WHEN TYLER EMERGED from the bathroom, he walked up to the nearest concession stand. Taller than most of the other patrons at the game, he had a bird’s-eye view of the crowd. The first thing he noticed was that every single male head—and some of the female heads—within twenty feet were all surreptitiously glancing in one direction. He sighed, already knowing the reason for it, and looked around until he spotted Serafine.
“What’s up?” he asked as he sidled up next to her.
She immediately stopped turning in a circle, peering through the crowd. “I was looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Three beers and a popcorn is a lot to carry. Besides, Joy decided she wanted a water and I started feeling hungry myself.”
He cleared his throat. “Okay.”
They filed into the concession line and stood side by side, a good sixteen inches of distance between them. He was conscious of the looks he was receiving simply for daring to stand next to this exquisite creature.
In a different world, he would have already dated and broken up with Serafine St. Romain. If she’d been just a skosh less attractive, or less spooky. If she’d made his palms sweat just a bit less. If there had been just a tiny bit less smoke in her voice, he’d have had no problem asking her on a date, texting her, sexting her, charming her, hopping into bed if and when she was into it.
The problem was, he happened to live in this particular world, where she was simply a perfectly beautiful, spooky, smoky-voiced vixen who gave him heart palpitations and made him feel like a preteen who’d never even check-yes-or-no-ed a girl before.
He shifted on his feet as they shuffled up the line, trying to ignore her and also memorize every second of standing next to her. He frowned at himself, wishing he could pour a gallon of ice water over his head. Snap out of it, Ty!
Tyler Leshuski was no inexperienced lad when it came to women, he reminded himself. When he wanted company, thanks to his extensive contacts list and the internet, it was the rare occasion that he couldn’t find it. He was good-looking and smart and funny.
He watched a man bobble his beers as he double-taked on Serafine, almost breaking his own neck like a chicken.
Tyler shook his head at the poor fool, knowing exactly how he felt. There was just something about Serafine St. Romain that made Tyler feel like his heart was wearing clown shoes.
They finally made it to the front of the line.
“What’ll you have?” asked the bored sixteen-year-old girl with a hairnet on. She was the only person in a twenty-foot radius who didn’t look entranced by Serafine or mystified by Tyler’s place in her life.
“Ah, three Buds, two bottles of water, a large popcorn, a hot pretzel, no salt. And whatever she wants.” He pointed one thumb at Serafine and didn’t chance a glance over at her.
“Mmm, chili cheese fries, please, and is there any hot sauce back there?”
The girl pointed listlessly at the condiments stand and plugged the rest of the order into the register. She held her hand out for cash. Tyler wordlessly handed over a fifty, knowing he’d be lucky to get more than pennies back in change.
They went to stand at the side and wait for their food.
“What?” Serafine eventually asked him, turning to him with her arms crossed over her chest and those bright eyes burning a hole in the side of his head.
“What what?” he asked back, his eyes stubbornly on the kid slapping their order together behind the counter.
“I can feel your question for me. Just ask it.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. He really hated all this psychic bullshit. “You got chili cheese fries.”
“So?”
“So, I assumed you were, like, a vegan or something.” He’d eaten with her before at Sebastian’s house but had been too distracted by her presence to pay attention to what she ate.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
He couldn’t help but laugh as he finally turned to look at her. He took her in, from her complicated dark braid over one shoulder to her makeup-less face, the silver and gem rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrists. He looked her over, from her loose embroidered top to her equally loose embroidered pants and all the way down to what looked like a pair of velvet slippers. She carried with her the scent of sage and something else earthy. As painfully gorgeous as she was, her look screamed earth-child.
“Because you’re all...” He rolled a hand in the air, searching for the right word. “Organic-looking.”
To his immense surprise, she actually burst out laughing. He was used to making people laugh. It was one of his favorite things on this Earth. But he’d yet to make her laugh like that. He’d thought she was most likely one of those people who never laughed—they merely smirked instead. Or chuckled behind closed lips. But here he was, blinking down at a row of white teeth, her lips, so full in repose, almost disappearing in the stretch of her smile. He got that solar eclipse feeling again and when he tore his eyes away from her, a faded echo of her smile followed his vision for a moment, like he’d burned his retinas on her laughter.
“I also happened to grow up in Louisiana,” she reminded him. “They run vegans out of town down there.”
So, she was a meat eater. He couldn’t say why that pleased him. He couldn’t say much of anything, really, befuddled as he was by her smile, her laughter. Why did he let this woman throw him off his game so much? It was annoying. She wasn’t actually magical, regardless of what she told people. There was no reason at all for him to treat her any differently than he would any attractive woman he happened to be attracted to.
His heart banged hollowly in his chest like a rock clanging against the side of a bucket. Holy crap. He was gonna do it. He was gonna finally do something about the hairs that, even now, were rising on the back of his neck. He’d been an athlete his entire life, and Tyler instantly recognized this feeling. This at-bat, at-the-free-throw-line, let-the-muscles-do-their-thing sort of feeling.
“Let’s go out,” he suddenly blurted to Serafine, his voice a little too loud, his eyes on the ground instead of her face.
Shit. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to factor in the whole clown-shoes effect she had over him. Could that have been any more clumsy? He wasn’t even facing her. He couldn’t seem to be able to tear his eyes away from the girl in plastic gloves brushing salt off his pretzel. Stop watching that, dumbass!
Serafine turned to him and, unfortunately, so did the woman next to them, obviously extremely curious to hear how all of this was going to pan out.
“Uh,” Serafine said, her bright eyes on the side of his face. It became immediately clear to Ty that he’d just clicked on a swinging light bulb in a dark room, tied himself to a chair and begged a concession’s line worth of Cyclones fans to mock him.
Tyler made himself meet her eyes. He was an eye-contact sort of person, dammit! He believed in introducing oneself with his full name, in firm handshakes, in looking a person full in the face when talking with them. He’d been doing it his entire life! Why was this so hard with her?
“If you want to,” he added on lamely. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Because I want to. Go out with you, I mean.”
She just sort of stared at him for a moment.
“I mean that I want to take you out,” he tried one more time. “I mean that if you’re into it, I’d love to take you out sometime.”
“Order’s up,” the kid with the food called. Ten seconds later, Tyler found himself with two arms full of food and drinks and no answer yet from Serafine. He looked down at the hot pretzel and popcorn, the beers balancing in a tray, and felt like he was tumbling through the air with his arms too full to catch himself as he fell. He wanted to toss the food in the trash and bike home. Why had he thought this was somehow a good idea?
She stood there, the water bottles under one arm and her fries in the other hand. “Tyler...”
Yikes. He could practically see the dot dot dot lingering in the air after his name. She’d dot dot dotted him. Not a good sign, my friend.
Copyright © 2020 by Cara Bastone