“Hey,” he says. “Where’d you go?”
I look up at him, startled. “Nowhere. Just thinking.”
“Yeah, I could tell that much. About what?”
“Didn’t know you were a fancy college boy, that’s all.”
“What about you?” he asks. “Are you going to school anywhere?”
Almost like a physical thing, I feel my defenses rising. I can visualize it in my head. The walls going up around my bruised and battered heart. The spiky armor I’m putting on over my soft and vulnerable underbelly.
This guy is not for me, and I’m not for him.
Best to keep things on strictly professional terms.
My chair scrapes loudly against the floor as I push away from the table. “It’s late,” I say. “I should get home. Let’s close up.”
While I put the forks in the dishwasher in the back, Luke sets the chairs to rights again and packs up the cake box.
He holds it out to me. “Why don’t you take the rest?”
I shake my head. “No. Take it to your mama. Hope she enjoys it.”
As I start to shrug into my heavy winter coat, the fabric catches at my elbow.
Luke steps in. He takes the lapel of my coat and lifts it, guiding my arm through. His knuckles brush the inside of my wrist. The contact is brief, barely there, but every time his skin touches mine it leaves a trail of fire in its wake.
He gets close enough that I catch another whiff of his warm and woodsy scent.
God, he smells good.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
“You’re welcome.”
He walks by my side through the parking lot, close enough that our shoulders almost brush. The moon is bright overhead, making the snowbanks beside the road seem to glow. Ice and gravel crunch beneath our boots, the sound loud in the quiet night.
“You’re good at your job,” Luke says out of nowhere.
I glance at him, surprised by the comment itself and thathe’s choosing to say anything at all. His face is half-shadowed, expression unreadable.
But his attention is fixed on me.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist,” I say, a little embarrassed. “It’s not that important.”
“It’s not just the serving drinks part of it. It’s the listening. You give people your attention. Your sympathy. Might be the only place they get those things their whole day.”
Nobody’s ever said something that deep to me before about my job. Heat climbs up my neck despite the cold.
“I just try to be kind,” I say.
He tilts his head, studying me. “When you feel like it, you mean.”
“Well, obviously, when I feel like it,” I volley back. “I’m not gonna be kind when I don’t feel like it. I can’t fake that shit.”
“Clearly.” His lips quirk. “‘Bad hire,’ huh?”
Those seaglass eyes are glimmering in the moonlight, bright and intent. He doesn’t look offended. He looks amused—like he likes this version of me.
