Page 14 of Home With You

"Just the fritter for now."

She nods and rings it up. I pay her, then race back outside. The girl is gone. What the hell? Did she really leave?

I look right and left. I don't see her anywhere. Then suddenly she appears from the side of the building. What was she doing there? Hiding from me? If so, she shouldn't hide in an alley. It's not safe.

"Hey," I say, getting her attention. "You said you'd wait for me."

"Actually, I didn't." She walks toward me. "You told me to and I decided not to."

"It was part of the deal."

"The deal was over before you even went in there. They don't have fritters this late so there was no need for me to stick around."

"You shouldn't make assumptions."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning you were wrong." I smile.

"I wasn't wrong," she says defiantly. "I go to this place all the time and I know for a fact they sell out of fritters by noon."

"Hmm." I take the sack I had hiding behind my back and hand it to her. "Then what's this?"

She slowly opens the sack. Her eyes widen and her lips part but she doesn't say anything.

"The girl inside said it was my lucky day." I smile. "She was right. Now how about that coffee?"

4

Raine

I can't believe this. There are never fritters in the case past noon and now it's after seven and they had one left? How is that possible? Did the guy go somewhere else to get it? He couldn't have. He didn't have time. I left him alone for a minute, maybe two. Definitely not enough time to find one somewhere else. And there's nowhere else he could go. Everything around here closes at five except for the coffee shop.

"After you," he says, holding the door for me.

I can't go in there. If I do, Shelly, the girl who works the counter, might say something to let this guy know I'm homeless. But who cares if he knows? It shouldn't matter.

But it does. Because I don't want to be known as the homeless girl. It's not who I am. Not who I want to be. It's only temporary and I'm trying to fix it but until I do, I don't want people like this guy judging me, or worse, running off when he finds out.

Maybe I wouldn't care so much if it were anyone else, but THIS guy? I don't want him to know I’m homeless. I might have a small, tiny, minuscule crush on him. It's purely physical. I don't even know him so obviously what I'm feeling is simply a physical attraction but it's strong enough that I haven't been able to stop thinking about him since I saw him last night.

It was his body that first caught my attention. He's tall with big shoulders and muscular arms. Last night he had on a t-shirt that fit close to his body and my eyes immediately went to his muscular chest, then his biceps. Then I glanced up at his face and saw those blue eyes and that dark hair against his tan gorgeous face and had to look away so I wouldn't stare. When I glanced at him again, he smiled and I felt this strange flutter in my stomach. I thought maybe it was from something I ate. When you eat from the trash, you never know what will happen. Food poisoning is always a possibility. But this didn't feel like that. It was more like the excited flutter you feel when you're at the top of the roller coaster, or when you're opening a birthday gift as a kid and you know it's the one you really, really wanted.

I don't know why I felt that way seeing some stranger smile but it happened, and oddly enough, I felt it again today when he showed up here with that same smile.

"Are you coming?" he asks, still holding the door. He's giving me that smile and I really wish I was just a normal girl with a normal life because I think I could actually like this guy. His smile seems genuine and he's kind of funny. He even made me laugh. If he asked, I'd probably agree to go out with him, if my situation were different.

But it's not. My life is a mess that nobody wants to be part of, including me. I need to get it back on track before I even consider dating again.

"Um, could we just forget the deal?" I hold the sack out to him. "You can have this back."

"Nope." His smile widens. "A deal's a deal. And I still owe you a coffee. Let's go." He motions me inside.

Why is he being so insistent? We just met. And he's hot. There are plenty of other girls who'd agree to have coffee with him.

He'll lose interest in me as soon as he finds out I live on the streets. A hot young lawyer's not going to be interested in a homeless girl.

As I walk up to the register, Shelly smiles at me. "There's someone in the bathroom. You'll have to wait."

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