted to ask. What aren’t you telling me, Amy?

      It’s here, she said. Like, at the house. Um. Dad’s going to be there. She paused, apparently expecting him to say something, and she was better at the waiting game than him because the silence stretched out long enough to make him uncomfortable.

      Oh, he said.

      Yeah, she said.

      Oh, he repeated. Then, No. He shouldn’t have been surprised. When Amira had started college, she’d chosen to stay with James rather than move into dorms. Of course she was having her birthday party at her house. At James’s house.

      Daddy, it would mean so much….

      No. I’m sorry, he wanted to add, but he couldn’t, not when he didn’t mean it. Self-preservation. Surely self-preservation came ahead of attending his daughter’s

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