“Dad!” It’s ten at night. Why is she up and what could she still want? My parenting hours are over for the day, doesn’t she get that?
“What?” I groan from the comfort of my bed.
“Can I go to Kat’s after school tomorrow? Her mom can get us.”
“Did you just make these plans at ten at night?” I shout back.
“Yes,” she says without hesitation.
“Don’t we have phone hours along with parenting hours in this house?”
Hannah releases one of her lioness growls, and I’m not in the mood. “Fine whatever. Go to bed,” I tell her.
Not even a thanks among all that grumbling.
Is it me? Am I unlikeable? I’m friendly. I do courteous things for others. I hold open doors. So why … Journey, why? Why does she despise me? She had no trouble saying otherwise that one New Year’s Eve. What changed between then and now aside from fifteen years’ worth of shit?
Coffee. It’s always coffee. Coffee and beards. It’s so simple yet, I don’t get it. At least I know where she’ll be. The second I dropped Hannah off at school, I booked it for the coffee shop. She must go there every morning. She strikes me as a creature of habit—a routine keeper. If I knew where she lives, I’d just show up there, but maybe that’s too much, too soon.
The coffee shop is more coincidental, I think. I see a restraining order in my future, but when there’s a challenge in front of me, I don’t give up. I can’t. That’s quitting and I’m not quitter. Journey needs something. It might not be me, but it’s something and I need to figure out what it is—in case it is me.
She’s inside, waiting in line, checking her watch. I wonder what she’s late for. Maybe a rendezvous with moi. I’ve read books about men like me, waiting for the woman in her favorite spot, but in the books, the main character will fall head over heels for the man who went out of his way to know the very spot, at the exact moment she will be there. It has to work.
I wait for her to walk outside with the hot coffee in hand. I’m leaning against the brick wall of the cafe, acting casual as I scroll through my phone. “Hey stranger,” I say, trying to sound surprised to see her here, which is technically a surprise since I didn’t know for sure she would be here.
Journey stops and turns toward the sound of my voice. She greets me with a smile. A smile. A real, genuine smile, like she’s happy to see me. “Brody,” she says, stepping in closer. “What are you doing here?”
Do I tell her the truth or make this look like happenstance? “I could tell you I come here all the time, but I’m sure you would have seen me before. I was hoping you might be here.” There, that doesn’t sound psychotic or over the top.
“That’s sweet of you,” she says. With a shy look playing through her eyes, she sweeps a strand of hair away from her forehead and takes another step closer, leaving us only inches apart. This is the part where she says something hot or I become covered with something hot—her coffee.
“I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s not in a creep way, though. I just have all these questions, wondering what you’ve been doing these last fifteen years, and what you’re up to now.”
“It sounds like you’re obsessing over me a bit,” she says sharply.
The conversation has taken a sudden sharp turn into hot coffee over my head territory. “Obsessing? That word is a little strong, don’t you think?”
“You’ve asked me out at least three times in the past two weeks. You’ve shown up at my father’s shop and have called me several times after I said I wasn’t interested. It sounds to me like you might have a problem hearing the word, no.”
“I hear the word, no, all the time. I assure you, you’re wrong.”
“Okay then,” she says, placing her hand on my chest. “Ask me if you can kiss me. Right here. Next to the coffee shop where people can see us out in broad daylight, acting like fools at ten o’clock in the morning.”
This is obviously a trick. She just wants to reject me again. “I don’t want to hear the word no after asking if I can kiss you, Journey. I’m not the one who made the first move.”
“Maybe if you had, things would be different,” she says.
I’m doing my best to think as fast as possible, but her riddling statements are making my head hurt. She doesn’t want to say yes and doesn’t want me to ask. Is that the answer?
She peers down at her coffee for a moment, then glances up at me. Her dark lashes flutter and her gaze locks onto my lips. I could be slapped right here in front of the coffee shop, on the street where people are driving by, or I could do what she is indirectly asking me to do. I think.
Her lips are wet, parted, and a burn strikes from my chest down through my groin. Dammit, I need to kiss this girl. I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff into what is most likely ice-cold water, but on the slim chance that the water is warm, I’m going for it.
I lean down and cup my hand behind her neck and wrap my arm around the small of her back. I’m gentle so she doesn’t spill her coffee, but I touch her lips lightly, teasingly. “I’ve wanted this so badly,” I mutter against her mouth.
“Me too,” she responds through a whisper.
I taste the coffee on her lips, the sweetness of sugar on her tongue. There’s enough caffeine in this kiss to keep me going all day. Her arm loops around my back and her hand clenches at my fleece jacket. She fits within my arms as if she’s meant to be here. Her hair smells like a tropical breeze. God, she could be the end of me. When my lungs run out of air, I pull back just enough to inhale more of her sweet scent. “Could I take you out for dinner, please?”
