Page 118

Sixty
Conner
It’s Coffee.
Just Coffee.
It’s not like I’m going to take her into the bathroom and Gilroy her, for fuck’s sake.
It’s probably what she expects.
Why she asked you out in the first place.
You really think she’s interested in having a conversation with you?
You’re pretty dumb for a genius.
Shit.
One cup.
I’ll stay for one cup and then I’ll tell her I have to go. If she asks me out again, I’ll tell her no. That I have—
“Am I late?”
I look up from the worn paperback in my hand to find Kaitlyn standing over me. She’s wearing a pair of jeans and a blood-red sweater that clings and coasts over every curve. Her dark hair is loose around her face. Her eyes are bright. She’s cute and happy to see me.
And I feel like I want to chew my goddamned arm off to get away from her.
“No.” I shake my head, tucking the same scrap of paper I’ve been using as a book mark for the last eight years between the pages of my book. “I’m early.”
Tell her. Tell her you’re early because you left while Tess was on a parts run because you didn’t want to answer questions about where you were going in the middle of the day and why you had to take a shower to do it.
“A guy who’s early.” She smiles at me while she shrugs out of her coat. “That’s a novelty.”
“Well, I’m either twenty minutes early or three hours late,” I tell her, standing up to pull out her chair for her. “There is no in between.”
She grins up at me while I push in her chair. “Consider me warned for next time.”
Next time.
Jesus Christ.
She thinks there’s going to be a next time.
“What can I get you?” I gesture to the coffee counter where a team of green-aproned baristas are steaming milk and brewing espresso like their lives depends on it. She suggested Benny’s but there’ no way I’m doing this in a place where I might actually run into someone I know. Better to humiliate myself in front of strangers.
“Oh,” she looks at my cup on the table in front of her and shrugs. “Whatever you’re having is fine—and a cranberry orange muffin.” She smiles and unwinds her scarf. “We can split it.”
Black coffee.
I can do that.
Muffin splitting isn’t part of the plan.
It’s a fucking muffin, not a marriage proposal.
“Be right back,” I tell her before frog marching myself to the counter. A few minutes later, I make my way back to our table, doing a balancing act with her coffee and pastry to find her reading the back of my book.