The grin is for him. Like an inside joke.
And I’m on the outside.
Oh my God.
Is he laughing at me?
My stomach yo-yos. And, again, I glance around, trying to get my bearings. To make sense of why he is laughing at me.
Why did I agree to this date? I should have known this would never work.
“What can I get you?” Then he gestures to a display of bottles and a stack of tiny plastic cups I hadn’t noticed. “Want a sample? We have two blends.”
“A… sample?” I croak.
His brows pinch, eyes narrowed on me and he nods again. “Yep. Original and Maple Pecan.”
I glance down at a pair of bottles on the table like they can offer any clarity, and when I look back at Beck, he’s wearing an expression I’ve seen on a thousand faces throughout my life.
One that says, What’s wrong with her?
I take a step back, a searing burn replacing my sternum.
My heart trips over itself, frantically looking for an emergency exit.
“I-I don’t drink alcohol,” I tell him. And then because I’ve felt comfortable telling him so much about me—though, right now, I’m the furthest thing from comfortable—I declare, “Spirits taste like poison. Beer tastes rotten and wine tastes sour.”
“A muffin then?” He waves a hand at the baked goods, and something in the gesture reminds me of the many times Dad tried to teach me how to drive. The stiffness in his body when he waited for me to put the car in gear or execute a turn.
He’s losing patience.
I swallow. “I’m not hungry.” Nothing has ever been truer.
He smirks at me.
At me.
And then?—
HOLY CRAP!
His eyes aren’t amber. They’re brown.
And every cell in my body starts screaming that this is not the Beck I met a week ago.
Did I make him up? Has he been body-snatched? Have I tripped into an alternate universe?
I take another step back—right into the person behind me. I whirl around, panicked.
“I’m so sorry!” Yes, I probably shout it. The poor old man I bumped into looks startled. “I-I-I—This was a mistake. I need to go?—”
And then I veer out of line and into the Farmer’s Market crowd.
“Oh, shit—wait!”
I hear the shout behind me, but it can’t compete with the bug-zapping buzz in my brain. The wrongness. The overwhelm. I need to get out of here. I need to get somewhere safe. Quiet. Enclosed.
I need to burrow.
