Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Ha! Talk about a cop out!
It was already half-past ten when we called it a night, and like always, Damian insisted on having his chauffeur drive Jolie and me home to our respective places. On the way back to the city, Jolie turned to me suddenly, saying, “I’m serious, you know.”
Huh?
“You should really think about what’s holding you back from talking to him.”
I looked away as she said this...mostly because I didn’t want her to realize that I already knew the answer. Because I had been thinking about it, and the thing was...I still couldn’t see myself as someone who deserved to have a normal life.
I knew God loved me, and that He’d never leave me or forsake me, but a part of me was still scared. A part of me still saw myself as the girl whose father was in prison for the rest of his life, and it was just pure luck—instead of God’s perfect will ensuring I was where I was—that I ended up in Wyoming because of the non-profit founded by the Foxes.
A part of me was terrified that God would take all of this away if I ever messed up, and so...I just preferred to stay invisible.
Because you couldn’t make any mistake when the world didn’t notice you.
MONDAY MORNING, I FOUND myself torn between hoping and dreading that he’d come.
Spoiler alert: he arrived at the exact time as usual and, yes, he chose the same booth as well.
When I brought him his omelet, he looked up and said, "You work here every day."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "Six days a week. Mondays through Saturdays."
"Not Sundays."
"Café's closed Sundays."
He nodded slowly, like this was important information he was filing away, and I stood there with an empty tray and no excuse to keep hovering, and then he said, "Thank you, Thea."
I almost gasped. Almost started fantasizing even. Until I remembered that my name tag was pinned to my apron.
For the nth time, Thea, stop being silly!
"You're welcome," I managed, and I walked away before I could do something mortifying like ask how long he'd known it or whether he'd been planning to use it or why my chest felt like something had cracked open inside it.
Jolie took one look at my face when I got back to the counter and said, "What happened?"
"Nothing."
"You're blushing."
"I'm not—"
"You absolutely are. Your face is the color of those beets Gail uses in the salad."
"He said my name," I admitted, and even saying it out loud made it feel more real, more significant than it should have been.
Jolie's eyes went wide. "He knows your name?"
"Name tag," I said, pointing at it.
"Still. He looked. He noticed. He said it." She was grinning now, that full-wattage Jolie grin that usually preceded her saying something wildly inappropriate. "This is happening."
"Nothing is happening—"
"Oh, something is definitely happening. I'm calling it now. By the end of the month, you two are going to—"
"Jolie." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "Don't."
She sobered immediately. "Hey. I'm sorry. I was just teasing—"
"I know." I pressed my hands flat against the counter, trying to calm the suddenly frantic beating of my heart. "I just—I can't. Okay? Whatever you think is happening, it's not. He's just a customer. And I'm just...me."
"Yeah," Jolie said softly. "You're just you. And that's not nothing, Thea."
But it felt like nothing.
It always had.
THE DAYS ACCUMULATED like snow.
Ten days. Fifteen. Twenty.
He came every morning. Same booth, same window of time, same precise rotation of orders. And I learned things about him without meaning to, the way you learn the shape of furniture in a dark room just by walking through it enough times.
I learned that he held his fork in his left hand, European-style, and that Jolie was right—it did make him seem Continental, charmingly but also intimidatingly so. I learned that he read something on his phone that made his jaw tighten every Tuesday morning around seven-forty, like clockwork, and that whatever it was, he never finished reading it. He'd put the phone face-down on the table and stare out the window at the elk refuge for exactly two minutes (I counted) before picking it up again and closing whatever it was without reading the rest.
I learned that he drank his coffee black, no sugar, and that he took his first sip exactly forty-three seconds after I poured it, as if he was waiting for it to cool to some specific temperature only he knew. I learned that he tipped exactly twenty percent, every time, calculated down to the penny, which meant he was either very good at math or very
good at having standards, and I suspected it was both.
I learned that on Saturdays, he didn't order food.
Just coffee. Just an hour of sitting in that booth, reading something on his phone with an expression that I'd started cataloging—beautifully brooding on most days, but sometimes it shifted to something else.