Chapter 6
The next morning, the heat wave broke with the arrival of a storm. Which was freaky strange. It hardly ever rained in Los Angeles, and when it did, it was usually during the winter months. A thunderstorm in July? It was unheard of.
But the dreary weather complemented my mood.
The Electric Waffle was deserted, and there was nothing for me to do.
After wiping down all the counters and tables, refilling the ketchup and syrup bottles, and mopping the floor to keep busy, I’d run out of chores.
Miss Daisy, the owner and manager, had sent the rest of the waitstaff home, and without the chatter of the other girls, my only company was my thoughts.
And they were torturous.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Alec. Yesterday, I’d been so concerned with getting him out of my room that I’d forgotten to set up a time to meet.
Not knowing when he’d arrive made me antsy, so when I wasn’t staring at the clock, my gaze was locked on the door.
To keep from pacing, I forced myself to sit at one of the counter stools, but that didn’t stop me from jiggling my leg or tapping my fingers.
It was nearly two o’clock, so there were a few more hours before my shift was over, but I had to acknowledge the possibility that Alec might not come at all.
Considering that I practically shoved him out my window, I wouldn’t be surprised.
What I needed was a distraction.
Thankfully, Miss Daisy stepped out of her office and told me to take a break. After clocking out and pouring myself a cup of coffee, I took a spot at my favorite booth. It was tucked away in the back of the room but still had a great view of the door.
I had my ACT prep book with me, and I momentarily considered studying, but I was too jittery to concentrate.
Instead, I dug to the bottom of my bag and pulled out the first three books my fingers touched: a battered edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, my travel copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby.
Deciding on the last one, I set the first two aside and dove into the 1920s.
As with every book in my collection, I’d read Fitzgerald’s masterpiece to the point of memorizing it, but I was still sucked into the story within the first few paragraphs.
Just as Nick received his invitation to one of Gatsby’s lavish parties, the bell above the door chimed.
I looked up, and there was Alec. It was as if he’d came from a photoshoot for a Burberry campaign.
He was wearing a stylish gray trench coat with the collar pulled up around his neck, probably to fend off the rain.
I always thought popped collars made guys look pompous, but on Alec it was cool.
I stared at him as he pulled off the coat and proceeded to shake away the water droplets that had collected in his way-too-perfect hair. He must have felt me watching because he glanced up and his eyes locked onto mine.
Crap, totally busted!
I shot out of my seat and crossed the room.
When I reached him, I tucked a loose curl behind my ear. “Hey.”
Alec looked down at me with his beautiful eyes. “Hey,” he said back.
Neither of us spoke.
A magnetic energy of sorts swelled between us. It was charged and electric and impossible to ignore. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I lowered my gaze, and by the time I looked back up, the buzz in the air was gone.
“You came,” I said finally. I was still surprised.
He scratched his temple. “You wanted me to, right?”
“Yeah, totally! It’s just… I thought that you might… Never mind.”
Alec looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language, which reminded me of how I felt when Boomer talked about mechanical engineering. Normally, I nodded my head and offered the occasional uh-huh during his rants about heat transfer or energy conversion. Now, I quickly changed the subject.
“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Soda? I make a killer blueberry milk shake.”
“Blueberry?”
I nodded eagerly. “I promise it’s good.” In fact, it was my absolute favorite. Mom had a weakness for them, which she’d passed on to me, so whenever blueberries went on sale, we’d fill our shopping basket with as many containers as possible and binge on shakes for a week straight.
“All right. I trust you,” he said, serious as ever. Like we were talking about a life-or-death situation and not milk shake flavors. I waited, expecting him to give me his real order, but he stared back at me. When he raised an eyebrow, I realized he already had.
“Ooh, right! Okay, cool.”
For reasons unknown, seeing Alec rattled me, even more than when Eddie Marks had sat next to me in geometry last year. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening, which left me feeling frazzled. So much so that I was halfway across the room before I realized I’d abandoned Alec by the door.
