He studies me for a moment. "Are you a student?"
"UW. My schedule is flexible. I can work mornings, afternoons, weekends."
He looks at me for another moment. Then he reaches under the counter and grabs an apron.
"You want to show me?" he says. "We're short today. Two hours. I'll watch you work, and we'll talk after."
I smile, taking the apron.
“Yes.”
He nods and returns to whatever he was doing.
The two hours are the most uncomplicated two hours I have spent since arriving at UW Seattle.
Jordan puts me on dishes first. I work through the backlog without being asked twice about anything. Then he moves me to bussing tables.
The café fills and empties and fills again. Students, mostly. Laptops, headphones, and the ambient creative misery of people on deadlines. I move through them invisibly, which is its own kind of relief.
Jordan watches without making it obvious.
It’s a relief to be useful. I’m enjoying this more than I should.
Around the ninety-minute mark, Jordan appears beside me while I'm restocking the condiment station.
"You're good at this," he says. Not a compliment exactly. An observation.
"It's not complicated."
"You'd be surprised." He leans against the counter. "Most people think it's beneath them. You can always tell."
I think about my mother's charity dinners. About learning to clear a table at twelve because the staff was short, and my father said to pitch in. About every performance I've given in every room I didn't want to be in. "It's never beneath anyone," I say.
He almost smiles. "Can you come in tomorrow? Eight to noon?"
"I have class," I say. “I can be here right after.”
He takes the apron when I hand it back. "Bring your schedule when you come in, and ask for me when you get here."
I pull my coat on, collect my bag, and walk out into the cold, feeling something small and solid settle in my chest.
Mine.
That's mine now.
I'm two blocks from the café when I see his familiar face. His broad shoulders. The height of that man is no joke. He's across the street, moving at a pace that suggests he’s going somewhere important.
Theo.
Everything that has been luring about him since the first afternoon he dropped a book on my desk comes flooding back in one wave, and I am standing on a sidewalk in the cold letting it.
I don't make a decision.
I start walking.
I cross at the light — or I start to cross at the light, and then the light changes, and I jaywalk because he's already moving far ahead, and the distance is getting worse. I pick up my pace. He moves like he has somewhere to be.
He turns a corner.
