Page 10 of Secret Santa

Harris: ??

Beckett: ??‍????‍????

Presley: ??

ChapterSix

Every year as soon as the calendar turned to November, I’d swear to myself that I’d never be unprepared for the holidays again. And somehow, every single year I forget I made that promise to myself. I needed to hire more people. Even if it was just seasonal. I couldn’t tend to the front of the diner and also handle all the prep work for the upcoming onslaught of catering and pie orders for Thanksgiving, and then again for Hanukkah and Christmas.

And I really needed to stop being such a sucker for the five people who came and ate breakfast on Monday mornings. The handful of coffee and pastry orders with the college kids, and the few breakfasts with the retired folks wasn’t enough of a reason for me to be opening at the butt crack of dawn after working the entire weekend. I was already dead on my feet, and it hadn’t even hit nine o’clock yet. Even Elvis’s Christmas album on the Wurlitzer couldn’t snap me out of my funk.

“Welcome to Ito Eats—”

“I’m smiling already.”

He’d only been in my diner once, but there was no mistaking his voice. Despite him talking in a totally normal volume, it felt as if he’d shouted into a stadium full of downtrodden football fans. His presence was the late in the game touchdown that injected everyone with a second wind.

“How did the big tournament go?” I asked, setting a menu down in front of the chair he pulled out at my counter.

“It was incredible.”

His smile was so big and so genuinely bright that despite my shitty morning, my aching feet, and tired back, I couldn’t help mirror it.

“Kelsey, my women’s team captain crushed three of her personal bests and took gold in two events and silver in the third. Amira took a silver and a bronze and killed it in the hundred back but got a little caught up in the turn. Tiernan too! His hundred fly is probably the best I’ve seen. Better than my brother’s, but if you ever meet him don’t tell him I said that.”

He pushed his sleeves up his wrists and my ears lost their ability to listen. The man had the sexiest arms I’d ever seen. So. Incredibly. Defined. There was way too much emphasis put on football, basketball, and all the other manly men sports. I felt robbed having never known that swimmers were delicious with a capital D.

“I’m sorry. It’s super boring if you don’t follow swimming.” His apology yanked me out of my obsession over his arms.

“No! Not at all! It is really interesting.” My hand went to that wrist like he and I were more than just passing customer and server. Why would Itoucha man I didn’t even know? Regardless, I felt a zing from that tiny connection to my eyebrows and down to my toes. “I should apologize, not you. It’s been alongweekend here at Ito Eats.”

He nodded his thanks as I poured him a cup of coffee.

“It’s been kind of crazy here.” I continued. “My cook was putting up Christmas lights this weekend, tripped somehow, and broke his ankle. His backup is in the throes of new parenthood and isn’t expected to be back from paternity leave until after the new year. Though he said he could come in, in a pinch, but his son isn’t sleeping very well so the two of them are zombies right now.”

“Are you telling me you worked all weekend?” he asked, his coffee cup hit the counter with a loudthunk. He raised his eyes, meeting my gaze, and I could feel his surprise at that information. Clearly, he’d never worked in food service. I shrugged my shoulder in a sheepish admission.

“Please take a seat. You don’t need to stand just for me. I can grab my refills.” He held up the cup, his eyebrow lifting in tandem with what I assumed was a hidden smile.

“Really, it’s no big deal. This is the slow time anyway. The lunch rush doesn’t start for another hour.”

He patted the seat next to him at the counter. If I were in my regular mindset and not mentally and physically exhausted, I wouldn’t have sat down. That’s what I told myself anyway. But he pat that seat and smiled at me and my feet decided for me.

Even through the smells of the restaurant—the oil in the fryer and the smells of the griddle—I caught a whiff of his aftershave. It was crisp like the chill of a winter day, and clean like freshly washed sheets. And for someone who felt like oil just seeped from the pores on any day, it was possibly the most refreshing scent I’d been close to in a while.

“I saw this at the airport, and it reminded me of you.”

He passed me a tiny rock whittled into the shape of a maple leaf across the counter. It was the aforementioned exhaustion that made me believe I’d felt any kind of strange connection when our fingertips touched. Or perhaps it was the thrill of knowing he’d thought of me while he was away.

“Labradorite.” I held it up and inspected the shimmery blue-black colors of the little stone.

“Wow you really are into geodes.” I heard the entertained awe in his voice. Not judgement.

“My brother and I used to hike Twin Falls when we were young. With a single mom running a diner, we were left to our own devices a lot. First, we skipped them in the creek. One day we found a rock that had been broken open and were hooked on finding more rocks with cool sparkling crystals inside.”

He’d been working all weekend. Coaching and doing whatever swimming related things he did. Yet, he walked past some store or shop at the airport, saw a rock, and remembered enough about our conversation to bring it back for me? Crochet me in cotton and call me smitten.

ChapterSeven

---