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“Wait…” What is happening? “You don’t have to invite every time, and…”
“Yeah?” His voice is a low drawl. He leans forward again, closing the distance I put between us. He exhales, leans in closer. “You know, I wasn’t sure you’d come today.”
“Why not?” I whisper back, suddenly uneasy, because I had been about to do precisely that.
Why is he looking at me like that, and was Lin right? Do I even stand a chance with a hot jock like him?
“Come on.” He takes my hand again and pulls me to my feet, and then out of the diner. The sounds of the late afternoon close around us as we step outside, cars honking and people talking and a guy playing the guitar at a street corner. Merc stops and turns to face me. “Listen…”
My phone chimes with a text message, but I ignore it. I barely register it, in fact. Everything fades as Merc Watson lifts a hand to my face and grips my chin gently, tilting my head up.
He’ll kiss me, I think, and it’s a bad, bad idea. I know it, and I don’t care one bit. He’s staring at my mouth like a starving man, there’s no going back now…
My phone chimes again, and he blinks, pale brows drawing together in a frown. Then he shakes his head and straightens without kissing me.
Aww. Why? I resist the urge to stomp my foot like a frustrated two-year-old.
“Here, tomorrow, same time,” he says again, and I nod vigorously, unable to stop myself.
“Yes.”
A faint smile pulls at his mouth, and he nods, too. “Okay, then.”
It’s long after he’s gone that I realize I’m still standing, still gazing after him. And it’s even later that I realize another thing: He never replied to my question.
But my question becomes moot the very next day for a couple of reasons.
The day starts out normal. That is, I wake up, make my way blindly to the kitchen where I proceed to almost burn everything down when I forget to add water to the coffee maker. Disaster averted, I drink some instant coffee instead to feel halfway human, before I shower and brush my teeth and get ready for my day.
Then I go the extra mile and put on make-up. I mean, I usually slap on some foundation and mascara, but today I take my time, using a primer Lin foisted on me, and highlighter, and eye-shadow, and blush. The works.
In for a penny, in for a pound, right?
The last two times Merc saw me unfiltered, in my ripped jeans and overlarge sweater, my mascara probably running in places and my hair like a nest. I shouldn’t want him interested in me, but as we’ve established, I can’t help myself, not around this boy, so… here we are.
And then of course, I’m running late, and I exit the apartment like a stormfront: killer mood and breakneck speed, trying to make it to the first class of the day.
My stomach is full of butterflies—the giant, somersaulting kind. Why am I nervous about meeting him when yesterday I’d been about to abort the date?
Date. If you can call it that.
Which you can’t. We just had coffee. End of story.
But the butterflies don’t lie. They swarm and dip and make me want to puke by the time I pat my hair and check my face in the bathroom mirror in the women’s restrooms on campus, then hurry out to meet Merc at the little diner.
Where I sit and wait and wait, realizing too late that again we didn’t exchange phone numbers. What the heck, right?
He’s late.
I find a couple text messages on my phone. One from Lin, asking what I’m up to. One from Dad, proposing dinner one of these days. And a glaring absence of texts from Mom.
I put my phone away, try not to obsess over the time passing. But my magic trick doesn’t work. Eventually I look again, and again.
The thing is… he doesn’t come to meet me. At all.
In retrospect, the fact that I almost burned down the apartment this morning should have been a clue. Or the fact I dressed up and made an effort.
Cosima’s Law says that when you feel good about something, it will go to shit.
