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Not thinking, she extended her own. He took it. Instead of shaking it, he brought the back of her hand up and brushed his lips over her knuckles. His hands felt even better than she imagined. His skin was blazing, or was she just blushing? If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would have crumpled to the floor in a swoon.
She put her hand in her lap, her turtleneck was suddenly too warm against her skin. She swallowed. How the hell was she supposed to follow that?
“Clarissa, I already know where you work.” He gestured to the diner, smiling at his own joke, then looked at her expectantly. Was she supposed to be talking? She seemed to have forgotten how. When she continued to stare at him like she’d been dropped on her head, he pressed on. “Why don’t you tell me, do you have any siblings?”
“No.” The word was curt and cold. Pursing her lips, she came back to herself. Why was she being so rude? Was it rudeness or was she uncomfortable in his presence?
It really didn’t help that her mind kept wandering back to the dirty lumberjack calendar she’d conjured up, and her traitorous vagina was encouraging the fantasies. Trying to get her mind to behave, she racked her brain for something to follow that statement up so the conversation could continue. “My family is … small.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” He smiled, clearly pleased she’d chosen to keep talking. “I personally come from a very large family, so it’s hard for me to imagine anything else. But if you care for each other as family should, then I’d say it’s just the same.”
“I care for my aunt very much. She’s my everything.”
“Does she live in town?”
“Yes, we live together,” she said.
“How long have you lived with her?”
“Since I was four and a half.”
His eyes became sad again. “I can see why you’d be close to her.”
“Yes, well … it is what it is.” She shifted in her seat awkwardly; this was getting too personal. Jumping to her feet, she blurted out, “I’m sorry, but I need to get back to work.”
“Of course.” He smiled, but she thought she saw a hint of disappointment flicker across his face.
“Sylvia can ring you up.” Clarissa took the coffeepot and left.
Putting the pot away, she grabbed Sylvia’s arm. “Ring him up, will you?”
“Sure thing, sweetie, you okay?”
“Fine, I just need to take a quick break.”
She locked herself in the employee washroom, wrapping her arms around her chest and trying to concentrate on breathing. Her head was spinning and her chest felt tight. What the hell was wrong with her? Was she such a mess that a simple conversation with a nice man made her fall to pieces?
Yes. Yes, she was.
* * *
Clarissa worked an extra hour to make up for leaving early the previous day. Then she stopped by the auto shop to drop off another hundred dollars on her car bill. That left her twenty dollars from the cash Eugene gave her the other night. She could use that twenty for some much-needed groceries, and prayed nothing unexpected would come up and her tank of gas would last through next week.
At the grocery store, she raided the clearance section, grabbing a fair amount of dried goods. Going through the rest of the store, she found a few staples on sale. She was pleased with her afternoon chores, but the time was making her anxious, she didn’t get home until after six in the evening.
“Hi, aunty, I’m home.”
“Hello, Claire, how was school today?” Rachel sat in her recliner folding laundry. “You’re home late, were you at your study group, the one for the SAT?”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I stopped at the store on the way home. Do you want mac ’n’ cheese for dinner?”
“That sounds good.”
After putting the groceries away, she dug in the freezer until she found another package of hot dogs, freezer burned but still viable. Starting water to boil, she fiddled with the blue box of noodles and asked Rachel about her day.
“Oh, it was great, I did … I did something but I can’t remember what it was. Must not have been important then.”
Clarissa internally cursed herself. This wasn’t healthy for Rachel. She needed to do something different and soon. She wasn’t doing a very good job at this caretaker business. The second she got her next paycheck, she was going to call Eugene’s niece, Elizabeth.
