“You got it.”
“I mean theater-quality remorse. Tears. Knees. Possibly music.”
“Not your grandfather’s music,” Darlene calls.
“Still disrespectful,” I tell her.
The day keeps moving. I should be grateful for busy hours, and I am, mostly. Work keeps my hands occupied and my mind from staring too long at numbers that refuse to improve. Yet beneath every customer exchange, every joke, every clink of ceramic and hiss of steaming milk, I feel a thin cord of tension running through me.
I keep checking the street.
Not obviously. I am not pressing my face to the window like a teenager waiting for a holovid star to walk by. I am a grown woman with pride, debt, and flour on my sleeve. But every time the bell rings, my gaze moves. Every time a large shadow crosses the rain-smeared glass, my heart makes a small, embarrassing leap.
Kauss does not come in.
Of course he does not come in. Last night he told me to lock my window and vanished into the rain after preventing several Poison Memories idiots from prying open my back door. That is not the behavior of a man about to stroll in for coffee and casual conversation. That is the behavior of a man who thinks protecting people from alleys is easier than letting them say thank you.
By midafternoon, Darlene catches me looking out the window again.
“He’s not a bus schedule,” she says.
“I’m checking the weather.”
“The weather is wet. Mystery solved.”
“I’m also checking foot traffic.”
“Foot traffic does not have scales.”
I turn from the window with as much dignity as a woman can maintain while holding a tray of lemon tarts and being emotionally mugged by an elderly chain-smoker. “You are very invested in my alleged interest in a man who has spoken perhaps twenty words to me.”
“Twenty words is plenty if the man looks like that.”
I almost drop the tray. “Darlene.”
“What? I’m old, not blind.”
“He is intimidating.”
“So was my second husband.”
“You told me your second husband was five foot four.”
“And mean as a badger in a sock. Intimidation comes in many sizes.”
I slide the tarts into the display case and close it with more care than necessary. “I am not interested.”
Darlene’s silence could strip paint.
“I’m not,” I insist.
“Sure.”
“He is obviously dealing with things.”
“Everybody in Halo is dealing with things. That does not make them your new renovation project.”
“I don’t renovate men.”
