A strange thing occurs as I watch her place the light pink box with a spinning ballerina down and pick up another. Tunnel vision. My gaze hones in on the way she analyzes the boxes with her eyes.
I drink her in, the compulsion to outline her jaw with my finger close to overwhelming me. The need to traverse her body with my hands until she’s shivering beneath me, makes me briefly close my eyes.
Voices behind us, from another couple that’s appeared at the vendor’s table, reminds me that we’re in public. I force myself to tuck my very unpublic thoughts away for later.
“This one is beautiful, like you,” the older vendor tells Alyssia, once the other couple leaves.
She replies in French, speaking in the language he uses.
While my French isn’t the best, I understand a decent amount. It doesn’t take fluency in a language to know that he’s flirting. Especially when he winks at her.
He’s not wrong, but that’s my damn job.
“Such a pretty girl like you deserves her own music box,” he says, holding up another box. This one is a light purple with a little Black girl ballerina dressed in a purple leotard.
Alyssia turns the spring to make the music play, and the figure starts spinning. Her eyes sparkle as she watches the slow spin of the figurine with rapt attention.
“It’s so cute.”
“So are you,” he says.
“That’s enough,” I say between gritted teeth.
His eyes widen as he looks at me, feigning ignorance. I glare back, wrapping my arm around Alyssia.
“Travis,” Alyssia says in a voice similar to admonishment.
“What? He’s blatantly flirting with you.”
“Is not,” she says, frowning.
“Well, you are a beautiful woman, and if I were a few years younger,” he says in broken English, “I would?—”
“Get your ass beat,” I grumble.
“Travis!” Alyssia gasps.
“He’s trying me.” I pull her closer and look down at the music boxes. “Do you want one?”
She rolls her eyes. “We should go before you get in trouble. Thank you,” she tells the vendor in French.
I glare at him when he waves at her and glares at me.
“Do you like music boxes?” I ask, feeling slight guilt for pulling her away from flirty grandpa over there.
She gives me a sideways grin. “My grandmother used to collect them,” she says, her voice filling with reverie. “I lived with her after my parents—” She stops to clear her throat. “After they were gone. Every night, she would sit in her living room with a cup of tea and play one of her music boxes.”
She pushes out a breath.
“I wish I would’ve kept one or two of hers after she passed.”
“When did she die?”
“When I was sixteen. Halfway through my junior year of high school.”
That was only two years after her accident and her parents’ death. My heart aches for teenage Alyssia who barely had time to cope with the death and upheaval caused by that accident, then her grandmother was gone.
“Is that when you went to live with your uncles?” She’s told me about her Uncle Theo and Owen.
