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“Ooh, that smile said it all, dude!” Sam taunted while I shook my head.
“Was it good?” Nick asked sneaking behind me, unable to pretend he didn’t care anymore.
“It was the mother of all kisses,” I admitted in a whisper, so only he could hear.
“So, when are you seeing her again?” Josh asked, placing two sandwiches on the counter for the girl’s order.
“Um. I’m not.” I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant, but the words stung. “She went back home last night.”
“She left!” One of the girls squealed in disbelief. “Why would she leave after sharing that with you?”
“She had to. She’s having problems with some guy trying to steal the lands she inherited from her family, somewhere in the mountains. The guy leads a guerrilla or something, so there’s like a civil war there. She came here to try to find someone her parents knew, who she thought could help her, but she couldn’t find him so she had to go back.”
“Damn, that’s intense,” Josh added. “So you can’t go visit her there?”
“She lives in New Zealand.”
“Holy shit. No wonder she was so weird—that came out wrong!” Peter immediately defended, lifting his hands in surrender when the girls glared at him with a horrified‘oh no he didn’t’look in their eyes. “I meant, since she is from a country so far away, her culture is totally different from ours, which made her behavior seem strange to us at times. People act way different in other countries.”
“Good save,” Sam whispered but the girls didn’t seem too convinced.
“Anyway,” one of them added. “Maybe she’ll find a way to get in touch with you, or come back on vacation after things get resolved.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I agreed even though I didn’t believe it. They were giving me the exact look of pity I had tried to avoid by not telling them anything.
“Good luck,” one of the girls offered, and they all walked to a table nearby, where they would surely talk about how pathetic my life was.
They didn’t know half of it.
“Well, I’m headed home. Rebecca is here,” Josh added, calling my attention to the door, to see his girl waving at us. “I have to help her with some math tutoring,” he shuddered exaggeratedly. “Don’t fall in love, dude. Love makes you do terrible, terrible things.”
Chuckling, we watched him hop over the counter and leave, but not before pumping fists with the guys. Washing my hands, I took the last ticket Nick had written and walked to the sandwich station, letting Sam take my spot by the register as he began his shift.
The moment I grabbed the French baguette to begin cutting it for the panini, everything went black. No, I hadn’t fainted. I was conscious, but my vision had left me. Panic swiftly gripped me, but I took a deep breath, blinking and willing my eyes to work. I could still hear the customers eating and chatting around us. Phones ringed, the register dinged, people laughed and asked for their usual, but my eyes couldn’t catch any of that, only my ears.
I couldn’t see.
“Peter, I’m going to the bathroom really quick,” I shouted back, pushing myself to walk towards the back door. My hands gripped the frame and going only by memory, I twisted the knob, bursting into the back room before I could hear his reply.
Shutting my eyes, I tried to calm my now frantic breathing, but I had no idea what was happening to me, and my heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. With unsteady steps, I stretched my arms before me, feeling for the wall as I moved towards where I remembered the bathroom was.
An ounce of relief filled me when I entered the space and locked myself inside it. Resting my back to the door, I began to take long gulps of oxygen, holding them and then releasing slowly like the therapist had shown me when I was a kid. It was the only way to slow my heart back then and release the panic that gripped me with the nightmares of my father’s death.
When I felt somewhat in control of myself again, I stepped closer to the toilet, hitting my shin with the ceramic bowl before I fell on my ass on the closed lid. Thank God it was closed. Once seated, I shut my eyes once more, and continued my breathing, hoping that as I calmed down whatever episode I was going through would subside, and I would be able to see again.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” Nick’s voice came through the door and I flushed the toilet so he would think everything was fine.
“Yeah. My stomach is just weird. I might need a few more minutes.”
“Okay…” he sounded unsure.
“Are you leaving?”
“I just punched out, but I can stay a bit longer if you need me to.”
“No, go home. I’m fine.”
Silence stretched for a few seconds, then he sighed. “Okay. Call me if you need me to come back in or something.”
