Chapter 2
Chapter Two
He looked so damn lost.
As if the sun had stopped shining and the Tabasco had stopped burning.
She just had to try to make him laugh. According to her best friend Daisy, her second biggest character flaw was that she always wanted to make everyone happy.
Lilly herself didn't see anything wrong with that. She preferred spreading sunshine to rain, and since today was not only her last night at Diner USA, but also in Los Angeles since, starting tomorrow, she’d finally be living her dream in Italy, she had enough good humor at her disposal for an entire ice hockey team.
There were eleven players, right? No, that was football. Or soccer? Both?
It didn’t matter; she just wasn’t interested in sports that took place outside of water.
Today was a fantastic day, and if her last good deed in the USA was to make the man she’d been staring at since the beginning of her shift laugh – he was admittedly hotter than all the Tabasco in the world – then so be it.
The far too attractive man, who didn’t even spoil things by being unfriendly or arrogant, was still sitting in the same spot.
His dark brown hair fell across his forehead as he turned his empty milkshake glass in his hands.
She’d thought several times over the past three hours that he was going to speak to her, but each time he seemed to change his mind at the last moment and sink back into his heavy thoughts.
The clock showed it was just before midnight. The kitchen had long since closed. He was the last customer in the diner, hadn’t moved in half an hour, as if practicing for his next Broadway role as a boulder.
She would have given everything she owned to know his thoughts.
But since her current possessions consisted of 150 dollars, a lot of miniature glass figurines, and a handful of rusty safety pins barely holding her rotten luggage together, she probably wouldn’t be able to convince him to reveal his innermost musings to her.
Granted, he had spoken considerably more than his serial killer friend.
Yes, she’d realized at first glance that the two weren’t gay!
She had a reliable radar, and the two men had exuded so much heterosexuality that she was in danger of suffocating.
But her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
According to the kitchen list, they’d turned down no fewer than fifty women in the past two months – an absurdly high number, in her opinion.
What man in his mid-twenties with shoulders as broad as the Hollywood sign said no to sex on a silver platter fifty times in a row?
Okay, shoulders were irrelevant in the equation, but it was hard to ignore them!
It wasn’t that Serial Killer wasn’t good-looking, but Tabasco Boy had that mischievous smile that made her uterus flip-flop…
He glanced up and met her gaze.
Her heart skipped a beat as warmth flooded her cheeks, and she wondered if he’d noticed her staring. But before she could feel embarrassed, she remembered that starting tomorrow, an entire ocean would lie between them.
She smiled broadly at the thought. She wanted to know what he was thinking…and what was stopping her from asking? She’d never see the man again! Under normal circumstances, she might not have been so brave, but tonight, she had absolutely nothing to lose.
“Hey, do you mind if I sit with you?” she asked, strolling over to him. “It’s tiring knitting while standing.”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You shouldn’t be knitting at work at all.”
She shrugged and slid onto the bench opposite him. “Nothing has been going on for an hour. I like to keep my hands busy, and as I said, today is my last day. Let them fire me!”
He nodded. “Right. You’re changing jobs?”
“Yep. I’m starting training as a glassblower tomorrow.”
He opened his mouth in surprise. “You can train to be a glassblower in Los Angeles?”
“I don’t know, but I’m moving to Italy tomorrow,” she said, laughing.
“Wow.” He looked impressed. “So this really is your last night.”
“Yep.” She placed her knitting on the edge of the table. “Have you ever been to Italy?”
“Yes. I was on an international…” He trailed off and cleared his throat. “Well, I did a type of exchange there.”
“So? Did you like it?”
“A lot. Best pizza I’ve ever had, and I lived in Chicago for a while. Have you been there before?”
“Nope.”
“So you’re moving there straight away?”
“Well, if I want to become the best glassblower of all time, I have no choice,” she replied with a grin.
“There’s a small island near Venice called Murano.
They make the best glass art in the entire world.
They only offer three spots in their emerging artists program each year, and I was one of the chosen. ”
“Congratulations, that’s impressive,” he said, looking like he meant it.
“Thanks. I would have moved there sooner if my parents hadn’t insisted I go to college first and do something serious with my life. But now that I have my bachelor’s degree and am twenty-one, they can’t tell me what to do anymore…”
His smile widened. “You are taking the first opportunity to flee?”
