Liam’s eyes are glued to mine and his lips are set in an easy smile as he makes his way to join me. He’s carrying a tray with a beverage and a plate. Also, held beneath the tray is the weirdest looking bouquet. He places the tray on the table and takes the seat facing mine. The odd bouquet is placed somewhere on his thigh under the table, outside of my line of vision.
He takes a sip of coffee, eyes on me. He smiles softly, “Turns out I’ve seen you before too. I knew you looked familiar—”
I cock my head. “You did?” I ask, cutting him off. Hence the inexplicable, weird hit and run eye contact thing from moments ago.
“At Poison and Wine, twice, I think,” he says.
I perk up, surprised. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been there a few times. My drummer friend I told you about performs there with her band.”
He looks like he’s about to say something but chooses not to. Instead, he pulls up the tragedy of a flower composition. He laughs as he hands me the Thing. “I had to be creative and this is the best I was able to come up with – us meeting was sort of a spur of the moment thing, so here goes.”
I trap my lips with my teeth, but I’m sure my tentative smile is still noticeable. “That’s, umm, unique.” In closer proximity, it’s even more . . . unique. It’s a sad-looking bouquet if you can call it that. The roses aren’t exactly in their prime, and that’s putting it mildly. And what’s that? There are little red paper – what are those? Masts? Laced together with the depleted flowers. Intertwined with the flowers are little flags, red flags. On closer inspection, I see that each flag has something scribbled on it.
I lift my eyes to Liam in question because the rare composition begs for some sort of clarification for those of a lesser artistic imagination.
“In one of our first emails you mentioned that you wished people came with warning signs,” he says and gestures with his hands at the flowers. My own smile grows wider. “My red flags, Anna.”
Suddenly the tragedy of the bouquet becomes the most beautiful thing. Okay, it’s not beautiful, it’s still. . . unique, but I absolutely adore it.
“I love it,” I tell him. “Where did you get these flags from?” I gently ruffle the paper masts.
“My nephew’s birthday. It was one of those decorations chain things. I borrowed a few.”
“Creative,” I say to my tea, my smiling eyes directed at Liam.
He nods in a casual, “thanks.” He has this self-assurance about him, but not of the smug variety, it’s an unassuming one. The kind of confidence of someone who knows his value but doesn’t flaunt it.
Among the ill-looking roses which Liam explained were purchased at one of those twenty-four hours gas station stores, I look for Liam’s red flags. He eats his avocado toast, watching me as I read the writing on the flags. A bit of a challenge. Doctors’ bad handwriting, apparently not a myth. I train my attention on the “warning signs.”
Stubborn
Very little free time
Career driven
Disturbingly meticulous
Leaves socks everywhere
No commitment in the foreseeable future
“What’s up with the socks everywhere situation?” I ask next.
His side smile appears. He puts the toast back on the plate next to a twin one. “That’s what you’re most concerned about?”
I eye the other toast; it looks so delicious. Lifting my eyes back to Liam, I say, “I’m just trying to understand how severe the socks everywhere situation is.”
“I prefer bare feet and I just tend to take off my socks whenever I can. I always forget to take them with me. It drives my roommate crazy.”
“You guys sound like an old married couple,” I say and unthinkingly reach for the untouched toast and take a bite.
Liam chuckles, gesturing with his hand at the other toast as in “why not?” I bring my hand to cover my full mouth, saying, “Oops, sorry not sorry.”
He shakes his head, seeming to find me cute. “Nothing to be sorry about, it’s damn good toast. Help me finish these and we’ll share a dessert.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Winter or summer?” Liam asks out of nowhere.
I chuckle in surprise. “That’s random.”
He shrugs with a smile that makes my smile grow a little wider. “Neither. Autumn.”
He nods in what seems to be approval.
“So, um. I brought you something too,” I send my hand to my shopping tote. I feel much less hesitant and silly to give him this thing I made for him just before leaving home, what with the lovely bouquet of warning signs. “In one of your emails, you mentioned that you should get recognition for your outstanding achievement—” I pull out the printed document and give it to Liam.
