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I nodded, unwilling to break the spell of what was happening. I wasn’t going to bring up the restaurant shift or the fact that I usually had to leave to get back to my son. I knew bringing Jimmy up usually resulted in men running for the hills.
“Well, you’re here now,” I said.
“That I am,” he said. “For a junior, though, I would have thought I’d bump into you a lot sooner.”
“I was on sabbatical,” I joked. “Needed a few years off.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Respect. It’s good to know when you need some time away from all this.”
“Oh, you know about that, do you?”
Horace chuckled. “Took a gap year before college. Between you and me, I’m not even supposed to be here. Freshman. This course is at least a year away from being available for me.”
I frowned in confusion. “Then why would you be here?”
“Literature is my thing,” he said. “Has been for a very long time. At least, once I found out it would make the old man angry.”
“A rebel, huh?”
“My dad runs a bunch of casinos, so the path of choice was either finance or business.” Horace looked at me intently. “So I chose literature. I’ve been pissing my dad off since high school.”
I nodded and couldn’t help but smile. A rich kid rebelling against his father. I really did attract the weird ones.
“So, how about we skip this lecture and get a cup of coffee?” Horace offered.
“I thought you loved literature,” I smirked.
“I’d love coffee more,” he replied, leaning in.
I mimicked him, our faces inches from each other. “How about we attend the lecture and actually learn something?”
He faked a pout. “You’re breaking my heart.”
I was about to reply when the professor walked in and started bellowing instructions. Sitting back, I winked at him and pulled out my laptop.
He spent the entire lecture switching between looking at the professor and me, and for the first time in years, I felt a swarm of butterflies fluttering in my stomach.
I saw Horace every day for a week since that first time. He would sometimes come to the lectures, but after we got scolded by the professor, he decided to keep our meetings outside. He’d show up at the library when I had to borrow a book or two to help with a paper. He’d pop up in the cafeteria between lectures. Once, he even met me early at the bus stop outside the campus just as I was coming in.
“You’re stalking me,” I joked.
“Is it a crime to spend time with someone?”
“Don’t you have better things to do with your time?” I had to admit that I liked the attention.
“Until I get that coffee, I’m going to show up everywhere.”
And he wasn’t joking.
That night, Horace actually showed up at the restaurant.
I was an hour into my shift, and the Maître D was already giving me hell. The man had a broom shoved so far up his ass it was astonishing that he could even walk around barking orders at us. I had been a waitress in a multitude of places, and I had endured my fair share of asshole bosses, but this was something else. If I had one strand of hair loose from my ponytail, I could get sent home for the night and lose my paycheck.
Of course, in the midst of being scolded for one thing after the other, seeing Horace sitting at a table in my area took me by surprise.
“We need to set boundaries,” I whispered when I showed up at his table and handed him the menu.
Horace feigned surprise. “Martha! My God, this really is a surprise. I had no idea.”
