“No, I wasn’t!”
“Yes, you were, it’s hard not to notice when a pretty girl is burning a hole through your chest with her dark eyes.”
“That’s not fair! You can’t use cute writer talk on me!” God, this guy is so annoying. Does he have a quip for everything? “I was just curious why the sudden style change?”
He looks down at his outfit, confused by the comment. Before he has time to react, I snatch his glasses off the table. “And what’s the deal with these?”
He scoots around, trying to snatch them back, as I put them on, and suddenly everything is ten times closer. “Jesus, are you blind?!”
“No! It helps me read small print!”
I look at him, his face a distorted mess of black hair hiding sharp lines, and yet even here I can still make out his eyes. “Do you even know what I actually look like?”
“Yes!” he says defensively. “I just told you I’m not blind!”
Suddenly, the ease with which he confused me for a haunted house employee the other night makes a little more sense, and yet, something is still off. “Oh, really? Then shut your eyes and describe me.”
“What?”
“Do it! I wanna know you actually know what I look like. If you do, I’ll give you back your glasses.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll crush them in my hand, and I imagine the last thing you wanna do is gamble if someone like me is stronger than a pair of dollar store specs.”
At first, I see reservation before it gives way to something more mischievous. He turns his head away and closes his eyes. “Fine.”
I scoot a little closer. “And no peeking. Now, go on, what do I look like?”
I watch his eyes shift behind his eyelids as he struggles to recall details. “You have black hair, long legs, a cute smile, scars-”
“A blind man on the other side of the country could have told me that. I want specifics.”
He pouts at my interruption before collecting himself. “You have this beautiful scar running along your mouth where your lips meet that makes it look like you have the biggest smile, even when you frown.”
I touch the scar, a scar I’ve lived with for ages, not even thinking about how someone might find it “beautiful.” I scoot closer, eager to hear what he says next. “Go on.”
“The bolts of white in your hair make it look like you carry your own personal thunderstorm around with you.”
His words cut deep, an observation that actually makes me feel sorry for myself, wondering whether it is because of how I look or how I act. I keep my eyes fixed on him, so curious how much of this is insight or imagination. “Go on.”
“When you’re curious about something, you have this look on your face, the way your lips part, the way your eyes glitter behind your long lashes, like you want to dive into it with abandon.”
He opens his eyes, and only then do I realize how much I’ve inched towards him, the fact that we are almost nose to nose in the booth. His eyes catch mine, and I notice how stunning his lashes are for the first time since I met him.
“Like that,” he says in a breathy baritone voice, as if we both don’t know I’m sitting too close.
The words hang in the air between us, fragile and loaded. For the first time, I acknowledge what I’ve been denying up until now, a genuine yearning in him that desperately mirrors my own. But I also see something else—a hesitation. A flicker of a shadow, a guardedness that pulls him back as he swallows in what I imagine must be a very dry throat.
I pull back as well, heat burning my face as I hand him the glasses. I don't press. I, of all people, should know how dangerous it is to rush into things, so instead I search for a path back, a way to cool the heat between us before I hurt the gentle creature hiding in the man across from me.
I slide back towards my drink and rest my chin on one hand as I collect my drink with the other. “It's okay, you know. To be scared. Or confused. Or just... not ready.”
I sheepishly turn my gaze back to him, not hoping to emulate some domineering vixen, but instead coming from a place of empathy. “I want you to know that. I didn't come here tonight to pressure you into anything. I just... I couldn't stay away.”
My fingers reach for the book he was reading, seeing it was his copy of The Colossus. He was reading Mushrooms, probably because of what I told him the other night. My lips curl into a hopeful smile as I savor the longest I think he’s ever been quiet since we met. “Whateverdoes or doesn’t happen tonight, I just want you to know that this tells me you see me. Maybe not all of me, not yet, but it’s a part of me I think few people have even bothered to unearth.”
“And I thought I was the writer,” he says, finally managing to break his trance. He collects the book, his fingers brushing mine, the heat I thought I had dismissed now an electric shock between us, before turning his toothy grin on me. “Wanna go for a walk?”
