Page 19 of Falling Backwards
And even though they whisper across my nerve endings because he’s handsome whether I want him to be or not, I know—I justknow—that he’s failing to answer me for the second time because he’s comparing me to the walking work of art in the other room.
It makes me painfully aware of the parts of my body that I’m unhappy with these days.
Then all of a sudden, I’m angry.In a way, what he’s doing is more insulting than what Marcus was doing.
Probably because this wouldn’t be the first time I was a joke to Luke Bramhill.
Gritting my teeth, I glare at him—and would you believe he has the audacity to look taken aback when his eyes finally stick on mine?
My voice comes out low.“Didn’t your mama teach you that it’s rude to stare at people?”
That just sends his eyes over me again.
“What’s with the attitude?”he asks.“I’m not the one grabbing another girl’s ass in front of my—”
“Like I said, you were staring at me.”I scoff.“And now you’re cussing with guests around, which is also rude—and unprofessional.”
He mocks my scoff.“It’s not like any of them are close enough to hear me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“In fact, it does.I can’t offend a guest if there isn’t one nearby.”
“You should behave a certain way at work just in case.”I turn and locate the hand sanitizer sitting on a shelf of the stand, for no reason except to try to distract myself from my aggravation.I don’t want to end up cussing too—he’d never let me live it down.“And speaking of work: for the third time, why aren’t you at your own station?”
Silence precedes his weirdly surprised-sounding, “Oh.”He bends over enough to look at the shelves himself.“Right.I just need….Let’s see….”
“What?”I ask impatiently.
He clicks his tongue as he peers around.He bats at the two hostess stand phones, a couple of iPad chargers, a box of tissues, and the hard copies of our reservation books and seating charts.Then he walks around behind me, not bothering to avoid brushing me with the side of his body, and bends over more to touch around the kids’ paper menus and things.
“Luke!Would you quit digging around in my stuff and just—?”
“Newsflash, Maggie: I’ve worked here longer than you have, which means I have a good idea of where things are.You can trust me to be able to look for something without needing your help.”
“Oh, can I trust you?”
He goes still in the middle of grabbing something in the stand.
Not having meant for that to slip out, I tense into stillness, too, except for my outright racing heartbeat.
Well, even though I didn’t mean to say it, I don’t try to take it back.
I know he tried like crazy to apologize after his actions had our happy times grinding to a halt all those years ago, but the fact remains that I’ll never forget how it felt to put my trust in him, indeed, only to have him break it.
And my heart.
At the unstoppable thought, my pulse picks up pace even more.
I don’t know how to describe all the emotions that thought inspires in me.There are too many, and they’re swirling too fast.
He finally unfreezes to stand straight again, and I unfreeze to cross my arms, feeling chilled.Time seems to pause as we capture each other in a look full of meaning, of memories.
Neither of us mentions them, though.
We never mention things from the past.
We never reached out to each other about them before we found ourselves working at the same place, and we haven’t talked about them since.