Certificate of Remarkable Achievement
This Acknowledges That
Liam Brody
Is Anna’s number one e-person
He reads the page and raises his eyes to mine for a beaming encounter. For a long stretch, he looks at me, like he’s considering me in a way. After a pause, he says, “I think, I’m going to make it my goal to be Anna’s number one person off and online.”
Till this morning all I had was a 2D image and a wealth of personality I grew to cherish and value and even got attached to. Now, I have the 3D flesh and blood version and it’s so much more. I mirror his stare, thinking to myself, I think you might just be capable of achieving that. “Are you sure you’re up to it? It sounds like quite a commitment,” is what I actually say. I raise the “thou shalt not commit” little flag and fiddle with it for him to see.
He grins a bright grin. Looking like he finds me . . . worthy. He murmurs something under his breath, something that sounds like touché.
13 Hours of Sleep, a Good Shower, Fresh Coffee, and a Newspaper. Saturday, You Babe.
It’s been gone – what? Two hours? Yet, I still get these spikes of excitement now and then. And if I’m being honest here, I might still be a tad bewildered by the fact that Anna – my online – Anna, is the beauty from Poison. And she’s as awesome in person as she was in the virtual realm.
Looks like God’s on my side on this one. God and the entire damn universe. Because . . . damn!
I take a drink of coffee, my eyes trained on Anna as I listen to her attentively. She goes on about the studio she teaches at, telling me how she might buy it if she gets approved for a loan. Involuntarily, she lets out an “amen” under her breath that makes my smile tip up a little more. Her eyes shine with excitement, radiating just how passionate she’s about it. And she looks so damn beautiful. Hardly any makeup, hair up, revealing that beauty mark at the side of her neck that’s teasing me. She has pinkish plump lips that got me nearly drooling. And her eyes, a bewitching dark blue of endless expressions. She has this urgency about her when she talks in a charming neurotic way, yet at times, she’s the damn poster girl for zen. Especially when she listens to you talk, acting as if you are the only person in the room.
She’s something else.
“Saturday or Sunday?” she asks abruptly.
I inwardly shake myself out of my gazing spell. “Saturday,” I recover quickly. “There’s still another day to the weekend.”
She traps a smile with her teeth. “Okay, I got to—” she gestures toward the toilets, then the same hand motions at the few empty cups we’ve consumed in explanation.
I nod with a smile. My eyes don’t leave her departing back till she disappears behind the door. I check my watch. If this were a simple “coffee” we’d probably say goodbye right about now, if not an hour or so ago. I don’t want that to happen. I get the check before she returns while thinking up excuses to make this thing last longer.
“Let’s get the check,” she casually suggests, coming back.
“Done,” I say.
“Next time’s on me,” she says, slinging her cross body bag over her shoulder.
I grin cheekily, eyeing her with my head cocked. “There will be a next time?”
“Do you even have a doubt?” she says with an immense amount of confidence.
My stomach does a funny thing, but I keep the telltale feeling under the surface and smirk instead, widely.
“So,” Anna smiles at me while sliding a hand into her pocket. She pulls out a Chapstick and applies it to her lips. I swallow hard, unabashedly watching her. She grins at me, now with lips a shade rosier and glossier. They look like the best dessert this place can offer, and they serve some fucking sublime desserts here.
“Hey, so—” I scratch my temple, “do you have any plans for later, I mean now?”
Anna beams knowingly. “Well, not really. I was thinking of popping by the organic store for some veggies and fruits, but that’s kind of it.”
“I need to run a couple of errands myself, want to join?” I try not to come off as eager as I feel. I hold my smile but I’m pretty sure the zeal in my eyes is unmistakable.
Her smile stretches wider reassuringly. “Sure.”
Anna throws me a side-long glance as we walk side by side. We’re back on her favorite topic, nutrition and health. “Let me ask you this,” she says, “take your dream car—”
“That’s not a question.” My eyes sparkle with tease.
“Ha,” she deadpans.
“I actually own my dream car,” I think about my babe and add, “My beat-up, beauty of a beast, aka Thanos.”
