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“I’d give anything to get outta this town. Even though I just got back,” I mumble, heaving myself off my childhood bed.
“What’s that?” Mom calls out again. “Jacinta! I have to go, are you even listening to me or not?”
It feels like I never left.
“Yeah, I heard you,” I call back but my words are cut off by the front door slamming. The sound of her car revving not long after.
Then she’s gone. And I’m alone again.
I hadn’t planned on it, but I find myself starting to cry once I reach the kitchen. Wondering if this is as good as my life gets.
After folding the laundry I certainly don’t feel like hanging around the house.
It’s too depressing.
A walk through town sounds nice, but nowhere near the diner where my mom works sounds like a plan.
Who knows? You might just bump into the man of your dreams.
I laugh to myself, managing to cheer myself up. Even though it is through sarcasm.
I need it too, after folding a closet full of my old clothes my mom washed for me, ready for when I got home from college. Clothes that I don’t fit into anymore but just haven’t got the heart to tell her.
If she can’t see it for herself.
That baby fat I’ve carried since I was a kid?
I don’t know what you call it by the time you’re twenty-one.
I just call it fat.
But before I can even get out of the yard, my mom calls me. Asking me to drop her name tag and purse, which she’d forgotten.
Looks like I’ll have to go to the diner after all.
It’s not fair, and it means I can forget stressing about having to avoid the place.
It’s silly, but I had one shift there before college and it didn’t end well.
But I’ve had trouble showing my face there ever since, which is awkward seeing as my mom works there.
And it looks like today is no different.
Just as I’m approaching the diner, a car screeches to a halt behind me and my heart almost stops.
Not from the sudden noise, but from every face at the diner window spinning in my direction.
All eyes are on me.
I feel like dying until I turn around, looking for who I should thank for bringing me so much unwanted attention down on me.
But my heart gives out for a second time, and for a very different reason this time.
I feel my lungs empty too, a kind of dry cough of disbelief rise up.
Am I dreaming?
Is this actually happening?
The man who’s almost just run me down looks like he’s stepped straight off the cover of a magazine and into a rented hatchback.
Sure, his driving sucks, and his huge body seems way too big for that tiny car, but his face.
That smile.
Those eyes.
That huge body…
Even from where I’m standing frozen, and long before he gets out of the car, I can see he’s built like something carved from marble.
A living, flesh and blood statue from Ancient Greece or the Roman Empire.
My eyes seem to stumble over which part of him I want to feast on first.
His dark, intense gaze is zeroed in on me but his brilliant smile, tugged up at the corners of his mouth seems to brighten the dark, overcast day.
The cold breeze whips at his thick, dark hair. A slight hint of silver at the temples telling me he’s not a boy.
He’s all man, in case I was wondering.
Mature. Confident.
Powerfully strong in body and in mind.
The low rumbling sound he makes reaches me. Filling my whole body from the ground up with intense heat.
He clenches his chiseled jaw, scanning me up and down once he realizes what he almost just hit.
His body language tells me he’s also a man who knows what he wants.
And right now, I’m guessing he wants me out of the damned way.
But shifting his tiny car into park, leaving it at the same sickening angle he skidded to a halt, he leaps from it.
Striding towards me in three long steps, makes me wonder if he’s mad, happy, or just plain crazy from the look in his eyes.
“Uhh… Sorry?” I venture, hearing my thin voice crack, rising to a near squeak.
But he’s not mad or crazy.
Not even close to it.
“Just tell me you’re alright,” he says firmly in a deep, clear tone that echoes through my body, plucking every string inside me connected to anything good.
“I’m fine,” I reply, frowning, wondering why anyone would even think to make sure I was okay.
Nobody gives me a second glance. Most of the time I’m in the way or the butt of a joke.
“I mean, I’m fine,” I repeat, softening my voice and nudging the chip off my shoulder.
“I wasn’t looking where I was going,” he says without breaking eye contact, sounding like he’s the one apologizing.
His huge frame towers over me.
