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)
What was he, a magician? A surgeon? Some kind of professionally trained coffee-pot-catcher who moonlights in corner booths eating omelets with devastating precision?
Stop it, Thea.
But I can't stop it. My shift ended twenty-seven minutes ago (I checked—I'm always checking, always counting), and I'm standing in the back room with my apron half-untied because my fingers won't quite cooperate, and my brain is stuck in this loop, replaying the exact moment when gravity betrayed me and he—
He caught it.
And me.
His hand on the coffee pot. His other hand on my wrist.
Both at the same time.
Like it was nothing. Like catching falling objects and falling waitresses was something he did every Monday morning between bites of omelet.
I press my palm against the cool metal of my locker and try to breathe like a normal person. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The way Sarah taught me during that one panic attack I had last year when the anniversary of my father's sentencing rolled around and I couldn't get out of bed.
You're safe, Sarah had said, her hand on my shoulder, steady and sure. You're loved. You're okay. It’s okay to breathe. Just breathe. Everything is different now. Because you know who you belong to.
I counted to forty-seven that day. Same number as the ceiling tiles in the café.
Right now I'm at thirty-two and my heart still feels like it's trying to escape my chest.
"Okay, so." Jolie's voice comes from the doorway, and I startle so hard my locker door swings shut with a metallic clang that echoes in the small space. "We need to talk about what just happened."
"I’d rather not.” Like, seriously. Because the way Jolie is looking at me right now says that she’s about to say something uncomfortably insightful, and I’m just...I’m just not ready for it.
"He was counting, too, Thea! Counting.”
I badly want to say it’s a coincidence. But...the thing is, once you know in your mind and you believe with all your heart that God is real...
There’s no such thing as coincidence.
But even so.
“It doesn’t have to mean what you think it should mean,” I say instead. “Maybe it’s just a wake-up call for me to be more...careful. Because he knew I was counting, and obviously, he has every reason to see it as pathetic and—”
“He doesn’t think that.”
Jolie sounds so sure that it has my heart doing something foolish.
“I saw his smile, Thea. And I know you did, too. It wasn’t a smile that says he was laughing at you.”
I’m torn between wanting to cover my ears and begging for her to say more.
Please give me more reasons to hope that he can still be a part of my life.
“You know how Damian sometimes looks at Sarah when he’s teasing her?”
My heart is racing faster than ever now.
“That’s what his smile reminds me of.” Jolie shifts Wuthering Heights to her other arm. "Thea, I've been watching people for years—you know this. It's literally what I study. And that man is interested."
"He's a customer."
"He's a man who's been coming to this café every single day just to sit in a booth and eat breakfast and watch you work."
"You can’t be sure of that.”
“I am, though. And I’m right about this, you’ll see.”
I fight against the urge to clutch my chest. Every word from Jolie is like an answered prayer, and I just don’t know how to handle it. “You, um...” I check the clock behind her. Oh, good. “You should go or you’ll be late for class.”
Jolie laughs. “I know when you’re trying to get rid of me.”
I pretend not to hear that as I usher her out of the locker room. “Go.”
She rolls her eyes at me, and I pretend not to see this, too. But my friend still ends up having the last word when my phone buzzes, and her text message pops up on the screen.
Corner guy is in the parking lot. :)
Time...crawls after that. Every second is a battle not to look out the window or step out of the cafe just to see if Jolie was right, and he was still out there.
When I finally reach the end of the shift, I barely manage to resist the urge to run out.
Play it cool, Thea!
A cold breeze stings my cheeks as soon as I step out. It's the kind of cold that makes
your lungs ache when you breathe, the kind that turns the inside of your nose into ice the second you step outside. The sun's already setting—it sets so early here in winter, sometimes as early as four-thirty, and it's past five now. The sky is doing that thing where it turns purple and gold and pink all at once, like someone spilled watercolors across the horizon, and the mountains in the distance are dark silhouettes against all that color.
It's beautiful.