“I’m meeting someone for breakfast.” It’s a ridiculous hope.
While waiting, I reach for my back pocket where I keep my book, only to find it gone. I feel my front pockets instinctively, finding only keys in one and the pocketknife my father passed onto me in the other. I retrace my route from yesterday. When was the last time I read it? I clearly remember running my fingernail along a particular scratch in the diner’s table as I scanned the lines over and over, trying to keep the lyrical words in my head. My booth from yesterday is just across the way, occupied by an portly man, his large hands cusped around a mug of coffee, his wife’s fluffy white hair bouncing as she describes a scene from her most recent meeting ‘with the gals’.
The waitress returns with my coffee. I hardly touch it over the next half hour. When I finally take a sip, the ring around the inside edge is thick. Without my book to keep me focused, my body is looking for other means to keep itself occupied. Legs bouncing under the table, fingernails that I should have trimmed before coming out tapping. And every time the chimes above the door ring, I look up like a dog awaiting its owner’s return.
The crowd ebbs as the breakfast rush dies down. Tables filled with the detritus of half eaten toast, stale egg yolks, and sticky syrup residue. The waitress has stopped asking what I’d like to eat.
“Sorry, hon,” she says as she refills my coffee a third time. “Looks like your friend got held up.”
I could ask her about Joy. She must know the owner’s daughter, but then I would be straying into stalker territory. No, if we’re meant to be, our next meeting has to be organic. No cheat sheets for this guy.
At least it’s Saturday, which means no hauling trees or loading the backs of pick-ups with mulch and sand. I can sit here all day without worrying over the nursery, but I have an appointment to keep. One I absolutely can’t skip.
I leave a tidy tip, pay at the register, smiling at Joy, wishing she were here in the flesh. I hope to run into her in the parking lot. I’m even formulating how I might ask for her number, but there is no one out here. The day’s warming up, baking the concrete.
Back in my trusty steed, I pull out onto the highway. This is the only day of the year I don’t have classic rock pulsing through the speakers and instead listen to Garth Brooks wailing on about his troubles. My windows are down, arm hanging out. It should be the start of a perfect day. Even the trees lining the drive up through the cemetery are picturesque, shading me in their clumps of green leaves. There is only one other car in the parking lot. Not Jake’s. He’s running late, as per usual. Not many people visit cemeteries nowadays, so I’m surprised not to have the place to myself, especially on a day like today.
I lean against one of the faithful maple trees, enjoying the shade as the cicadas chirrup in the rhythm only they seem to know. After five minutes, I decide to get on with it. I pull my tools out of the bed of the truck: garden shears, a spray bottle with a cloth, and a travel bottle of Jack.
Dad’s grave is just a five-minute walk through the east side. His stone marker is fresher than those around it. The elements haven’t had much time to wear away at the sheen. Still, it’s covered in a dried layer of grime that is easily removed in a few minutes with the cloth. This past week’s rain has filled the grass with energy, the blades now reaching nearly to my ankles. The gardening shears make short work of them. Within ten minutes, I’ve got dad’s grave tamed once more. Last comes the whiskey.
Before breaking the seal on the tiny bottle, I look back towards the parking lot again. No Jake. Not a total surprise. He’s even been flaking out on rent recently, so what made me think he would turn off his game and actually venture outside. With a sigh, I hold the bottle out and repeat the tired words from the first year Jake and I did this: “You weren’t the best dad, and we weren’t the best kids, but we’re certainly worse off without you.”
A little smirk crosses my face. Jake thought he was so clever for pulling that toast out of the air after the funeral. I bring the neck of the bottle to my lips and am about to toss my head back when a branch behind me snaps. I whip around, expecting it to be Jake finally caught up, but who I find instead is the gorgeous face that’s made a thousand laps around the inside of my head since I woke up.
Chapter 4
Joy
When the truck pulls into the parking lot, I’m arranging the flowers on mom’s grave. I’m used to being alone during these times, so I hope whoever it is doesn’t come to our side of the cemetery.
