Page 19 of First Impressions of You

He eyes my left shoulder, where my right hand is gently massaging the sore spot. At this moment, both of us realize something at the same time: he’s still holding my left arm. He lets go as soon as our eyes land on the place where we’re touching, and his hand leave a burning circle around my wrist where he was holding me.

“I’m fine,” I say, trying to sound firm. My brain is sending a command to my body to turn around and leave, but my legs refuse to obey. I’m paralyzed.

The sea of people moving around have pushed us close, our bodies almost touching again. I can feel the heat from his skin like waves breaking through the thin fabric of his white T-shirt.

I somehow choose this moment to compute that this is all he ever wears. Jeans and white tees.

I’m cataloguing this new piece of information, when I’m hit again, this time by a small drunk girl on her way to the bar, but even her tiny size is enough to send me off balance, and suddenly, my chest is glued to the hard shape of Winter. His hands fly instinctively to my waist to keep me straight, and my skin all but catches fire.

The flimsy pale green dress I chose to wear today does nothing to block the heat of his hand from reaching my waist and spreading all over my body, awakening parts of me that should definitely not be responding this way to Winter Davis, of all people.

This isn’t right. I feel like his proximity defies some law of physics. I should want to rip his hands off me and dart out. Instead, I want his hands to rip my clothes off.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I haven’t even had anything to drink yet.

Our magnetic fields are malfunctioning. They should be pushing us apart, but instead if feels like they’re pulling us together.

I open my mouth to apologize for slamming into him, but I’m cut off by the sudden uproar coming from where I left my sisters just a few minutes ago.

“I’m going to…” I say and nod in the general direction of the commotion.

He blinks like he, too, has just woken from a weird trance. “Right.”

I find my sisters before I can let myself freak out about what just happened. When I turn around, I see Winter’s back as he moves away from the bar, head bent down and a hand on his cap.

My eyes are pulled away from him when a rendition of “Happy Birthday” starts, followed soon by Olivia’s high-pitched voice.

“Stop, stop, stop,” she whines. Julia’s holding the cake in front of her, and her eyes search for me. I arch an eyebrow, just as confused. “We’re doing this the Brazilian way. This is too fucking sad for my taste.”

My lips curl in a knowing smile. This is such an Olivia thing to do. Julia passes the cake on to Cameron, who promptly takes the position in front of our youngest sister.

“Just follow Luiza and Julia’s lead and clap along,” Olivia orders, and all her friends laugh at her absurd request but they do as they’re told.

Julia and I start singing “Happy Birthday,” clapping along to the rhythm like we always do at Brazilian birthday parties. Quickly, the mood changes from a somber chanting to a celebratory song, every guest joining us, clapping in rhythm.

I make a conscious effort not to think about Winter for the rest of the night. I don’t know if he’s left or not, but I try not to keep looking for him in every corner. I take turns sitting with my older sister and Cam, then moving to talk to some of my coworkers from the front gate and some of the cast of the theater department. Olivia has managed to gather so many people for her birthday that I wonder if there’s anyone at The Reel Pub who’s not here for her celebration.

Not thinking about Winter gets easier when a guy approaches me after I’ve finished my first mojito. I’d lost track of Olivia’s whereabouts a few songs ago, and Julia is so entertained in her conversation with Cam that I don’t dare come between them. This is why he finds me sitting on a stool at the bar.

“This will sound like a line, but I promise it’s a genuine question,” he says, leaning towards me to be heard over the loud music. “Have we met before? You look so familiar.”

I can’t say that I get that a lot. I’m not someone who looks like a lot of people. Olivia looks the most like me, but our resemblance is in our body shape, not our face. I’ve heard one too many times the expression “exotic beauty” thrown around to refer to me.

There’s something in the way he says it, though, that makes me wonder if he’s actually telling the truth. Before I can say anything, he snaps his fingers at me as if he’s just solved the world’s greatest mystery.

“Do you work at the park?”

Probably ninety percent of the patrons here do, but I’ll indulge him.

“I do, yeah.”

“That’s where I must’ve seen you before.” He rakes a hand through his wavy blond hair, and I might be wrong, but I think he flexes his bicep when he does it. He’s so not the type of guy I’d usually give the time of day, but I’m alone, I’ve had a couple of drinks, and he doesn’t seem harmful.

“Probably,” I agree.

The guy eyes the empty stool next to me then cocks his head at me. He only takes a seat after I give him a quick nod, and then he places his beer on the bar, our arms grazing when I lift my cup for another sip of my mojito.

“I work at the 441 building,” he says. I give a sheepish smile from behind my glass, and his eyes drop to my mouth. “But I promise I’m one of the fun ones.”

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