I spun back around. “Um, you can sit there if you want,” I said, pointing to the booth where my books and bag were. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
In the kitchen, I pulled everything I needed from the industrial-size fridge—ice cream, milk, blueberries, maple syrup—and set it out by the drink mixer.
As I worked on digging a huge scoop of vanilla out of the frozen tub, I wondered what Alec needed to talk to me about.
Whatever it was, it must have been important if he was willing to meet me in person twice to discuss it.
What if he thought I was the one telling the tabloids all those crazy, made-up stories about how we met?
Oh crap, maybe that meant he was mad at me.
But he didn’t look mad, I reminded myself. Stop freaking out.
Although I could make a blueberry milk shake blindfolded, I measured the exact amount of each ingredient to give myself a few minutes to calm down.
When I returned with two bluish-purple drinks in hand, Alec was listening to his music.
He yanked out his headphones and dropped them around his neck as I set both glasses on the table.
“Thanks,” he said, pulling one of the shakes toward him. The tower of whipped cream on top wobbled.
I slid onto the bench across from him and smoothed out my shirt.
“Pretty good, huh?” I asked when he took his first sip.
“I love blueberry-flavored anything, but milk shakes are my absolute favorite. The problem is most places don’t make blueberry ones, so when I started working here, I convinced Miss Daisy to add them to the menu.
There’s this ice cream place down the street from my house that makes them, but theirs were terrible.
The ratio was all off—too much vanilla, not enough berry.
So I gave them my recipe, and guess what? They totally use it now too!”
Why. Am. I. Rambling?
Alec offered me an amused look when I finally finished. “Your recipe is killer,” he said, using my earlier description.
Too flustered to drink any of my shake, I swirled the straw back and forth, making a mess out of the whipped cream. “Thanks.”
I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not.
Normally, I was good at reading people, but with Alec, it was impossible.
I could study him all day long and still not be able to crack his reserved front.
The only thing I could make out for sure was the unmistakable intelligence that flickered in his eyes.
And crap. I’d been staring at him for a whole ten seconds.
“So about yesterday,” I said with a start. Might as well swallow my embarrassment and cut to the chase. “You mentioned there was something you wanted to talk about?”
“Right.” He hesitated, and the anticipation nearly drove me mad. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. Both for any trouble the media attention has caused you and for what that one magazine said about you—”
“Not being as pretty as Violet?” I finished, unabashed. I wouldn’t take to heart what some poor excuse of a journalist wrote in an attempt to create drama. I had tougher skin than that.
He coughed. “Er, yeah.” After a quick pause, he added, “It’s not true.”
I blushed. “You drove all the way to my house to apologize?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“No, but most people would have called.” After all, I had given him my number…
It was Alec’s turn to blush. “My mother always said it’s important to apologize to someone in person.”
Ohmygod. A gentleman who isn’t embarrassed to talk about his mom?
“Plus,” he added, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t like talking on the phone, and you deserved more than a text.”
“Alec, you have nothing to be sorry for.” I wanted to reach across the table so he could feel the truth behind my words, but I tucked my hands under my butt so I didn’t do anything stupid.
“For the record, I didn’t believe any of it.
What they were saying about me in the magazines, I mean. I don’t care about tabloids.”
Which was ninety-nine point nine percent true.
The only details in the articles that remotely piqued my interest were the bits about Violet being Alec’s girlfriend.
Part of me wanted to ask him about her, to clarify whether or not she was his girlfriend, but the other part of me didn’t want to hear his answer.
Alec didn’t bother to hide his relief. “Good.”
I sank back into the vinyl cushion of the booth, feeling that same release of tension.
Somehow, while making the milk shakes, I’d turned whatever I thought he was going to say into something negative.
In reality, he was worried about how the rumors and gossip had affected me.
That along with his apology proved to me that Mom was wrong about him. Alec was a genuinely nice guy.
But now that he’d said his piece, I wondered if he would leave. He had no other reason to stay. My heart dropped at the thought. I didn’t want him to go.
Say something, Felicity, I thought. Anything.