“We’ll stop at the deli,” she replied.
“Do they only have soup? I need real food. Meat. Bread.”
“It’s a deli,” she said. “One can infer there’ll be meat.”
Sawyer mimicked her behind her back. He didn’t normally have so much trouble endearing himself to a woman; most of them just threw themselves at him, and he gladly caught them, so to speak. Not that most of the girls he met were rich, spoiled daughters of political figures.
He scratched his chin. Lila couldn’t be that bad, though. She had just spent most of her Saturday volunteering in an understaffed, underfunded free clinic which primarily served uninsured patients. How many doctors did he know who would do that?
He jogged to catch up to Lila. She seemed to always walk like she was in a rush. He wondered if she ever relaxed, or if she even knew how to relax? Maybe she felt like she had something to prove, living in the shadow of a senator. Sawyer knew what that was like. He’d spent his life trying to prove he wasn’t going to end up in a dead-end job or unemployed, that he could take care of his family and help fill his dad’s big shoes.
He followed her several blocks until she abruptly stopped – to his surprise – in front of an actual deli. A nondescript sign advertised sliced meats and cheeses and a single table with two chairs sat unoccupied out front. A real bell – not an electronic tone – dinged when she opened the door. Sawyer had expected Lila’s version of a deli to include a sanitized and white front of house, with raw wood tables and a menu full of bone broth with torn kale and gluten free bagels. Instead, she crossed her arms in front of a curved glass case packed with hunks of meat for sale by the pound, and a letter board menu with Coca-Cola logos emblazoned across the plastic top. A white-haired man in a paper hat manned the cash register and greeted Lila by name.
“The usual, please,” she said, pulling cash out of her purse. “And whatever he’s having.”
“I got it,” Sawyer said. He didn’t mention he could comp it as a work expense; she already looked down her nose at him enough. He could tell she was assessing his reaction to her deli of choice, as he scanned the sandwich selections on the menu. He tried not to laugh. So, she did care what he thought.
“Brisket melt,” he said after studying the menu and grabbing a bag of chips from a stand. He handed a twenty to the man. “Keep the change.”
“You didn’t have to pay,” Lila said.
“You’re welcome,” Sawyer said, opening the chips. “How’d you find this place?”
“My grandparents used to live in a building around the corner,” she said. “They brought me in when I was a kid.”
Sawyer nodded. “Looks like it’s been here a while.” He crunched a chip.
“Over fifty years,” Lila confirmed.
The man handed two wax-paper wrapped sandwiches and a plastic container of soup over the counter. “Need a bag?”
Lila nodded, and he placed the items into a brown paper bag for her.
“How far to your apartment?” Sawyer asked, his stomach still rumbling as he stuffed the empty chip bag into the trash.
“We’ll get the subway here,” Lila said.
“I’ll take my sandwich now, then,” he said.
She fished it out of the bag as they left the deli and crossed the street to the subway stop.
“So, what happened with that man in the ER?” Sawyer peeled back the wrapping of the sandwich, his mouth already watering as the savory smell of brisket hit his nose.
“His leg was bleeding internally,” Lila said. “He’ll be all right, though. But he should have come in right when it happened. He had a deep cut. Needed stitches.” She scanned her subway ticket. “Where did you learn to speak Farsi?”
“The army,” Sawyer said.
“So, you speak three languages?”
Sawyer laughed. “That depends. Fluently or enough to get by?”
Lila eyed him as they stepped onto a semi-empty subway car. “Fluently.”
Sawyer counted in his head. “I’d say fluently… five?”
He knew his mouth was full as he talked, but he didn’t care. The sandwich was too good. She was right about that place, and he’d have to go back. He also expected Lila to look impressed with his language skills – he’d always had a knack for picking them up and learning them made his tours and working with foreign militaries much easier – but she gripped the pole and stared out the window, instead. When the train shook or more people packed into the car, she was jostled or pushed against his body. Sawyer liked how her shoulders barely spanned the width of his chest. He could have wrapped his arms around her and enveloped her completely. That’d be one way to keep her safe.
Lila held the pole for balance but moved out of the way as more people got onto the car, letting her back be pushed up against Sawyer’s chest. She could feel the hardness of his muscles against her shoulders, and the warmth his body exhumed. Even as Sawyer pretended nothing had happened, he loved the way their bodies touched. It created a spark in him, and an ever-growing yearn to taste her.
Lila could feel how his chin could rest on the top of her head. She felt safe knowing he was right there behind her, that he could shield her from anything in an instant. She didn’t like it when the car emptied, and she had no reason not to step forward and give him his space. Something about his body next to hers put her senses on high alert. She felt, she tried to put words to it… alive? Warm? Most of the men she’d dated felt like they had a deadness about them.The dull, she’d told Kaylin when recounting a date from last month.
There was nothing dull about Sawyer. But he probably found her incredibly boring. The guys like Sawyer who had fun in life – who went to parties and drank beer and didn’t think networking was fun –always dismissed her as some sort of uptight bore. She didn’t think she was boring, but her sense of duty for the sake of her parents, prevented her from ever showing she could be fun, or that she wanted tohavefun.
She sighed as they reached her stop and exited the train. Once this nut-of-the-week was caught and the threats ended, Sawyer would disappear, so there was no use worrying about what he did or didn’t think of her. She led him up the stairs toward her building.
