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Looking at her this way, content and a beacon underneath the moonlight, he wondered what had gone through Curtis’ mind the first time he saw her. If Curtis had started atcutethat eventually made its way tobeautiful,or whether her beauty hit him all at once, that very first time.
“How’d you and Curtis meet?” he asked.
She huffed a quiet laugh. “Okay, so I’m nineteen and working at this restaurant, right? A real ritzy, upper-echelon kind of place. I took a year off from high school to ‘find myself,’ and I never did, so the day I met Curtis, I’d already put in my two weeks’ notice to start school at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa that summer. He walked into the restaurant and stopped traffic, not only because he was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and boots when everyone else had on suits and dresses, but also because he was the most beautiful man I’m sure almost everyone there had ever seen.”
“Was that just his style? Casual?”
“Yeah.” She smiled again, the same nostalgic pull of her mouth, this time with a bit of wistfulness. “And as fine as I found this man, I pulled off being the ever-professional server. But then, the whole time he’s ordering and talking to me, he doesn’t make eye contact once.”
“He was nervous.”
She looked up at him. “How’d you know?”
Because men either stared at things they found beautiful or made an effort not to look at them, afraid they’d end up staring so long, they would immediately go from infatuated stranger to creepy fucker.
“Just a hunch,” he said.
“It stays that way, him ignoring me,” she continued. “Then he pays for his meal and leaves. When I go to pick up the receipt, I notice he wrote something on the back. I’ll never forget what it said.‘I hope I didn’t come off as rude. I’m not usually the nervous type, but you’re so cute, I could barely look you in the eyes. I would really like to take you out to dinner sometime. If that’s too much, let’s get coffee. If you think you’d be interested, I’m standing by the window.’”
“Was he?”
“Yep.”
“Do you still have that receipt?”
“No. It got ruined when my apartment had a roof leak, but it was so early in the relationship, losing it didn’t sting as much as it does now. Back then, I would have never known how much…” She dragged in a breath and let it gradually flow from her lungs. “Anyway, I have other things of his. Two pretty important ones are asleep back at the house.”
Their arms crashed together, and they both offered quick apologies, increasing the gap between them.
“Why’d you ask me that?” she asked. “Just curious?”
“Yeah. I never knew him, you know? And if we have similar personalities, we might have gotten along.”
Their shoulders brushed, and they offered a second wave of apologies, but his were a little less sincere. He didn’t mind that their shoulders had brushed, or that when they did, the tips of her fingers passed over his knuckles.
In fact, it was kind of nice.
He and Sydney were still having sex, but they didn’t touch and hold like they used to. It wasn’t until after they separated that he realized they’d stopped touching and holding way before that first conversation about splitting up.
On one hand, he wanted that familiarity back. The feeling of being at home in someone’s arms. On the other, it felt like he was forcing something that, deep down, neither he nor Sydney could admit didn’t work anymore and hadn’t worked in a long time. Despite the danger of the assignments he now went on, regularly, what he found most threatening was letting go of the hold he had on his and Sydney’s relationship.
“It’s because you’re cute,” he found himself admitting. “That’s how I knew he was nervous. I was just thinking, if it were me, the same thing would have probably happened.”
She didn’t respond.
And he mentally chastised himself.
Sometimes, he did come across as flirty, even when he wasn’t trying to be. All he’d meant was that he could understand Curtis’ predicament. Ayeshawascute; however, he wasn’t actually supposed to ever tell her that.
In another life, one where he wasn’t wrangling with divorce, and she wasn’t the widow of the close friend of his closest friends, he would have searched until he found moments; moments to take her hand, moments to make her smile, moments to feel her touch. Had they been different people, he would have eventually had to come to terms with the fact that friendship was what hesaid. It wasn’t exactly what hefelt.
“I’m sorry for being standoffish,” she said, after a long silence. “I would have regretted missing out on this.”
“Missing out on what?”
“Your friendship.”
He clutched at his chest. “Be still my beating heart.”