“Good for you,” she says with a half sassy smile. “And we’ll unpack naming an inanimate object later.” She shakes her head pretending to be disturbed while doing a shit job of hiding a grin. “So, would you ever feed, umm – Thanos.” Cue eye roll. “Low-quality fuel.”
“Hell no!” I send a hand to my chest. The horror!
And another brief eye roll comes from my errands running partner. “I can assure you that 99% of people will have the same answer. Now, it’s blasphemy to feed your vehicle with junk but it’s A-okay to feed your body – something that should function at its best for approx eighty years – with garbage?”
“Hey, you just gave me a life sentence, and not a generous one,” I frown theatrically.
She does that trapping a smile with her teeth thing again. “A hundred and fifty years?”
Time to put this subject to rest.. But she’s so damn adorable all riled up, so of course, I go along. “I get what you say, but the human body is much more complex than an automobile engine. Our body knows how to rid itself of toxins and waste. Yeah, I know, there’s just so much a liver can take. But an overall balanced diet should be fine. Crap and healthy combined.”
“I agree, but that’s exactly my point. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, the consensus of a balanced diet is profoundly misguided. Take the official food pyramid for example. Both dairy and meat are still prominent foods in the mix. While a plant-based diet tackles both the poor nutrition-quality food eaten by billions of people and averts global environmental catastrophe. What we eat isn’t just affecting our health. Our diet influences farming – especially livestock – and drives climate change, the destruction of wildlife and the pollution of rivers and oceans.” Her cheeks lightly tint, her expression a tad embarrassed. “Okay, I’m done nerding out.”
My heart sings to that flushed face. “So, explain this to me, you’re,” I gesture my hand at her. “A . . . vegan?”
She shakes her head. “I’m nothing in particular. I prefer not to eat dairy and meat. I generally opt for a plant-based diet, but I eat fish and eggs occasionally. I just try to eat what you’d call clean.”
I nod, glad to learn she’s not radical. That would probably put a damper on my quickly growing fascination with her. Not that there’s anything wrong with veganism or healthy eating of any sort, on the contrary, but when it becomes extreme, as in people that won’t eat avocados since avocado production involves migratory beekeeping, and migratory beekeeping is not in favor of bees, or yeast because it contains living organisms, well, that’s where I declare mad territory.
She winks at me. “I like to play against my type.”
I grin, thinking, you don’t have a type. You’re a class of your own, Anna.
Topics change, some deeper some less so. There are smiles, brief laughs, and knowledge and random facts exchanged as we roam around the bio/organic whatever it is, store. I observe Anna as she studies the apples as though they have the power to alter a life. A whole of two minutes passes before two fruits are chosen. Anna lifts her eyes to me as I watch her with my lips tipped at the corner. “What?”
I just shrug, smile intact. I listen to Anna as I help her bag the few items she bought – measly few items that took her nearly forever to choose. I could have probably shopped an entire week’s worth of groceries and stopped for coffee in the time she took. Shopping together would probably never be our thing.
“So, I kept reading,” Anna says as she pulls out a few notes from her purse. “Anxiously waiting for the book to become as extraordinary as people claim it to be.” Anna delivers her frank thoughts on Anna Karenina as we leave the store. “You know there must be a reason it’s considered a classic. I think that classification might be a bit of a stretch.” I raise a questioning brow. “C’mon, all these so-called sophisticated characters in their idiotic tangle of practicing shity judgments just because they didn’t really pay attention. A bazillion pages of . . . that!”
I grin because she’d just trashed Tolstoy. See, there’s something I greatly appreciate about nonconformists. Let your thoughts be heard even if your opinions aren’t all that popular. “Guilty,” I raise a hand. “I didn’t not like it.”
“Different strokes,” Anna shrugs it off.
“But I get your point. A few less thoughtless driven decisions and the book would have been a few good hundred pages lighter and not necessarily entirely less good.” I squint at her. “So, Anna, any more unpopular opinions I should know about.”