Then he steps out.
The boy from yesterday who said he was going to marry me. Who made father guffaw when he didn’t back down, even after finding out I had heard the whole thing. Has he been stalking me since then? Is that why he’s shown up now? He’s waited until I was alone, and now he’s going to take me and have his way with me?
Not all of that sounds completely unappealing. He was cordial the other day, and father said he was a good tipper. And that was before he even saw my photo behind the register. I allow my fantasy to advance, just enough to imagine the chest hiding under that flannel shirt carved close to the muscle. He holds himself with the posture of someone who’s challenged their body through daily physical activity. I wonder what kind of job he has to have obtained such a solid physique in this age of desk jobs.
He’s pacing around the parking lot, which only serves to run my heart rate up my throat. He’s waiting for me to come back to my car. Here in the tree’s shadow, he must not be able to see me. What other reason would someone have to just hang around a cemetery parking lot? Finally, he retrieves a handful of objects from the bed of his truck and, to my relief, walks off the other way.
Of course, I have to follow him. It’s not even a question of tucking tail and running at this point. He’s got me curious, and that’s not an effect guys tend to have on me. Books, yes, but not boys.
When he finally stops, it’s in front of a grave similar to mom’s. He washes the grime from the headstone before manicuring the overgrown grass. When he gives his little speech about his father not being the best, I can’t help but giggle at the way he’s talking to himself. That’s when he turns back and squints into the shadow, catching me in the act.
I step into the light and love the way his eyes go wide. So he wasn’t expecting me here. Which means he wasn’t following me after all.
“I saw you in the parking lot earlier. I was behind a tree, so I don’t think you could see me.” My voice goes up, so I wave my hands as if to defend myself before he can misconstrue what I just said. “I wasn’t hiding or anything. I mean, that’s just where her grave is. My mom’s grave.” After a somber pause, I add, “But I thought maybe you were stalking me. I mean, after what you said in the diner yesterday and all. There are lots of crazy guys out there. You have no idea. I mean, you were just standing around for a while. I thought you were waiting for me to come back to my car, which would have been the worst way to pick a girl up. In a graveyard? Really? But then you wandered off, so I followed you.”
“My brother,” he says in a gravely tone.
“Oh, I thought this was your father. You said—”
“No, no.” He coughs to clear his throat. “I was waiting for my brother. I mean, that’s why I was just standing around in the parking lot. I wasn’t stalking you.”
“Where is he?” I take a step closer now that I know this guy’s not a complete psycho.
“Meeting his guild.” The look of confusion I give in return leads him to explain. “Jake plays a lot of games. Too many, I think, for a twenty-one-year-old. Teams are called guilds.”
“That’s why he didn’t meet you here? Because he’d rather play games than come to his father’s grave?”
“Well, I’m not sure if you heard me earlier, but my father wasn’t exactly a saint. But at least he wasn’t a stalker,” he adds in a joking tone. “Be honest. If an outsider were to see this situation, who would they consider the criminal? I was just minding my own business and—bam—I turn around. Stalker.”
>
I laugh, which hasn’t happened a lot since mother’s passing.
“You’re the one slobbering over photos in a diner. I was seventeen in that photo, so you know. I ought to call the authorities.”
A pink shade fills his cheeks. His free hand goes to his back pocket. “You don’t look any different,” he says. He’s right, of course. The morning of my fourteenth birthday, puberty hit me all at once instead of drawing itself out. I was mistaken for a substitute teacher not once, but twice, and that was just in my junior year.
I feel bad for him, so I change the subject. “You planning to drink that by yourself? It’s not even lunch yet.”
He looks down at the bottle of bourbon as if he had never seen it before. “This? It’s only two shots worth. I usually split it with Jake.” I didn’t notice until now, but he’s got two shot glasses enveloped in his large hand behind the bottle. “But it would be nice to have a drinking partner. My father drank this stuff every night. He wasn’t a drunk though. Never drank more than a finger or two. I tried gifting him nicer bottles, but he always came back to good ol’ Jack.”
