“Hi,” she said.
Lowering himself down across the table from her, he felt himself smile, even with all the shit in his head. “Hey.”
Okay, Lyric was the first to admit that the brain was capable of dreaming up all kinds of romantic bullcrap.
Particularly when you were lying awake during the day, curled up into your pillow, your family a mess, your career floundering, your purpose in life evaporated… and yet you had a man who had just texted you back that yes, he would meet you for dinner at Roberto’s at seven p.m.
All of that was arguably the breeding ground for delusions of sexual attraction, but, good golly Miss Molly, as Lyric stared at the face she had been busy recasting for the last however many million hours, she could confidently say that the real thing was so much better.
Dev in person was next-level—and she laughed a little. Then almost knocked her water glass over when she went to pick the thing up.
“Sorry.” She took her hands back and put them in her lap. “I, ah—how are you?”
For God’s sake, did she have to sound like someone on a customer service line? In that tone of voice, she might as well ask for his social security number next.
“Good.” His smile faded. Then he glanced around. “Nice place.”
“It is, isn’t it.”
Even though she’d gotten here fifteen minutes early, she brought fresh eyes to the restaurant’s narrow interior and limited number of tables. The uniformed waitstaff brought a little formality to the otherwise casual place, and the countless maps of Italy that hung on the exposed brick walls, from all different eras and in all different frames, made her feel like they were in a lowbrow museum. Overhead, opera music rose and fell, and the smells coming out of the flap door in the back were pure heaven.
There was only one other couple in the place, and they had to be in their sixties, the pair of them each with reading glasses on their noses as they went through their menus.
Dev cleared his throat. Then went for his water glass like a total pro, even bringing it to his mouth and swallowing without a drop spilled.
She was about to comment on it—like he’d mastered some kind of complex skill—but fortunately caught the words before they left her mouth. As she racked her brain for something, anything, to say, she focused on his hands. They were such strong hands, with blunt fingers, and all those calluses.
They had felt good on her waist, and she wondered what they’d be like on her skin—
“Listen,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve got to be honest.”
Her stare shot up toward his face, but she couldn’t make it any farther than his Adam’s apple. The tension rolling off him was palpable, and as a cold, hollow feeling struck her chest, she braced herself, noting he hadn’t taken his windbreaker off.
Closing her eyes, she nodded. “It’s okay—”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
Blink. Blink.Blink.“You… haven’t?”
“Why do you sound so surprised.” He laughed with an edge as he shrugged out of his jacket. “I can’t believe I’m the first man to say that to you.”
She refocused on her water glass because the fluttering feeling in her chest had probably translated into something rather walleyed-ish on her puss.
“That’s true,” she whispered. “But you’re the first man I’ve cared about hearing it from.”
Everything seemed to dim down around them, especially as he extended his arm and laid his hand on the table. Except just as she was about to reach across, the waiter, a tall, lanky young man with a ponytail, approached again.
“Hi, can I get you all some drinks?”
Dev took his palm back. “I’ll take a beer.”
“Sure, I’ll bring you the menu—”
“Just a beer. Doesn’t have to be special.”
That seemed to confuse the kid. “Do you want a seasonal lager? Or a draft—”
“Fermented hops. Cold. In a glass—but only because this looks like the kind of place where you can’t have it in a bottle.”
