Chapter Two
DID I ACTUALLY DROP the coffee pot?
In front of him?
In front of a man whose hands moved so fast I didn't even see it happen?
What was he, a magician? A surgeon? Some kind of professionally trained coffee-pot-catcher who moonlights in corner booths eating omelets with devastating precision?
Stop it, Thea.
But I can't stop it. My shift ended twenty-seven minutes ago (I checked—I'm always checking, always counting), and I'm standing in the back room with my apron half-untied because my fingers won't quite cooperate, and my brain is stuck in this loop, replaying the exact moment when gravity betrayed me and he—
He caught it.
And me.
His hand on the coffee pot. His other hand on my wrist.
Both at the same time.
Like it was nothing. Like catching falling objects and falling waitresses was something he did every Monday morning between bites of omelet.
I press my palm against the cool metal of my locker and try to breathe like a normal person. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The way Sarah taught me during that one panic attack I had last year when the anniversary of my father's sentencing rolled around and I couldn't get out of bed.
You're safe, Sarah had said, her hand on my shoulder, steady and sure. You're loved. You're okay. It’s okay to breathe. Just breathe. Everything is different now. Because you know who you belong to.
I counted to forty-seven that day. Same number as the ceiling tiles in the café.
Right now I'm at thirty-two and my heart still feels like it's trying to escape my chest.
"Okay, so." Jolie's voice comes from the doorway, and I startle so hard my locker door swings shut with a metallic clang that echoes in the small space. "We need to talk about what just happened."
"I’d rather not.” Like, seriously. Because the way Jolie is looking at me right now says that she’s about to say something uncomfortably insightful, and I’m just...I’m just not ready for it.
"He was counting, too, Thea! Counting.”
I badly want to say it’s a coincidence. But...the thing is, once you know in your mind and you believe with all your heart that God is real...
There’s no such thing as coincidence.
But even so.
“It doesn’t have to mean what you think it should mean,” I say instead. “Maybe it’s just a wake-up call for me to be more...careful. Because he knew I was counting, and obviously, he has every reason to see it as pathetic and—”
“He doesn’t think that.”
Jolie sounds so sure that it has my heart doing something foolish.
“I saw his smile, Thea. And I know you did, too. It wasn’t a smile that says he was laughing at you.”
I’m torn between wanting to cover my ears and begging for her to say more.
Please give me more reasons to hope that he can still be a part of my life.
“You know how Damian sometimes looks at Sarah when he’s teasing her?”
My heart is racing faster than ever now.
“That’s what his smile reminds me of.” Jolie shifts Wuthering Heights to her other arm. "Thea, I've been watching people for years—you know this. It's literally what I study. And that man is interested."
"He's a customer."
"He's a man who's been coming to this café every single day just to sit in a booth and eat breakfast and watch you work."
"You can’t be sure of that.”
“I am, though. And I’m right about this, you’ll see.”
I fight against the urge to clutch my chest. Every word from Jolie is like an answered prayer, and I just don’t know how to handle it. “You, um...” I check the clock behind her. Oh, good. “You should go or you’ll be late for class.”
Jolie laughs. “I know when you’re trying to get rid of me.”
I pretend not to hear that as I usher her out of the locker room. “Go.”
She rolls her eyes at me, and I pretend not to see this, too. But my friend still ends up having the last word when my phone buzzes, and her text message pops up on the screen.
Corner guy is in the parking lot. :)
Time...crawls after that. Every second is a battle not to look out the window or step out of the cafe just to see if Jolie was right, and he was still out there.
When I finally reach the end of the shift, I barely manage to resist the urge to run out.
Play it cool, Thea!
A cold breeze stings my cheeks as soon as I step out. It's the kind of cold that makes
your lungs ache when you breathe, the kind that turns the inside of your nose into ice the second you step outside.
The sun's already setting—it sets so early here in winter, sometimes as early as four-thirty, and it's past five now.
The sky is doing that thing where it turns purple and gold and pink all at once, like someone spilled watercolors across the horizon, and the mountains in the distance are dark silhouettes against all that color.
It's beautiful.
