Page 4 of Come Back To Me

I rolled my eyes.

“You like me,” he said. “Just a little.” He held his fingers up and pinched the air to show me how little. I shook my head and he made his pinch smaller. I shrugged.

“I’ll take it. I’m a man in love and I’m grasping at straws.” He had an excellent poker face. I was almost convinced. I felt a little sad for the girls who’d fallen for the joker—especially Elizabeth: the sincere eyes and the emotional lips. How many hearts had he fucked beyond repair?

I busied myself at the computer, putting in his order. I could feel his eyes on my back, the sexual heat of someone wondering what your skin tastes like.

“Hey,” he said when I brought him his breakfast and got him another beer. “Is that your newspaper?” He jutted his chin to where the paper sat behind me. “Do you mind?”

“You could just look on your phone,” I said, with a small smile.

“Nah,” he said. “Phones are bullshit, give me a newspaper any day.”

I handed him my newspaper without looking at him. I didn’t want him to know that I actually did like him.

“The Cheetos too,” he said.

I didn’t say anything as I dropped my half-stale bag of chips in front of him. He winked at me and I rolled my eyes.

“Cheesy,” I said.

His mouth was already full. “Me or the Cheetos?”

“Both.”

And then we got lunch-shift busy. I only saw him once more to drop off his check. He didn’t leave his number like I expected he would, and I never learned his name. He was the guy in the beanie who wanted to marry me.

He came back a few days later. I was working the dinner shift, and my hair had seen better days. He was carrying a guitar case, which he propped against the wall before taking a seat at the bar. As I walked toward him, he smiled, and I knew the guitar case was planned. Carrying a guitar around was almost as sexy as carrying a baby. He was wearing a leather jacket over a pink T-shirt, his jeans ripped at the knees. No beanie this time. I eyed his hair and tried not to smile. A hard side-part in light chestnut brown.

“Who are you today?” I asked him. “You look like one of those punks from California.”

“Hey now!” he said, shrugging off the jacket. “I’m wearing Docs, not Vans.” He lifted a foot to show me. “I’ve never surfed,” he told me. “And LA sucks.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’d lasted in LA for a month before moving on to Miami.

“I went on a date with a professional surfer once,” I told him. “He said that the only way to really feel alive was on the waves.”

“People make me feel alive,” he said. “Licking the salt off of a woman’s body at the beach. That’s the way to tell if you’re really living.” He had a mint in his mouth, he’d held it still until now, and while his eyes narrowed, he moved it around the front of his mouth, which made his lips move in the most sensual way. I pulled my eyes away from his mouth and stared at the beer taps.

“IPA?” I asked him.

I had four other tables. I glanced around the room to see if they all looked happy. A table of women in their early twenties was laughing near the window, their pink fur and metallic coats draped across the backs of their seats, sweet fruit drinks at their elbows. For the moment they’d forgotten to be gluten-free and I didn’t hate them.

“No,” he said. “That’s what I drink for breakfast. Jack and Coke.”

His hair was still damp from a shower, and he smelled of cologne. I’d discovered in my first month of living in America that all of the men here wore one of three colognes: Acqua Di Gio, Armani Code, and Light Blue. He was wearing none of these. He smelled woodsy like pine and fresh dirt.

“Oh, look at you,” I said. “Getting cooler by the minute.”

He smiled and stole a cherry from the tray. I watched him put it in his mouth, pulling the stem from the fruit and setting it on the bar.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“You were planning our life together last time you came in and you didn’t even know my name?”

He was a very still person, his movements paced. I’d noticed it the first time but now even more. Only one part of him moved at a time; right now it was his mouth as one corner turned up in a grin.

“I like to do things slowly,” he said. “And out of order.”

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