Aggie, another waitress who I’d decided was going to be my work wife, stood in front of the window to the kitchen with her lip hitched in classic Elvis style, her hips jerking back and forth. She didn’t quit until the guys in the back were laughing, then got back to work, snagging the fresh coffee pot.
“Hey,” I called over my shoulder as I headed to the back. “Would you hit table twelve with that?”
“I will not hit Mr. Hersch with the coffee pot, Presley Hale. You should be ashamed.”
“Thank you,” I said on a laugh.
I unloaded my burden at the dish station, careful not to get anything on my pretty pink uniform or the pristine white of my apron. Whatever man chose these colors should have been publicly shamed. The odds of me making it to lunch without syrup and ketchup all over me were slim to none, and I only had two uniforms. Ya girl was not a fan of laundry, and even less into ironing.
I wondered momentarily how old Priscilla needed to be to learn how to iron. Probably kindergarten, at least.
Bummer.
When my hands were washed, I headed back out to the floor, checking the coffee machines, making sure something was brewing in all of them. My arm was elbow deep in a sleeve of filters when I heard a voice that slid over me like silk.
“Well, look at that. The rumors are true.”
Lightning struck me dead to the spot—shock, I realized distantly. The sensation was followed by the frying of my ovaries like a couple of unsuspecting eggs.
Sebastian Vargas had that effect on me and my eggs.
I turned, smiling despite my utter horror. And there he stood, tall, dark and smirking at me in that way that made all the girls fling their panties at him.
Memories were funny—what you thought you remembered with vivid, certain clarity was a sad, watered-down version of the real thing. I didn’t remember him being so tall, though I’d come up to his shoulders since we were seventeen. I didn’t remember just how strong the cut of his jaw was, made sharper by his tidy scruff. Or the masculine line of his elegant nose, the abundance of his black hair, so thick, you couldn’t see his scalp, even with the ebony locks cut with ruts from his fingers. I didn’t remember the golden amber of his skin, the color so rich, it seemed to swallow sunlight thirstily.
That wasn’t the only thirsty thing in his general vicinity.
He was built like a runner, long and lean, with strong shoulders and rolling muscles. I noted every curve down to his pecs until his shirt hung too loose to count abdominal muscles that I knew for a fact were right there, chasing each other in pairs toward his narrow hips.
I tumbled into the depthless black of his eyes, such a deep shade of brown, you could only see his pupils in a certain slant of light. Those eyes I remembered, lined with enviable black lashes. That smile on wide, full lips, I knew. The flash of bright teeth when he laughed had been only for me for a few perfect summers, though he always broke it off when I went home to California.
Ever the practical one, he was.
“Seb,” I said with a smile I hoped wasn’t too obvious to the fact that I’d liked to have climbed over the bar and onto him face first, if things like manners and societal rules weren’t a thing.
“Come here,” he said with a movie star smile if I ever saw one. He walked to the galley, and I paused, indecisive for a split second.
And then I nearly ran for him, giggling like the teenage girl I was when I’d fallen in love with him a million years ago.
He caught me with a laugh that rumbled all the way through me. And for a second, he just held me there.
I breathed him in—he smelled the same, an earthy spice that I remembered most of all. One whiff elicited a biological reaction that had my hands fisting the back of his shirt where I hung onto him.
I relaxed my grip, and he took the cue to put me down. But he didn’t back away, instead hanging his hands on my hips so he could peer down into my face.
It’d always been this way with us. Easy.
“Goddamn, Pres. What’s it been, five years?”
I laughed so I wouldn’t have to answer the question directly. Because it was somewhere around four years and nine months, if we were counting.
“What are you doing here?” I asked stupidly.
“I was looking for donuts without holes. It’s inhumane what you people do to them, disfiguring them like that.”
“I tried to petition Bettie about it, but she laughed, took a drag of her cigarette, and told me to fuck off.”
“That tracks,” he said on a chuckle.
For a moment, we were silent, just standing there staring at each other with stupid smiles on our faces.
At the same time as I asked, “What have you been up to?” he asked, “Where’ve you been?” and a customer said “Excuse me!”
Sebastian smiled at me. I smiled at him.
“Can I see you tonight?” he asked.
“Only if you bring me hole-less donuts.”
“Order up!” Frankie called from the kitchen window. I ignored him.
“I mean why should I have to pay separately for the donut and the holes?” he asked. “It’s bullshit, frankly.”
As I laughed, he reached for a cocktail napkin and stole a pen out of my apron.
“Excuse me,” the lady said with much less patience and an unkind look on her face.
“Be right with you,” I assured her.
Aggie waggled her brows from behind the lady before stepping in to help her in my stead.
Sebastian handed me the napkin with his number on it, the numbers square and his letters even, slanted caps. “My new number. Text me later.”
“Bring the donuts or no deal.” I pointed at him and lowered my chin.
God, his smile could have powered half the town. “You’re gonna make me drive to Austin, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “Do what you’ve gotta do, Vargas.” When he took a step back, I called, “Wait!”
“Yeah?”
“Did you need to order something?” I reached for my notepad.
“Nah.”
“Then why’d you come in?”
“To see you.”
“Order up!” Frankie pinged the bell like nine times.
I glanced back at him and stuck out my tongue when I caught him maddogging me. “I probably shouldn’t get myself fired on my third day.”
“Not on my account, at least. Go on. I’ll see you later.”
“All right,” I answered with hot cheeks and a truly outrageous smile on my face. For a second I watched him walk away.
And then Frankie went bananas on his bell again.
I put my hands up in surrender. “All right, all right, sheesh. God forbid somebody have a conversation around here, Frankie. I’m gonna remember this next time I hear you talking to the salad dressings when you think no one’s listening.”
He rolled his eyes, but he was smiling just a little. I considered it a win.
As I stacked plates up my arm and my dopamine metabolized, dread took the place of my giddy excitement. Because I had a secret, one I’d been trying to tell him for those four years and approximately nine months since I’d seen him last.
And her name was Priscilla Marie.
Thank You
This book is one I’ve wanted to write for years, and on having the chance to do it, I was ecstatic. But early on, life intervened. The loss of our oldest dog to leukemia. An incredibly emotional political and news cycle. A child hospitalized after asking me for help—they no longer felt safe with themselves. A holiday season in and out of psychiatric facilities, beside myself with worry that I would lose my oldest child to the darkness of mental illnesses. Coming out on their behalf to our family as non-binary, doing my best to guide loved ones through their emotions and trying to find my way through my own. All that on top of a global pandemic and endless months spent isolated.