She shrugs with a little happy sniff. “You’ll have to read about them in my memoir with everyone else.”
“And here I thought I was special.”
No verbal response, just a clandestine little smile.
A couple of hours, two pit stops, and another coffee later, we find ourselves waiting for the check in at yet another corner coffee shop. It’s quite obvious that neither of us wants this hanging out thing we started many hours ago now to end.
“My turn,” Anna snatches the check before I even notice it was placed on the small table. “Told you there would be a next time, O ye of little faith.”
An idea pops into my mind and I fetch my phone. “Hey,” I lift my eyes to Anna who’s busted intensely checking me out. My brief smile comes as an instinct to her light blush. “Do you want to go to one of those outdoor movies? There’s one starting in fifteen. We can make it if we leave now.”
Not, what’s on? No, how long is it? No, what are we going to do with our stuff? None of that. “Sure!” is Anna’s reply. Needless to say, an answer that makes me want to high-five myself.
We make it just in time, find a little spot that’s a bit to the side but has the blessing of a tree back support. Shouldn’t be taken lightly when you’re about to park your ass for a whole two hours on the grass.
“Pet peeve?” Anna asks, sitting next to me, leaning back to share a patch of the tree trunk. I’m so aware of our proximity, the heat of her arm next to mine, her scent.
I pivot to face her. “This irritating trend to rename things.”
“Meaning?”
“For example, decompress,” I say, air quoting the word. “Why can’t you simply say lying on the sofa with your jean button open, inhaling pizza? Why do people need to rename things?”
Anna thinks for a brief moment and nods in agreement. Then something changes about her expression, about the way her eyes glance at me. There’s a tender quality to the moment that unsettles me. As though shaken out of wherever she’d just been transferred to, Anna bumps her shoulder to mine, “It’s starting,” she nods at the screen.
Half-way through the fil
m, a chilled breeze veils the night. I give Anna a quick peek, one of the many I’ve stolen so far. “Hey,” I whisper. “You’re cold.”
She drops her eyes to her fists hidden inside her sleeves and nods in agreement. “It’s a little chilly.”
With my heart thudding a little faster, I drop my legs to the sides and open my arms in invitation. She stares at me for a breath and wordlessly scoots over to nestle between my parted legs with her back to my chest. I’m so glad for the place to be so vibrant, for the sounds coming from the speakers to muffle my heartbeat, the little sharp intake of breath I’m taking when the wind carries her honeyed scent over. Is it just me or does this feel fucking amazing, her in my arms? I’m a bit less attentive as we continue to watch the screen. Occasionally my mind wanders from the person cuddled against me, to the day we just had and how great it was.
“Did you just trace something on me?” Anna whispers, her face tilted my way.
My eyes cut to my finger on her sleeve. I furrow my brows and shake my head in a complete lie. No, I didn’t just trace you’re perfect on your sleeve. Only I totally did.
“This is me,” Anna says as we finally reach her building. She peeks at her phone, “Wow, it’s already tomorrow.” For a moment concern fills her eyes. “When’s your next shift? You need to get some sleep.”
“Sleep? What’s that? Not familiar with the word.”
She chuckles softly.
I reciprocate, mirroring her smile. “Late this evening, I have enough time to recharge.”
She nods twice, appearing a bit apprehensive. “Okay, so goodnight?”
My eyes hold hers for a stretched, silent moment while my mind is reeling insanely like I’ve got just a few seconds to answer a million-dollar question. I snake my arm around her waist and pull her to me. My mouth collides with hers with such urgency. As our lips mesh, we both let out a relieving sigh that is followed by strangled moans as we but devour each other in burning necessity. It’s an elusive moment of utter enchantment, yet greater uncertainty. Yeah, that just happened . . . in my head. And in that moment I make a hard choice. I’m not going to take things a step further. Not now anyway. I volley my impulse to have my lips on hers and instead do the most logical thing I can think of under such immense tension. I give her the most brotherly hug I can and quickly step back to push the door to the building open. I hold it for her, signaling night’s over, goodbye.
by Mistake: (Poison & Wine, book 1) Page 8