I take the shot glass he offers me and hold it out while he fills it and then his.
“Sounds like a regular guy to me.” I mean it in the best way, but as soon as the words are out there, I fear he will take them the wrong way.
“That’s what he always strived to be. Just salt of the earth. Well,” he says and raises his glass. “Here’s to being happy as salt.”
I giggle, and he’s smiling as he throws the shot back. But his smile erupts into a laugh as I choke back the bourbon. “It’s a bit stronger than the wine I’m used to,” I say between coughs that turn my face an embarrassing shade of burgundy. He takes the shot glass back, and our fingers graze. It’s the first time we’ve touched. Just realizing that makes me giddy, like I’m a schoolgirl looking forward to holding hands again.
“I never said it was any good.” He puts the empty bottle on the tombstone. Pauses. Takes a deep breath. “You know,” he says, turning back to me, “this isn’t the way I imagined it going down, but I was wondering if you’re busy. I mean, we’ve already shared our first drink together, so it’s only right I take you out to eat.”
“Before our first date, I at least need to know your name.”
I might have just punched him in the gut from the way he looks back at me. “I never told you my name? What an idiot. I’m Lucas.” He begins to put his hand out to shake, but second guesses himself. Before he can pull back, I place my hand in his. Even if I just laughed off our first encounter, Lucas really is cute. He’s also loyal to his family, and able to take a joke. And I did skip breakfast, so brunch doesn’t sound bad.
“I know the perfect place.”
Chapter 5
Lucas
The Café Le Blanc is uptown in a building that was once an old church. It’s a beautiful building, both inside and out, thin linens draped over the tables and modern chandeliers hanging high in the rafters. It’s not the type of place I would ever go on my own.
“I know the chef,” Joy says after we are seated in what used to be the pulpit. The other diners sit a few steps below us, and the strange feeling of being newlyweds looking down at our respective parties springs to mind. “She was a close friend of my mother.”
Speaking of, a woman appears from a back door. She wears a white apron, flour caked on her hands, and curly hair done up except for a few strands that bounce as she practically skips to our table.
“My petit girl has brought a boy this time,” she says in a French accent that has been smoothed over from years of being in the US.
“He’s just a—” Joy begins. My brain easily fills in the gap at the end of her sentence: Just a friend. But to my surprise, she starts again. “He’s Lucas. Lucas, this is Madame Anna.”
This woman I’ve never met then kisses the air beside my cheeks. I’ve only ever seen people do this in movies. Handshakes are more the norm in the South.
“She has called me Madame since she was a girl,” Anna explains. “She has also said that she is going to study pastry in Paris since she was able to speak, but she remains in that despicable greasy establishment with her father. I never understood what your mother saw in that man, God rest her soul.”
“Sometimes you need a sloppy burger,” I try to say helpfully.
Before Joy can defend her father’s diner, Anna says, “I know just what I will bring you. Don’t bother looking at those menus.” She pulls them out of our hands. “They are only for people who have the audacity to believe they know better than the chef. In the meantime, I will have Jasmine bring you coffee.”
When Anna is back in the kitchen, I take a good look around the chapel. “I can see why you like this place so much.”
In the light of the stained glass windows, Joy’s bittersweet smile might be a painting. “My mom brought me here when I was little, right after it opened. It must have been ten years ago. I remember asking her why her and dad didn’t have a restaurant like this? She asked me if I didn’t like dad’s cooking. At first I said that I loved his milkshakes, but then Anna brought out this strawberry cream cake, and my whole world shifted. When I asked Anna how she learned to make it, she told me she had studied in Paris. That’s when I vowed to follow in her footsteps.”
I let her stare wistfully out into what would have been the congregation decades ago before asking as gently as possible, “Then why haven’t you done it?”
