Chapter One #3
It made me realize just how big a coward I was...because all this time, I refused to pray about him. Because a part of me already knew. A part of me had always known and remembered that since God gave us a spirit of love and power, but not fear...
Fast forward to the present. It’s Monday again, Day 36 of watching a stranger eat breakfast, and yes, I’ve finally plucked the courage, backed by my prayer to God, that yes, I am absolutely going to talk to him today.
Not just take his order. Actually talk. Maybe ask him how he's doing, or what brings him to Jackson Hole, or literally anything that constituted actual human conversation beyond the transactional exchange of food for money.
I practiced in the bathroom mirror while getting ready.
I had talking points. I had conversation openers. I had a whole mental script, and yes, it was deeply embarrassing, but it was better than standing there with my mouth open like a fish while my brain abandoned ship, which is what usually happened when I tried to talk to him.
"How's your morning going?" I said to my reflection.
Too generic.
"Cold out there today, huh?"
Ugh, that was even worse.
Jackson Hole in February was always cold.
"So, you come here a lot."
I physically cringed at my own reflection. "No. Absolutely not. That sounds like a pickup line from 1987."
I settled on something simple. Something safe. Just: "How are you today?" With maybe a smile. Maybe some eye contact. Maybe the appearance of being a competent adult human who could string words together in a socially acceptable manner.
I could do this.
I walked to work repeating it like a mantra. How are you today. How are you today. Just ask how he's doing. Simple. Normal. Not weird at all.
Except..he didn't come in at seven-fifteen.
Or seven-twenty.
Or seven-thirty.
By eight o'clock, I'd refilled the napkin dispensers twice, wiped down counters that were already clean, and counted the ceiling tiles above the corner booth so many times I could have drawn them from memory.
"He's not coming," Jolie said, not looking up from Wuthering Heights.
"I didn't—I'm not—"
"Thea. You've checked the door seventeen times in the last hour."
"I was just—"
"Looking for him. I know." She finally looked up, and her expression was kind. "Maybe he had somewhere else to be."
"Right. Obviously. He doesn't owe me—I mean, the café—anything. He can eat breakfast wherever he wants."
"Or maybe he's sick."
"Maybe."
"Or maybe he'll come tomorrow."
"Maybe."
But he did come.
Just not at seven-fifteen.
He walked in at eight-forty-seven (I checked), and the café was mostly empty by then, just a couple lingering over coffee in the back, and when I saw him, my carefully rehearsed script evaporated like steam.
He went to the corner booth. Sat down. Looked at his phone with that beautifully brooding expression I'd memorized without meaning to.
And I stood behind the counter with a coffee pot I didn't need and a heart doing something structurally unsound in my chest, and I thought: Okay. This is it. Now or never. Just go over there and talk to him like a normal person.
But my feet wouldn't move.
Jolie kicked me under the counter. Literally. Her sneaker connected with my ankle, and I yelped.
"Ow—"
"Go," she hissed.
"I can't—"
"You can. You've been psyching yourself up for this all morning. Just go."
"What if—"
"Thea." She closed her book with a soft thump. "If you don't go over there right now, I'm going to go over there and tell him you've been mooning over him for a month."
"You wouldn't."
"Try me."
She would. I knew she would, because Jolie Liang had exactly zero shame and one hundred percent follow-through on her threats.
So I went.
I walked across the café with the coffee pot I still didn't need, and my pulse was doing something concerning in my ears, and my carefully rehearsed conversation opener had completely fled my brain, and all I could think was: Please, God.
Just let me not embarrass myself. That's all I'm asking.
Just this once, let me be the version of myself that doesn't trip over her own tongue and—
"More coffee?"
The words came out automatically. The exact two words I'd told myself I would not say.
Outstanding. Truly. A month of planning, and I'd defaulted to the most boring question in the history of waitressing.
He didn't look up.
I stood there.
I should leave. I should absolutely, definitely leave, because he clearly didn't want to be disturbed, and I was clearly disturbing nothing except my own dignity, and if I turned around right now, I could still pretend this was just a routine check-in and not the sad little
courage summit it actually was.
I started to step back.
"Thirty-six."
I froze.
His fork paused mid-air. His eyes—dark and unreadable in a way that reminded me of deep water, of locked rooms, of things I couldn't name—lifted to mine.
And there it was. That thing about his face that had kept me counting for over a month.
He wasn't classically handsome.
Or no, that wasn't right. He was. But it was the kind of handsome that didn't sit still.
One second he looked like he could be carved from marble, all clean angles and Italian severity, and the next there was something wicked playing at the corner of his mouth that made the marble crack, and what was underneath was worse. What was underneath was warm,
and warm was dangerous, because warm was the thing you reach for right before it burns you.
"Thirty-six days since you started staring at me."
He...counted?
I was about to convince myself that I had just imagined him saying those things until I heard Jolie choking somewhere in the background, and...well, that was it. I might as well die of embarrassment now.
My fingers tightened involuntarily around the coffee pot as my gaze met his. His expression was mocking and amused, but not cruelly so. And there was something in his eyes...
Something that almost made me wish I could be like Jolie just this once so I could unlock that expression in his eyes.
“And I know...you’ve been counting as well.”
I didn't know if it was the shock of his words or the impossibility of his gaze or the simple fact that my nervous system had officially abandoned me, but my fingers went slack, and the coffee pot slipped.
Time did the thing it does in moments like this, where everything goes slow and sharp, and I could see the pot falling, and I could see the dark liquid tipping, and I could see the catastrophic trajectory of hot coffee about to cascade across the table and his lap and probably my entire future at this café, and I thought, very clearly: Well, this is
it. Dying of embarrassment earlier was a false alarm. But this...this is really it. This is how I die. Not literally, but in every way that matters.
His hand catches the pot before it hits the table.
And his other hand catches my wrist.
Both at the same time. Like it's nothing. Like his reflexes exist in a different timezone than the rest of the world.
His grip is warm and sure, and his fingers wrap around my wrist the way you'd hold something you didn't want to break, and I can feel his pulse against mine, or maybe that's my pulse, or maybe it's both, and everything is very loud and very quiet at the same time.
He sets the coffee pot upright on the table without looking at it. He's looking at me, and for one endless, devastating second, I am not invisible.
Then he lets go.
Returns to his omelet. Picks up his fork. Cuts a precise bite. Chews.
As if nothing happened.
As if he didn't just catch a falling coffee pot and my entire composure in the same breath. As if my wrist isn't still burning where his fingers were. As if my heart isn't doing something structurally unsound in my chest.
I should say something. Thank you, or sorry, or please excuse me while I go have a quiet breakdown in the walk-in freezer.
But I can't speak, so I do what I do best.
I become invisible.
I take the coffee pot. I walk back to the counter.
I don't trip, which feels like a minor miracle.
Jolie takes one look at my face and opens her mouth, and I give her a look that says ‘do not’ with such force that she actually closes it again, which might be the first time in recorded history that Jolie Liang has chosen silence over commentary.
I busy myself with napkin dispensers that don't need refilling. I wipe down a counter that's already clean. I count the sugar packets in the caddy by the register (twenty-two, and one of them is a Splenda that someone put in the wrong section, and I fix it because I fix things,
that's what I do, I fix small things because the big things have never been mine to fix).
And I do not look at the corner booth.
I do not.
I absolutely, positively do not look at the corner booth, where the man who just shattered thirty-six days of carefully maintained distance is eating his omelet with the calm of someone who didn't just set a girl on fire with five words and the grip of his hand.
But I don't have to look to know he's smiling.
Not at me. At his plate.
Like I'm already the most amusing thing that's happened to him in thirty-six days.