For real.
They were just gone.
Completely erased from my brain. I was standing there with my order pad and a pen and approximately zero thoughts in my head except for the fact that his eyes were the kind of dark that you can't read, like deep water, and I had this wild urge to keep looking until I could see the bottom, which was possibly the most ridiculous thought I'd ever had about a customer, and I've had some ridiculous thoughts.
"Hi," I managed. "Welcome to, um, Gail's. Can I—do you need a menu?"
Smooth, Thea,I remember thinking at that time with major cringe.Really stellar work.
He studied me for a second, and I couldn't tell if he was amused or annoyed or completely indifferent, but then he said, "Yes. Thank you."
His voice was low and unhurried and carried an accent that I thought might be Italian, and something in my chest did a thing that I absolutely refused to name because naming it would make it real, and I've had enough experience with real things being taken away from me to know better.
Our fingers didn't touch when I handed him the menu, but I was aware—painfully, specifically aware—of exactly how close they came.
"I'll give you a minute," I said, and I walked back to the counter, and Jolie was leaning against the espresso machine with her book open but her eyes very much not on the page.
"So?" she said.
"So what?"
"So, that."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Thea." She closed the book, and I noticed she was only on page forty-seven, which was the same page she'd been on last week. "You forgot the specials."
"I did not—"
"You absolutely did. I could see it from here. You looked like someone unplugged your brain."
I busied myself with wiping down the counter, which was already clean. "He's just a customer."
"Uh-huh."
"He is."
"Sure."
"Jolie—"
"I'm just saying," she said, and her smile was the kind that made me want to throw a dish towel at her, "you should probably go take his order before you wear a hole in that counter."
I went to take his order.
He asked for coffee (black, no sugar) and said he needed another minute with the menu. I brought the coffee. I refilled the napkin dispenser at the table next to his even though it didn't need refilling. I counted the tiles on the ceiling above the corner booth (six) and wondered if this was what losing my mind felt like, and if so, whether it was covered by the café's health insurance.
When I came back, he ordered the smoked trout hash.
"Good choice," I said, because apparently I'd decided to have opinions about his breakfast.
"Is it?" He wasn't quite smiling, but something played at the corner of his mouth that might have been amusement.
"Best thing on the menu.”
I remember wishing I could just disappear then and there (I was never the type to make small talk!), but it was like nervousness had turned me into a gabbering idiot, and so I even found myself adding, quite unnecessarily—
“Gail makes it herself."