“I’m not eleven anymore. Things aren’t as easy as just saying you are going to do them.”Joy’s silence hangs between us until Anna brings out a three-level silver platter of tea and triangles of sandwiches. Madame Anna then skitters off into the kitchen again. After a deep breath that feels like she is getting the bad air out, Joy asks, “What about you? What was your dream?”
With a teacup balanced on my finger, pinkie naturally pointing out, there is no way I am about to make myself look even more girly by admitting a dream that is long in the past. “I don’t have a dream quite like that. Yours has a good reason: your mom is French and her best friend introduced you to pastries. Plus, you could actually make a living with yours. Mine has never been affiliated with being rich.”
A wicked smile scrawls across Joy’s face. With a cucumber sandwich held up to her lips, she says, “I showed you mine. Now let’s see yours.”
“What makes you think I’m such an easy man?” I answer, joining in on the innuendo. “Like I’m just going to give it up that easily?”
Joy’s throws a bit of cream off the top of a strawberry. It hits me square on the mouth. “I told you mine so easily, so what does that make me?”
I simply shrug, which earns more cream in the face.
The rest of the meal comes in waves of increasing sweetness. After the sandwiches comes a tray of scones and jams. Then more fruit and cream. Finally, two slices of strawberry cream cake, one placed in front of each of us.
“It looks amazing, but I don’t know if I can eat another bite,” I admit in defeat. Apparently the wrong thing to say in front of both Anna and Joy.
“It would be a sin to leave even a morsel of this on the plate,” Anna says in her fanciful accent. She motions around the interior of her café built within the skeleton of a chapel. “You would not commit a sin in God’s house, now would you?”
Joy points her fork at Anna. “But this is your house now. So you’re saying—”
Anna retrieves the empty platters and totters off, but not before saying, “True blasphemy would be to forsake the cake.”
Joy takes a bite from the perfect triangle of cake, and a layer of thinly sliced strawberries. When she moans in ecstasy, I’m suddenly glad that I don’t have to stand up any time soon.
“There’s a waiting list to get in here,” Joy explains as she takes another bite that leaves a dollop of cream on her upper lip. “Three weeks. It’s all because of this cake. Anna has deals with strawberry patches around the country. Seriously, you have to try it.”
>
How can I turn down this heavenly creature forcing sweet delicacies on me? An unconscious moan rumbles up my throat as the cream hits my tongue. Up until this point, my grandmother’s triple chocolate cake has been my favorite dessert, but this has pushed it into a distant second place.
Halfway through my slice, an idea forms in my head. By the final bite, it has solidified into an anxious question. While Joy is rubbing her finger across her empty plate, sucking up the last molecules of cream and strawberry juice, I know more than ever that this is the girl I’m going to marry. There is no point in looking further. Dating around would be a waste of time. In fact, I wish we could get married right now, right here in this chapel with Anna presiding over the ceremony. But that would mean sacrificing the dating phase of our relationship.
So instead of jumping straight to a proposal, I go for something only halfway to complete madness for a first date. I reach over and grab her hand. When Joy doesn’t flinch, I know I’m on the right track. This next move might ruin everything, but if I really am the right guy for her, it will be exactly what she needs.
“Would you like to go to Paris with me?”
Chapter 6
Joy
“What did you say?” Becca is practically reaching through the phone, clenching her hands around my neck. I’ve been having such fun teasing her before I get to the finale of how our first date ended. “I’m going to kill you if you said no.”
“If you don’t kill me, I might just have to do it myself. I can’t believe it,” I say and then sigh before finishing, “but I actually said I’d love to.”
The squeal at the other end of the line reminds me of a car screeching to a stop. Or perhaps peeling out as it accelerates with sheer excitement. “You didn’t!” Becca finally says when she regains the power of speech.
A Sweet, Sexy Collection 1: 5 Insta-love, New Adult, Steamy Romance Novellas (Sweet, Sexy Shorts) Page 2