"Like, a lot," he added, in the same conversational tone a person might note the weather or the price of milk.
Freddie looked at his machine.
"Seven weeks," Oliver said, "you've looked like a man standing on a very high ledge."
It was actually eight weeks, but Freddie did not correct him.
Oliver wrapped both hands around the cup. "I'm mentioning it because I spent yesterday evening at a farm watching a horse make decisions, and even that horse had better timing than you."
Freddie looked at him. Oliver was not looking back. He was examining the chalkboard menu with the expression of a man who found it interesting, though he had never in the history of their acquaintance ordered anything other than his regular order. Except that one time he'd added cinnamon.
"She hasn't taken her eyes off you," Oliver said, still looking at the board, "since I walked out of the shop."
The information arrived before the understanding. Freddie looked up. He could not have said it was a decision, more a reflex. Through the glass of the bookshop window, across the twelve feet of cobblestones, Wren was standing at the front display with a book in her hand, and she was looking directly at him.
Not the quick social glance. Not the administrative check of a woman seeing whether her eleven o'clock coffee was incoming. Bea had already ordered it and brought it in for her. This look was the other kind.
Freddie had stood behind his counter for seven weeks and been the one looking. He was not practiced at being looked at from that direction.
She smiled.
It was not the public smile, not the warm professional warmth she gave the whole street. It was the specific one, the one that had its own quality, briefer and quieter and aimed directly at him. The one he had been thinking about since approximately four-fifteen in the morning.
Freddie smiled back.
He could not have prevented the smile. It arrived without consultation, some involuntary expression of a thing that didn't have any other outlet available to it. It was genuine and uncontrolled and probably visible from a considerable distance.
Wren looked down at her book. He could see, even from twelve feet away through glass, that the smile had not entirely left her face.
Oliver made a sound beside him that was somewhere between satisfaction and amusement. He set his cup down on the counter and reached for his wallet. Oliver paid—exact change, as always, which Freddie had long suspected was a deliberate courtesy—and pocketed his wallet.
"That was two people who had been looking at each other for weeks finally doing it at the same time." He picked up his cup. "Remarkable that it's taken this long, frankly."
Freddie looked at the space where Oliver had been looking at the menu. He was aware of his own heartbeat in a way that was inconvenient and accurate.
"Tell her you feel the same way," Oliver said.
Simply. No drama. In the voice of a man stating something that was true and did not require elaboration.
Freddie said nothing.
Oliver looked back with the expression of a man who had said what he came to say and was at peace with this. Then he clapped him once on the shoulder—the same gesture, Freddie thought, that he had deployed outside the Rusty Spur that night,the one that meantI see you, I'm not going to make you say it—and turned to go.
He walked off down the main street toward his practice, his jacket dark against the bright morning, and was gone around the corner.
Freddie stood at the cart.
The notebook was under the counter, its fourth page carrying the one line he hadn't crossed out. The steam wand was clean. The next customer would arrive in approximately three minutes, based on the pattern of the morning, and he would make their coffee and manage the transaction and continue conducting the business of being a functional person in the world.
He looked at the bookshop window.
Wren had moved further into the shop. He could see her at the counter now, saying something to Bea, her hands doing the thing they did when she was explaining something she found interesting. She was not looking at him. She was just—there. In the amber warmth of Pages & Prose, being entirely and specifically herself. He had held her in that warmth last night, and she had smiled at him through glass just now with the smile that had been only aimed at him.
Tell her in person. Before the market. No more paper.
He had written this to himself. He had meant it. He meant it still.
He was going to tell her before the market. This was decided—not in the tentative, conditional way of his previous decisions, not I will tell her when the situation is clearer or I will tell her once I understand how to say it or any of the other versions he had offered himself as substitutes for action. This was a decision of the non-negotiable kind, the kind he had made in other circumstances when not making it was no longer acceptable.
Before the market.
The next customer came right on time. Freddie made the coffee. He did not write anything in the notebook for the rest of the morning. The one line was sufficient. He had only to find his voice.
