Page 196 of Coach
It was just stain, I reminded myself.
Just wood.
But my body was acting like it was holding something bigger.
As much as I wanted to believe it was a mystery, some unknown force driving my brain and body mad, I knew what it was.
More accurately, I knewwhoit was.
Mateo.
His name alone tightened my throat, made my hands itch with nerves I didn’t want to admit I had.
I tossed the rag down like it was a problem, tore the latex gloves off and threw them in the bin, then flexed my fingers. They ached from how long I’d been clenching. I shook them out, rolled my wrists, pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets until the darkness behind my eyelids swirled like ink.
Breathe.
But even as I returned to the chair and tried again—more careful and more focused—I could feel it.
The tension wasn’t in the wood.
It was in me.
Every line of muscle, every stiff breath, every too-precise motion screamed the same word:
Mateo.
A laugh echoed in my head for the fifth time in an hour. It was rich and deep, yet playful, an Italian liltgiving it a life of its own. Something in that sound made a spark of something flicker in me, made me feel . . . I don’t know . . . happy?
Ridiculous. I was being ridiculous.
Something else made me happy when I thought about it: the way he said “fries” like it was a dare.
And the way his eyes crinkled when he smirked.
And how he leaned forward across the table when he talked like the world was on pause and he hadn’t noticed yet.
I scrubbed harder.
The wood didn’t protest, didn’t laugh, didn’t lean forward. God, I loved wood.
Nope. Not goingthere.
Mateo and I had been on a grand total of one date. One dinner.
Sure, he was a charming teacher with blue-black hair, pearly white teeth, and an accent that could drop a man at fifty paces.
But I didnotdate.
I didn’t make time for people who smiled like they saw something in me I didn’t . . .
or smelled like the ocean and most aromatic flower on Earth had a baby.
I’d spent most of my life keeping things simple and quiet. It was my work, my shop, and Stevie yelling at me about eating vegetables.
That was enough.
I blinked away visions of chocolate eyes and midnight hair and returned to the chairs before me, putting on gloves again and working the stain into the wood with steady pressure, watching it soak into the grain like it belonged there, like it had always been part of the story. I smoothed it in with the edge of my palm, and nodded at the depth and texture of its new color.
