Page 7 of Boyfriend of the Hour
“Did you say it was last call?” he asked.
The chocolate scent grew stronger. His deep voice wasthatsmooth. In the back of my mind, I heard the opening piano riff of Sinatra’s version of “All the Way.” Cheesy, I know. But you’d be a sucker for oldies too if you were raised by a couple of Italian immigrants who graduated high school in 1957.
“Hello?”
I refocused. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Those brown eyes watched me, deep and brooding. “I asked why you were staring at me.”
“Oh, sorry.” I tapped my fingers against my hip, feeling like I’d been caught shoplifting, not staring out into space. “Just zoned out there for a minute, you know?”
The customer frowned. “Not really. I never ‘zone out.’”
I balked. “Never? Not even when you’re staring at a drink you barely touched?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I waited for him to answer my little dig about his drink, but he didn’t. “Lucky for you, then. I do it, like, all the time. It’s pretty inconvenient.”
“Surely notallthe time,” the man repeated as he pushed his glasses up his nose, which would have been perfect if not for acharmingly crooked bridge, like he’d been in a fight once, and it had never healed correctly.
Interesting. Was Clark Kent a fighter? Or was that only when he turned into Superman?
“Yes,all the time,” I parroted him right back, this time with a really bad English accent, even though he didn’t have one.
I used the same voice when I teased my sister’s English husband. But Xavier at least rolled his eyes and chuckled at my shitty imitation. This guy just looked at me, zero comprehension in those big, beautiful browns.
Some people really can’t take a joke.
“Ah, never mind,” I said. “So, yeah. It’s last call.”
“I gathered.”
“Well, do you want anything else?”
He examined his still-full glass. “I don’t think so. I didn’t particularly care for this anyway.”
“I can see that,” I said. “What did you order?”
The man rotated his glass another half inch on its cardboard coaster. “I asked for something strong. That gentleman brought me this.”
“Hard day?”
The man’s jaw tightened. “Hard night. I got off at two.”
Graveyard shift, I figured. Probably a train operator or maybe a custodian somewhere, even with the collared shirt and tie. Yeah, that’d be tough on anyone.
Without asking for permission, I picked up his glass and sniffed. “Oh, you poor man, that shit is toxic.”
I laughed. He did not.
Tough room.
“FYI, hon, if you want something good, you have to ask for it,” I told him. “Otherwise, you’ll just get well crap. Hold on—I’ll get you something that isn’t gasoline.”
The man reared, then calmed when he caught me watching him. “That was a joke, wasn’t it?”
I snorted. “Um, yeah. We don’t actually serve gasoline. So long as we’re clear.”
