“Have at it.”
I do as he instructs, and by the time the food is melting in my mouth, I can’t help the low bawdy moan that slips through my lips.
“Holy shit,” I manage through a full mouth.
“Jesus, it’s like watching a baby hippo discover solid food for the first time.”
“Baby hippos are fucking adorable,” I inform him. A small chunk pops off my lip and embarrassingly lands on my arm. James laughs at me, and I follow, but when I shovel another heaping forkful into my mouth, those near-indecent moans return.
James coughs into his fist, followed by a quenching sip of water. “That good?”
I nod eagerly. “And these Coke floats?” My eyes roll to the back of my head, and he does this thing with his tongue where he makes it roll over his bottom lip, leaving it wet and glistening. Breakfast food and carbonated drinks shouldn’t be this unchaste, but here I am being proven wrong.
“You really did pull out the big guns,” I comment. “Hazelnut waffles, Coke and ice cream,andTropical Blast? I can’t imagine what you’d do for a date with someone you actually like.”
He looks offended. “Who says I don’t like you?”
I shrug, attempting to come off as impassive and blasé as possible. I can’t even begin to entertain the idea of him liking me. “You don’t know me well enough to like me.”
He doesn’t respond with annoyance or irritation, proving my theory isn’t something he wants to rebut or argue. Instead, his eyes narrow, reproving and hard, and he calmly says, “That doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”
“Doesn’t mean you do.”
He leans forward, his elbows on the hard wood. He links his fingers together, his chin perched on his knuckles, all withouttaking his eyes off me. His lips quiver with what can easily be mistaken as a smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I like you.”
It feels too easy. To get sucked into this. This floaty feeling like I could drift off into dreamland. Where I don’t have to worry about the possibility of broken hearts or sleazy men with ulterior motives. Because I barely know him. But it doesn’t quite feel like I barely know him.
“Anyone can say that.” It’s meant to come off as a joke, something to tease him with, but it sounds more like a dare. I avoid his eyes, trying so hard to play my poker face. Tuck those emotions back under my sleeve where they can stay hidden.
“Anyone can,” he agrees. “But I’m not anyone.”
“You—”
“Are you guys doing okay?” The interruption reminds us we’re in a packed diner, not a place to be talking about whether or not our raging hormones are masquerading around as actual feelings.
“We are. Thank you.” James flashes a smile that’s all charm and sincerity to our server.
I take another bite of my waffle. He takes a long sip of his Coke float. Whatever quarrel-like banter tossed back and forth between us is drowned in sugar, and I almost want to go back to it. To dissect it to see if there’s more to his words, something backing it with substance and candor.
Our meal continues with quiet glances while the conversation holds a vagrant quality. The best parts of San Diego, the best parts of Washington. The possibility of moving anywhere outside of the West Coast, like New York or Florida. Or even something as daring as a foreign country. What high school was like in our respective hometowns, if college was any better. I ask him if it’s a San Diego thing that my neighbor keeps knocking at my door asking for sugar, and he asks if this specificneighbor is a man. I tell him he is. That earns me a tight-lipped smile.
“What’s Tacoma like?” he asks after he stopped our server to order another plate of waffles.
“It’s cold and really green,” I answer. “Gets a little gloomy.”
“So stuff I can look up on the internet, great.”
I slap a hand in his direction. “You asked what Tacoma’s like.”
“Not the weather forecast,” he argues. “What was it like growing up there?”
I sigh. “It was my mom and me a lot of the time. I’d occasionally have friends over, or I’d go to their houses, but it was mainly just me and her. We had a lot of little traditions. Like movie nights on Fridays. Or shopping at antique stores every other weekend. My favorite was when it was warm enough, which wasn’t too often, she’d pour Coke into these tall glass cups and plop five maraschino cherries in each of them and add a bendy straw. We’d sit out on the porch and drink them while we both read a book.”
“You miss her?”
I nod. “A lot.” I don’t go into detail about howmuchI miss her. How this time apart from her makes me realize how short she kept that umbilical cord. Not in an attempt to control my life, but because it was always just us two. She and I both knew some time apart would be good now that she’s remarried. She’s back home, establishing her new life, while I’m doing some variation of the same thing here.
“What about San Diego? What’s that like?”
