“Right. Coming right up.”
I turn fast, maybe too fast, nerves and attraction tangling like live wires. My hands move on autopilot, but my brain’s a mess — replaying last night, his voice, the way he looked at me when he said he wasn’t interested, and how his eyes told me that was the most blatant lie on the face of the planet.
Focus, Riley. Focus.
The next five minutes are pure improvisational triage, my hands moving on desperate instinct as I try to keep my head above water in the morning mess of The Noble Fir. Even though there’s barely a handful of customers this early, every one of them feels like a judge waiting to see if I’ll trip over my own nerves and get my jittery butt fired. I’m still rattled from seeing Breaker at his corner table, looking like the world’s most explicit warning label for heartache, and yet, when I set his breakfast infront of him, I do it with the pride of a person determined not to break at the first sign of pressure.
I think I do a pretty good job of it, too.
He looks down at the plate.
Then up at me.
Then, with surgical precision, back at the plate.
“Just to be clear,” he says, voice even but his eyes almost amused, “I ordered eggs, hash browns, and bacon.”
I look at the plate, and then I look at his face. After I second, I look again at the plate.
What’s on it is definitely not eggs, hash browns, or bacon. No, not even close. It’s grilled cheese. The cheese is melted in uneven lava-flow islands; some parts of the bread are crisp and golden, other parts are pale and doughy. Next to the sandwich is a trembling, gelatinous mound of tuna salad, just a portion of the tuna that looks like it’s oozing forth from being trapped between the slices of the world’s saddest grilled cheese; the tuna pile is the color of unrepentant regret. Also peeking out from the sandwich’s edge, I spy the suspicious greasy glint of melting peanut butter.
What the fuck did I write on my order slip?
There is a long, cold moment where every surface of the bar’s interior — the bruised wood of the tables, the dead-eyed gaze of an ancient deer head above the bar, the wet-glass gleam of the beer taps — is a witness to my humiliation.
Breaker lifts a corner of the sandwich with one tattooed finger and peels it open. He studies it like a bomb ready to detonate. “And this is grilled cheese with… tuna? And peanut butter?” His tone has gone analytical, as if he’s working out the blast radius of this culinary monstrosity.
My stomach dropkicks itself into my shoes.
“No. Wait, what? There’s no way…”
I can feel my pulse pounding in my ears. The drink next to the plate isn’t even coffee. It’s a tall glass of water. I don’t remember pouring it, but here it is, sweating nervously just like me.
“Oh my god.” My hands go to my face, and I can’t believe I’m actually hiding behind my own fingers. “I — I’m so, so sorry. I don’t even know how that happened. I’ll fix it, I swear. Just give it back to me, and I’ll get you the right order instead of this…” My voice tumbles over itself, stuttering to a stop as I realize I can’t even finish the sentence.
I’m so mortified I could combust.
Mortified, terrified, and disappointed. Who knows what this mistake could cost me? Sure, it’s just one mixed-up order, but it’s so bad — peanut butter, tuna, cheese — that Breaker or anyone could make the case that I was trying to poison him. I could be fired. And even if I’m not fired, they could still take the mix-up out of my pay, and there’s not enough money in my bank account where I could just shrug off a mistake like that.
He holds up a hand, palm outward. “It’s fine. Really.”
I try to snatch the plate away, but he gently tugs it back.
“I ordered food. You brought me food,” he says, and the way he says it — the way he says nothing else — makes me realize he’s not mad. He’s not even disappointed, which is a first for me, because I’ve spent years reading micro-expressions for the signs of anger or contempt that always, always followed my smallest mistakes and preceded… well, preceded things I don’t want to think about.
Instead, he picks up the sandwich. The whole thing. He looks at me, waiting to see if I’ll stop him, and when I don’t, he takes the first bite. I watch his jaw work as if he’s chewing gravel. His face doesn’t just telegraph pain; it stages a full-screen IMAX disaster movie of suffering. He forces it down anyway. Swallows. Reaches for the glass of water and drinks it fast.
“I can make you something else, really,” I whisper.
“No need.” His eyes flick to mine, and he gives me a lopsided grin as he squares himself up for the second bite. “You brought me a plate of food. It’d be rude not to finish it.”
I want to laugh and cry at the same time. I want to crawl under the bar and reinvent myself as a decorative beer coaster. Instead, I just stand there, watching as he eats the world’s worst sandwich with the stoicism of a condemned man. Even when a few other bikers at the other tables notice and start to snicker, he doesn’t blink. He finishes every bite, polishes off the entire glass of water in three swallows, and wipes his mouth with the tiniest shake of his head.
“Good?” I say. Because why not add masochism to the menu?
“Best peanut butter tuna melt I’ve ever had.”
“Be honest,” I whisper, caught between laughter and horror.
