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“Your phone. ”
I point, and he finally understands. He walks over and picks it up off the metal countertop right beside me.
I made the mistake of grabbing it once, thinking I would hand it to him. The look on his face—he has this way of shutting down his whole expression so it looks like there’s no feeling in him at all.
He’s hilariously funny when he wants to be, wickedly smart, open and teasing—and then suddenly I step over some invisible line and he’s a robot. Or too intense, complaining about how something is bullshit, like he did that first night I came here.
He takes his phone into the front of the store, where I won’t be able to hear him talking.
I go back to my Latin, though it’s hard to concentrate, knowing, as I do, that in ten or fifteen minutes someone will show up at the alley door. West will meet him there, positioning his body so I can’t see who he’s talking to, mumbling in this low voice that makes him sound like just another dude, a slacker. His shoulders will slouch. His hands will dip in and out of his pockets, propelled along by his soothing, nonthreatening voice.
I try not to see. It’s better if I stick to the slices. That’s the only way we can be friends—or not-friends, I guess.
And I need to be not-friends with West. He’s the only person in my whole life who doesn’t treat me like nothing happened but who also doesn’t treat me like everything happened. He says, “How’s it going?” when I walk in the door, and I tell him the truth, but afterward that’s that. We’re done talking about it.
Tucked in my nook at the bakery, for a few hours two or three nights a week, I feel like myself.
When he comes back, he hops up on the nearest table opposite me and says, “What’s that, Latin?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a quiz tomorrow. ”
“Need help with your verbs?”
“No, I’m good. ”
“Are you staying long enough for me to teach you all the finer points of muffin glazing?”
“Probably not. I’ve got to write a response paper for Con Law, and I didn’t bring my laptop. ”
“You should’ve. I like it when you write here. ”
I do, too. He’s quiet when I need him to be quiet, and when I want a break he’ll teach me some bread thing. If I read him my draft out loud, he’ll suggest some change that sounds small but always ends up making the paper more concise, the argument stronger.
West is smart. Crazy smart. I had no idea—the one time I had a class with him, he didn’t talk.
It is possible he’s actually smarter than I am.
“Next week, then,” he says. “Tuesday you will learn the secrets of the glaze. ”
I smile. I think he likes teaching me stuff nearly as much as he liked learning it in the first place. He’s almost insatiably curious. No matter what homework I’m doing, he’ll end up asking me fifty questions about it.
“Sounds good. Are you on at the restaurant this weekend?”
“Yeah. What about you, you got plans?”
I want to hang out with you. Come over Sunday, and we’ll watch bad TV.
Let’s go to the bar.
Let’s go out to dinner in Iowa City.
Sometimes I invent a life in which my being more than not-friends with West is a possibility. A life where we get to hang out somewhere other than a kitchen at midnight.
Then I mentally pinch myself, because, no, I want less scandal, not more.
“Bridget is trying to get me to go to that party tomorrow night. ”
“Where’s that?”