She laughed softly. “Yes! I want to finally enjoy my freedom, and I can do that…” She pulled his arm toward her and looked at his watch.
“…now! Because my shift is over and my future officially begins.” She felt the urge to imitate a drum roll with her tongue, but since she might have spit on him, she decided against it.
His gaze slid to his Rolex and he frowned. “Oh, shit, sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late. You want to call it a day, and I should go…” He made a move to stand, but before he could, she abruptly grabbed his other wrist and held him in place.
“No, stay put.”
She wanted to avoid the impending jet lag, anyway. It was only 9:00 a.m. in Venice, so it was actually better if she stayed up a little longer.
Her desire had nothing to do with the smile of the guy sitting across from her…
or his voice…or his face…or his lips, whose upper lip was a tad fuller than the lower lip…
or his body. And especially not with his dark green eyes, whose color she would gladly mix and capture in glass forever.
Beautiful, yet ridiculously fragile. And that was exactly how he seemed.
It seemed something inside him had broken. But maybe he just needed a little glue to put himself back together, and she was good at…
She blinked and hastily pulled her hands back.
Oh God, Daisy was right. Her number one character flaw was that she was a hopeless romantic.
She blamed romance movies and novels entirely for the fact that whenever she found a man likable and attractive, she would sink into vivid daydreams. In those dreams, she alone had the power to heal them, make them better people, and change their lives forever with the help of dirty, highly satisfying things. Preferably combined with whipped cream.
But in her defense…
Okay, no, she didn’t have any defense. Thanks to her brilliant imagination, she mostly found reality inadequate.
But she hadn’t even wanted to sleep with the hot guy; she’d just wanted to find out what he was thinking, and then she completely strayed from her objective!
“Sorry. Of course you can leave if you want to,” she said, backpedaling, realizing she’d been silent for far too long. “I won’t keep you here. I didn’t actually want to talk about myself. That’s not why I came over.”
His eyes sparkled with amusement. “Then why did you come over?”
“Actually…” She hesitated. “Actually, I wanted to know if you were okay.”
He opened his mouth in surprise, as if he’d never heard the question before in his life. “What?”
“Are you okay?” she repeated slowly.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Sure?”
“Yep.”
“Really sure?”
He laughed dryly. “Well… No. But that’s not what you say when a virtual stranger asks how you’re feeling.”
“And what if the virtual stranger knew you weren’t feeling well because you seemed like you’d had a terrible day?”
“More like a terrible few months,” he whispered, still smiling. “God, your service is really questionable. First, you attack my taste buds and my physique, yet now you want to know how I’m doing? You can’t afford to lose out on the tip – that's it, isn't it?”
“Hey, Venice is expensive,” she replied, defending herself and laughing. “You can't really get any more touristy. So…why have you had a few terrible months?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”
“Well, to be honest, I’ve been standing at the counter for a few hours, staring at you, wondering what you’re thinking. So…yeah, either I’m planning to stalk you, or I really want to know.”
Now the smile reached his eyes. “You’d be a lousy stalker to tell your victim about your plans.”
Warmth flooded her chest and cheeks. “Then I guess I’m honestly interested in what you’re thinking. Obviously, you don’t have to tell me.” She cleared her throat. “Although I’m a brilliant listener who, as of tomorrow, won’t be living on the same continent as you.”
He paused, staring at her intently. For a few seconds, she was convinced he wouldn’t answer, but to her surprise, he finally murmured, “I’ve just been through a pretty brutal breakup, and for hours, I’ve been thinking about what I could have done differently.
If there was anything I wanted to do differently. If I should have seen it coming.”
Her mouth went dry, and she swallowed.
He hadn’t been available. That was why he’d rejected all the women. Of course. The answer had been obvious. He’d just…stayed faithful.
“So? Have you reached a conclusion?” she whispered.
“No.” He leaned forward and interlaced his fingers.
“Why did you break up?”
“It wasn’t working out.”
“Why not?”
“Irreconcilable differences.”
“What kind of differences?”
“We were too different.”
“How?”
“Honesty was important to me, but not to her. And we just wanted…different things out of life.”
“What different things?”
He chuckled softly. “You don’t get that my cryptic answers mean I don’t want to talk about it, huh?”