He has a cute wrinkle creasing between his eyebrows when he is confused. The observation makes me even more nervous.
“I just saw a guy eating alone and figured I’d take pity on him.”
He clutches for his heart, feigning a look of being insulted. His playful reaction feels different than his usual stoic responses. A nice switch up from the glassy dullness in his eyes that I normally see.
“I am not lonely. I have company.”
The pendant is beaming a blinding shade of blue when she appears behind him. She is faking her own make-out scene—turning away from me, hugging herself and making kissy sounds.
I shift in my seat, placing my hands underneath the sides of my legs, not sure how to maintain a straight face with this happening behind him.
“Mm-hmm, I should try that.” I reach over to grab a bite of his fish tacos. In my peripheral vision, I see her snickering at me.
“You stole half my taco.” Holden uncrosses his arms and reaches his hand out to swat me away from his plate.
“I was just testing out if I wanted one too,” I say, taking the biggest bite I can before passing it back to him.
“There is such a thing as asking to have a bite.”
“There is…” I paused. “Something took over me and it seemed like you were offering.”
“Offering how?”
“With your eyes… You said: help yourself.”
“I did not say that.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” I lean over and take another bite. This time he doesn’t swat me but is displaying a genuine grin. The kind of grin that makes you forget about everything around you because you are the person who put it there.
Without a word, he gets up from his side of the booth and slides into mine.
“I like a girl who doesn’t mind sharing food with me.”
“Sharing is caring?”
My focus is split between Holden and the couple sitting in the booth in front of us. They are flickering sauce packets back and forth to each other like they’re playing finger football.
We both stare at them for a few moments longer before we play a game of “who are these strangers.”
“They’re celebrating their three-month anniversary. He thinks it’s going great. She hasn’t orgasmed once,” Holden says, pushing my hip closer to the wall.
I burst out laughing in a very uncool way, losing all my appeal as it comes out wheezing and unstable. If I had water right now, it would’ve been a spit take with how thrown off I am.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think she is probably stressed and he is taking her mind off it.”
“That’s oddly specific,” he shoots back.
Maybe it is.
The image of the couple in front of me blurs, crashing in the memory of Aidan and I sitting at a diner at midnight. He is building towers out of coffee creamer pods, talking to me in funny animated voices, doing anything possible to calm the stress hives that always broke out before any big exam. How easy we could read what the other one needed at any given moment.
Staring at the couple, I watch another packet fly off the guy’s head.
“Or they’re brother and sister?” I shrug.
“That’s disgusting, Charlotte. Who knew you were so freaky?”
“Oh, stop it!”
