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I tried to place her face as she raked her yellow hair back with long fingernails, her smile fixed on Stellan. He tried to order a Denver omelet and a black coffee, but she kept interrupting him for small talk.
Stellan made eye contact with me. “What would you like?”
She didn’t look my way, and her tone changed as she asked, “What do you want?”
Subtle. Stellan rolled his eyes, looking anything but charmed.
“The breakfast platter with French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon.”
She heaved a sigh as she wrote it down, as if it was a burden. I knew customer service positions sucked, but she seemed to be taking my desire for French toast a little too personally.
I didn’t remember her face, but I remembered her bitchy sigh. Roxy. We’d taken gym class together, and since we’d moved so much, I’d never played volleyball before. Sophia, Roxy, and I were all on the same team, and Roxy had sighed every time I missed the ball. She’d acted as if the concept of whacking a ball with your forearms so hard it stings was supposed to be innate.
Roxy had always had a huge thing for Stellan and hey, it wasn't as if I could blame anyone for that. But she'd also been “a wannabe mean girl” as Sophia had described her.
As soon as she walked away, I asked, “Do you actually remember who she is?”
“No.” He flashed me a grin that was sharper, wickeder, and even more gorgeous than the one he’d given her. "You're the only girl who left much of an impression on me.”
“And how lucky I am to have your attention,” I deadpanned. I’d like to see Roxy find her way out of Stellan’s trunk.
He clucked disapprovingly. “You were so sweet and reserved and mysterious in high school. Now you're all attitude.”
“Now I wear my crazy on the outside,” I said. “Instead of keeping it all on the inside where all it did was punish me.”
He suddenly adjusted himself as if he were remembering my promises to detach his dick if he continued to be, well, a dick. Maybe a dickectomy would balance his attitude out.
Our waitress might have been annoying, but the food she brought to our table smelled delicious.
“I guess you don’t worry about your weight.” Roxy plunked the maple syrup to the side of my plate.
I shrugged without looking up as I poured syrup over my breakfast. Her judgment wasn’t nearly as important to me as maple syrup.
I didn't really think I was very likely to live past twenty-two. Might as well enjoy some bacon along the way. Live fast, eat grease, die young. Something like that.
Someone changed one of the TVs from sports recaps to the news. At first, it was all about how the economy looked, all gloom and doom.
“I guess for most people, serial killers are the least of our country’s problems,” Stellan muttered.
But then gradually, I was jolted out of my maple syrup as I heard the wordsthe Demon.
My gaze snapped around to the TV. My father's face was on the screen and breakfast pressed against the back of my throat like it might exit. But it was just a TV, he wasn’t here. I didn’t need to have a panic attack.
I told my brain sternly to knock the panic off, but for some reason, that wasn’t a deeply calming thought.
“Aurora,” Stellan said softly. “You all right?”
I swallowed the panic that tightened my throat, although I had to try twice, then smiled at him. “Super.” I drained half my glass of water. Stellan was still watching me as if he were worried.
Roxy sashayed back up to our table. She didn't make eye contact with me, but that was nothing new.
“Stellan, there's a phone call for you in the back.”
He eyed her skeptically then looked at me, concern that this was a trap written all over his face.
Roxy looked annoyed. “It’s your mom.”
“There's no way she would know that I'm here,” he said.