I hunch my shoulders against the wind and head toward my car. The parking lot is mostly empty now—just a few cars scattered around, the staff vehicles clustered near the back door, and—
And his car.
I see it immediately because it's impossible to miss. It’s sleek and low and the color of wet slate, that dark gray-blue that probably has some fancy name like "graphite pearl" or "midnight steel" or something equally fancy.
It has a logo on the front that I don't recognize—some kind of emblem, silver and elegant, the kind of thing that screams expensive in a language I don't speak.
Honestly, I know more about the migration patterns of elk than I do about luxury vehicles.
I could tell you that elk winter in the valley and summer in the high country, that they can weigh up to seven hundred pounds, that the bulls' antlers can span four feet.
But cars? Cars are just things that get you from point A to point B, and as long as they do that without exploding, I don't really care what logo is on the front.
So this car...
I know it should impress me, but I’m just not cool enough to understand how appealing it is. All I care about this car...is the person driving it.
I can see him through the windshield. He's in the driver's seat, and he's looking at his phone, and the interior light is on, so I can see his face—the strong line of his jaw, the dark fall of his hair, the way his brow furrows slightly as he reads whatever's on the screen.
He looks up, sees me, and our eyes meet across two parking spaces and approximately seven feet of cold February air, and I freeze.
I should keep walking. I should get in my car and pretend I didn't see him, pretend this is a normal Tuesday evening and I'm just leaving work like I do every Tuesday evening and there's nothing unusual about a customer sitting in the parking lot.
But I can't move.
He's still looking at me, and I'm still looking at him, and the moment stretches out like taffy, long and thin and slightly uncomfortable.
Then he opens his car door, and just watching him move suddenly makes the world feel like it’s turning in slow motion, and everyone and everything is fading away.
The café ceases to exist. The parking lot becomes our own universe, and it suddenly feels like it’s just me and him and the dying light and the cold.
He leans back against his car. Casual. Like he's been waiting for this. Like he planned it.
Maybe he did.
I force myself to keep walking, keys jangling in my hand. I find myself wondering if he’d stop me as I walk past his car. But he doesn’t. I find myself holding my breath as I continue to walk away, but...nope. It’s all silence, and it’s heartbreaking.
But as soon as I make it to my car—
"Those tires."
I realize that the loud pounding of my heart has probably drowned out the sound of his footsteps behind me. Either that or he’s like stealth personified because he’s right behind me when I turn around.
But instead of looking at me, he’s looking at my decades-old Honda, which is the opposite of his in every way.
“Have you noticed they’re not in good shape at all?”
The words have me blinking. Really? I glance at my tires. “They look fine to me.” They got me through last winter, and they'll get me through this one.
"They are not fine."
"I drive on them every day—"
"That doesn’t make them less bald. The roads are icy. You will slide."
"I won't slide—"
"You cannot know that."
"I've been driving these roads for two years. I think I know—"
"Knowing the roads does not change the physics of bald tires on ice." He says it so matter-of-factly, like he's explaining basic mathematics to a child. "I will drive you home."
It's not a question. It's not even a request. It's a statement of fact, delivered in the same tone he probably uses to order omelet, like he's already decided what's going to happen and I'm just a variable in an equation he's solving.
"That's really kind," I say, and I'm using my customer-service voice now, the one that sounds polite and agreeable but actually means ‘no, thank you’. "But I'm fine. Really. I appreciate the concern, but I drive this road every day, and it's really not—"
"You drive that road every day on tires that would not pass inspection in any country I have lived in."
His accent thickens when he's frustrated, I realize. The consonants get harder, more deliberate, and suddenly I'm very aware that English is not his first language, that he's choosing these words carefully, that he's trying to make me understand something.
"And I have lived in countries with very low standards."
I don't know if I'm supposed to laugh or be offended or what, but something in my chest does that warm, dangerous thing again—the thing I've been trying very hard not to name, the thing that feels like the moment right before you realize you're falling.
"I appreciate that," I say slowly, "but I really can't—I mean, I don't even know you, and—"
"You’ve been watching me for thirty-six days."
My jaw drops.