Coffee, poured without asking.
"Hey. Pork shoulder?"
"Yes."
"You're early today."
His attention lands on my face. The same focus he always gives me, except tonight something is different. It’s an urgency that’s never been there before. His eyes are dark as they study me.
"I wanted to be here," he says.
Four words. The most personal thing he's ever said to me. NotI was hungry. NotI was in the neighborhood. He wanted to be here. Telling me that directly, plainly, with his hands flat on the table and his gray eyes on mine.
"Okay," I say, because what else do you say to that?
The order goes in. The dinner rush builds. Plates, tickets, Marco's voice from the kitchen calling Devon's name with escalating fury. The restaurant fills and empties and fills again. Through all of it, Carmelo sits at table four eating his porkshoulder, drinking his coffee. Every time I pass his table I feel the pull, and tonight I stop fighting it.
I don’t want to fight it anymore.
Eight fifteen. Clearing the two-top next to him. Plates stacked in both hands, I turn, and he's right there. Chair pushed back, legs extended, the space between my body and his less than two feet.
“You’re good at that.”
A blush spreads up my chest and across my cheeks. “…At being a waitress?”
“At juggling many things.”
Oh God, I just want to melt into the floor.
“Maybe someday you can tell me what you do.”
He smirks and I have to turn and rush to the kitchen before I say anything else stupid.
Nine forty-five. Carmelo is still at table four. The restaurant is half-empty around him. He hasn't left.
Ten thirty hits and the last table pays. I start closing. Carmelo stands, picks up his jacket, and my stomach drops.Guess he’s leaving now.Then he walks to the bar, sits on a stool, folds his hands on the bar top, and waits.
He's waiting for me.
Twenty minutes. Fastest close I've ever done. The mopping is sloppy. The silverware bins are crooked. I don't care. Javi left at ten, weeknight, leaving me to lock up. He wanted to walk me home, but smiled when he saw Carmelo there.Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.He said before flouncing away.
The door locks behind me and Carmelo is standing on the sidewalk waiting for me to start walking.
Three blocks. No pretending this time when our hands brush and my pinky locks into his. I walk near him because I want to walk near him.
At my door, the key comes out of my pocket and I turn to him. He's two inches from me, his stomach brushing against me. The top of my head reaches his chest, so seeing his face means tilting all the way back, and the streetlamp puts light on the left side of his jaw and leaves the right side dark.
He lifts his hand. Slow. I watch it the whole way. The tattooed knuckles. The wide palm. Fingers that held plates and a knife handle and my pinky only minutes ago. His palm lands on the side of my jaw.
His hand covers my jaw and half my neck. His thumb settles below my ear, right on the freckle. His fingers curve around the back of my head.
My body goes quiet. The tapping stops. My finger, which has been moving against something every waking minute of every day for as long as I can remember, goes still. My hands hang at my sides, motionless.
My face turns a fraction into his palm. My eyes close.
"Graziella." I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t trigger anything inside me. It just sounds like coming home.
"Carmelo."
