Rain taps down, just a first few exploratory drops like dead fingers, but the air is sagging under the weight of all the drops to come. I’ve been looking for her all day, and I’m almost ready to say she doesn’t exist and go sit in traffic.
There’s a café across the street called Bluebell’s. I’ve gone in a couple times and it’s cozy, with mismatched slumpy chairs and a carousel horse wound in plastic ivy. A nice, warm, smoky smell, like Lapsang souchong and oak and leaky sofa stuffing. So, fine. I will go there, and order a cocoa, and write something pissy in my journal while I resent the universe for the intolerable way it’s let me down.
The downpour starts for real just as I cross the threshold. Naturally I don’t have an umbrella, because today is dedicated to making me miserable. There’s a long line, because today, and some professorial dude cuts in front of me, because today.
At last, though, I reach the front. There’s this cute touch where they have an antique roulette wheel on the counter, and if you win the spin your order is free. I scowl down at its red and black pie slices marked with golden numbers, because why even bother?
Then I look up at the girl taking everyone’s orders. While I was still in line my view of her was blocked by the pastry case, but do I ever see her now!
Choppy, floppy, slept-on hair hacked off around chin length. Faded sunset streaks in her dark tangles, which more than compensate for the sunset that just got wiped out by the storm. Softly brown skin, lighter than Lore’s but darker than mine. No makeup except for a few stray flecks of purple glitter in peculiar locations, such as her upper lip and neck. Huge hazel doe eyes, an exaggerated nose, a wide sweep of plump lips, a receding chin. She’s nobody’s idea of a beauty.
Except mine.
I stand there smiling like a maniac, expecting her to recognize me too.
“What can I get you?”
Gruff voice, but with a secret sweetness to it. Her gaze lands right on my face, and I don’t see anything light up in her eyes. She really doesn’t know that I’m me?
“Large cocoa?” I sound like a puppy snuffling for scraps. “And a piece of the lemon poppy-seed cake?”
She jots down the drink order, and it doesn’t seem to bother her that she’s stopped looking at me. “That’ll be eight twenty-eight. Want to spin for it?”
Her hand is out, and I almost take it in mine. Then I see she’s just offering me a blue-and-red marble to drop on the roulette wheel.
My hands jerk back and up. Defensively. That startles her into lifting her gaze my way again. “No. No, thank you.”
“No? If you win your whole order is on the house.”
“But, I mean—” How can I explain? “I’ve had way more than my share of good luck for today already. Trying for more would just be unappreciative.” I dig in my wallet and hand her a ten-dollar bill.
That gets me a semi-huff of laughter. “No problem. What name?”
“Angus,” I tell her. She nods and scribbles my name below cc lg, then slides the slip down to the barista. I drop my change into her tip jar while she levers my cake onto a vintage plate with the logo of a defunct railway on its rim. And then I’m completely out of excuses to keep hanging around the counter and staring at her.
It’s me, I want to tell her. It’s me, it’s me, and you don’t have to wait any longer.
Strategy! I choose my table carefully: one where she’ll have a sidelong view of me. But I sit with my back mostly to her so I won’t gawk too much. I want to give her a chance to recognize me too; to surreptitiously study the lines of my neck and shoulders, the way the lamplight traces my curls, and think, You know, there’s something about that guy! Why didn’t I notice before?
Then I open my journal and slowly, deliberately eat my cake, taking my time as I lick frosting off the fork. Maybe she’ll bring my cocoa over herself, use it as a pretext to start a conversation.
“Angus!” a voice calls. But it’s a guy’s voice, not hers, and its tones are sodden with indifference. When I stand up to fetch the mug she’s talking with animation to another girl across the counter, her big mouth leaping through vivid smiles and grimaces. She doesn’t look at me at all.
So she needs a little longer. I go back to writing, trying hard not to feel hurt. But as the minutes tick on and she doesn’t come over something starts poking in my chest, like my heart is growing porcupine quills.
I run out of cake and cocoa, and I must have flooded a dozen pages with illegible babble by the time I feel a presence near my shoulder. So warm, so right, so full of gruff, sweet life that I don’t even need to look. I glance up as casually as I can.
“Hey,” she says. “It’s almost ten. We’re closing.”
When I first saw her I was so overwhelmed by her face that the rest of her escaped my notice. I look now. She’s wearing a worn-out T-shirt with the legend FREE KITTEN and a snarling cartoon tiger. Necklace and bracelets made of brightly colored pom-poms on strings. Slouchy torn jeans, navy sneakers. I love her so much, and it’s not socially acceptable to tell her so. How long do I have to wait? Is a week enough time?
“Okay,” I say, because what do you say in a situation like this? Stand up, shove my journal in my back pocket. “Have a great night.”
The rain has stopped. All that’s left is a checkerboard of puddles under the dark sky. Where the traffic lights blink, green and red shadows crisscross the pavement like drawn knives.