I walked across the café with the coffee pot I still didn't need, and my pulse was doing something concerning in my ears, and my carefully rehearsed conversation opener had completely fled my brain, and all I could think was:Please, God. Just let me not embarrass myself. That's all I'm asking. Just this once, let me be the version of myself that doesn't trip over her own tongue and—
"More coffee?"
The words came out automatically. The exact two words I'd told myself I would not say.
Outstanding. Truly. A month of planning, and I'd defaulted to the most boring question in the history of waitressing.
He didn't look up.
I stood there.
I should leave. I should absolutely, definitely leave, because he clearly didn't want to be disturbed, and I was clearly disturbing nothing except my own dignity, and if I turned around right now, I could still pretend this was just a routine check-in and not the sad little
courage summit it actually was.
I started to step back.
"Thirty-six."
I froze.
His fork paused mid-air. His eyes—dark and unreadable in a way that reminded me of deep water, of locked rooms, of things I couldn't name—lifted to mine.
And there it was. That thing about his face that had kept me counting for over a month.
He wasn't classically handsome.
Or no, that wasn't right. He was. But it was the kind of handsome that didn't sit still. One second he looked like he could be carved from marble, all clean angles and Italian severity, and the next there was something wicked playing at the corner of his mouth that made the marble crack, and what was underneath was worse. What was underneath was warm,
and warm was dangerous, because warm was the thing you reach for right before it burns you.
"Thirty-six days since you started staring at me."
He...counted?
I was about to convince myself that I had just imagined him saying those things until I heard Jolie choking somewhere in the background, and...well, that was it. I might as well die of embarrassment now.
My fingers tightened involuntarily around the coffee pot as my gaze met his. His expression was mocking and amused, but not cruelly so. And there was something in his eyes...
Something that almost made me wish I could be like Jolie just this once so I could unlock that expression in his eyes.
“And I know...you’ve been counting as well.”
I didn't know if it was the shock of his words or the impossibility of his gaze or the simple fact that my nervous system had officially abandoned me, but my fingers went slack, and the coffee pot slipped.
Time did the thing it does in moments like this, where everything goes slow and sharp, and I could see the pot falling, and I could see the dark liquid tipping, and I could see the catastrophic trajectory of hot coffee about to cascade across the table and his lap and probably my entire future at this café, and I thought, very clearly:Well, this is
it. Dying of embarrassment earlier was a false alarm. But this...this is really it. This is how I die. Not literally, but in every way that matters.
His hand catches the pot before it hits the table.
And his other hand catches my wrist.
Both at the same time. Like it's nothing. Like his reflexes exist in a different timezone than the rest of the world.
His grip is warm and sure, and his fingers wrap around my wrist the way you'd hold something you didn't want to break, and I can feel his pulse against mine, or maybe that's my pulse, or maybe it's both, and everything is very loud and very quiet at the same time.
He sets the coffee pot upright on the table without looking at it. He's looking at me, and for one endless, devastating second, I am not invisible.
