I've Died Here Before novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Nobody Came to the Pier
Addie waits at the waterfront for the boyfriend she talked into coming, hears a voice say she has died here before, walks away from a man in a gray coat, and finds Holden at dinner with his first love; in the cab she finds his text begging her to stay away from the water.
By nine that morning, every gossip account in New York had posted the same photo of Giselle Vickers stepping out of a black car.
Holden's first love was back in town.
I called him a dozen times before lunch.
He picked up on the twelfth.
"Addie, I'm in a meeting."
"Meet me at the pier tonight," I said. "Eight o'clock. Just us and the stars."
"Not tonight."
"Please."
I waited.
I always waited.
At ten past four he sighed into the phone and said, "Fine. Eight. The pier."
In three years, that sigh had never once been followed by a no.
I put on the cream wool coat he'd bought me in Paris and bought two coffees on the way.
The pier was empty except for me and a man far down the boards, looking at his phone.
I sat on the bench by the rail and set his coffee next to mine.
Whenever we walked along the river, Holden took the water side, always.
He never said why, and I never asked.
At 8:15, the coffee was warm.
At 8:30, it was cold.
At 8:35, I called him, and it rang out.
I called again.
The clouds had come in thick over the Hudson, and I couldn't find a single star.
I looked at my phone and thought, he did it. He actually didn't come.
Then a voice exploded inside my head.
"Are you serious? Still sitting there next to his coffee, like he's going to walk up with a bouquet?"
I went completely still.
It was my own voice, pitched higher and angrier than I had ever heard it.
"Don't turn around," it said. "Stand up slowly and leave the coffee."
I stood up so fast I knocked his cup off the bench.
"Who is this?"
"Who do you think? I've died on this pier eight times. Walk. Now."
"That's not funny," I said out loud, to nobody.
"In about forty seconds, a man in a gray coat will ask you for the time."
I looked down the pier.
The man far down the boards had put his phone away.
He wore a gray wool coat, and he was walking toward me.
"Then he'll say the view is better from the rail," the voice said. "Don't go to the rail."
My heart was loud in my ears.
"Excuse me," the man said, ten feet away, smiling politely. "Do you have the time?"
I didn't answer.
I walked straight past him toward the ferry landing, where the lights were and the people were.
"Good," the voice said. "Faster. Don't look back. Do not look back."
I didn't.
I heard his shoes on the boards behind me, and then I heard them stop.
At the landing, a woman with a stroller was folding a ticket into her coat.
A ferry horn sounded.
"8:44," the voice said, and for the first time it sounded tired. "That's when it happens. That's the part you never believed."
I looked at my phone.
8:44.
Nothing happened.
The man in the gray coat stood at the far end of the pier, watching me, and then he turned and walked off into the dark.
My knees gave out, and I sat down on the ticket kiosk step.
Then my phone buzzed with a new post from the gossip account I'd been refreshing all day.
A photo of Holden at a candlelit table at the Linden Room, four blocks from where I sat.
Across from him, in cream cashmere, was Giselle.
The post was timed 8:41.
Under it somebody had written, Back together?
"Don't," the voice said. "Go home. Please, just go home."
I got into a cab, and I did not go home.
The Linden Room had a doorman who knew me by name.
He opened the door and then stood in front of it, looking sorry.
I walked around him.
Holden sat with his back to me, and Giselle saw me first.
She stood and smiled.
"Addie. You're freezing. Sit, please. I'm Giselle."
She took a pin from her own hair and put it in my hand.
"Yours is coming down at the back."
She checked her thin gold watch and said, "I told him to go find you an hour ago. He kept saying you were fine."
Holden turned around.
He looked at my coat, and my wet shoes, and my face.
Then he looked away.
"Go home, Addie," he said.
The whole room was listening.
A man at the next table had his phone up.
"I stood on that pier for forty minutes," I said. "I asked you for one thing."
"This isn't the place."
"You've never said no to me."
"Go home."
I put his black card on the white tablecloth, and then the key to his apartment on top of it.
My hands were steady, and I hated that they were.
So I stopped asking.
I walked out past the doorman and the phones, and nobody stopped me.
In the cab I opened my messages for the first time since four o'clock.
I had put my phone on Do Not Disturb at the salon, so nothing could spoil the evening.
At the top of the list was one from Holden, sent at 6:02.
Please don't go to the water tonight.
He had known where I would be.
He had known for hours.
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