Waiting for a Girl Like You

by Christa Maurice

  “I guess I’m not, but I’m almost done.”

  “But you’re not sure anymore. You broke up with your boyfriend, and now you don’t know. Maybe you should give Marc another chance. Did you look at your phone to see if he tried to call? He might have had a good excuse yesterday.”

  And there it was. The entire reason Angela stayed home and cooked breakfast. After all, Angela had given Finn dozens and dozens of chances he didn’t even know he’d gotten.

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Sure it is. I saw you yesterday morning. You were happy when you thought he liked you. Did you look at your phone?”

  Her phone was buried in her purse under five pounds of yesterday’s tips that she hadn’t bothered to roll in her rush to get out of the house. But if he had tried to call or text, that would mean that he was interested and did care, which made her the type of woman who made a man prove over and over that he cared. Craptastic. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why not? He came to the office and said you weren’t home, and Ida said he showed up looking for you at the diner after you left.”

  The office? Finn’s accounting office. Bet he loved that. Wait, Ida said? “Ida said?”

  “She called me yesterday.”

  Of course she did. This whole town was wired for gossip. If terrorists ever made the mistake of setting up in Potterville, they’d be found out within a week and converted to Mom, apple pie, and baseball within two. Alex scooped the rest of her egg into her mouth. “I’m going to the library to work on my thesis before my shift.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m this close, and I might as well finish.” Alex stood up. She needed to be out of here right now.

  “But you could work on it here just as well. All the research is on your computer.” Angela followed her down the hall to the bathroom.

  “But it’s very quiet in the library and I can concentrate better.” The library also made and ideal place to hide from Marc. He might turn up at Finn and Angela’s house, but there was no way he’d show up at the library. Unless Angela told him where she was. Hmm, plot hole. Alex put toothpaste on her toothbrush, and then stared at herself in the mirror.

  What if she had told Angela where she was going to be because she secretly wanted Marc to come find her but didn’t want anyone, including herself, to think she was sitting at home waiting for him?

  She should have gone for a psychology degree so she could sit around all day analyzing herself.

  Alex rushed through her morning ablutions, scooped up her backpack, and ran for the door. “Thanks for breakfast. I won’t be back until late. Good luck with you know what.”

  The library was not quiet. Not in a traditional library sense. It wasn’t a library either. They loaned books, but only to residents. To the tourists, they seemed to have a running book sale that turned them into more of a bookstore. Alex had commented after her first trip there that she was surprised there wasn’t a coffee shop inside. Angela hadn’t gotten the reference, but Finn said it might be a profitable idea. Next summer there would probably be a homegrown version of Starbucks in the front corner between the checkout-slash-sales desk and the bathrooms.

  Alex sequestered herself in one of the study carrels in the back corner and focused on her paper. She’d assembled all the research. Now it was a matter of organizing it, which should be the easy part, but it had been defeating her since March when Roger’s wife gave birth.

  Psychology. She should have majored in psychology. Right now she could be finishing up a master’s thesis on how people screwed up their lives because of poor decisions regarding love.

  No progress on her thesis was made by the time she needed to get work. Alex packed up her stuff and walked along the baking sidewalk to the diner. Junie Keyes was in the kitchen racing back and forth like the grill was on fire. Tina stood between a couple and a family who were arguing over a table stacked with dishes. The outside eating area wasn’t open yet. No Ida. No Paul. Not even Drew.

  “Oh, my God, I am so glad you are here!” Tina grabbed Alex’s arms and shook her. “You didn’t answer your phone.”

  No, because the phone was still at Angela’s. “What happened?”

  “Ida went to the hospital.”

  “When?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  “Paul went with her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And they left you in charge?” What the hell were they thinking? No emergency warranted leaving Tina in charge.

  “Neither you or Drew was answering your phone.”

  Alex scanned the room. Four fuming tables, two with no menus, one shaking an upside down coffee cup, the last frowning at a bill. Two tables piled with dishes. Three other tables in various states of eating. Both benches out front full of people waiting, who were no doubt considering a run over the mountain to someplace where they could get food before they expired of hunger. “How bad is Ida?”

  “She went in an ambulance.”

  So anything between a panic attack and a heart attack. “Hey, Junie, is your mom home?”

  “My mom?”

  No, Godzilla. “Yeah, your mom. Can she come in and help out? Lunch rush is imminent.”

  “I’ll call her. Order up.” Junie banged a plate on the service counter so hard it should have shattered.

  The door jingled behind Alex. A mild looking man and a redheaded woman stood in front of the counter. Both of them looked vaguely familiar so they must be townies. Alex stepped forward to stop them before they got too far inside. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any tables open—”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey!” Tina threw her arms around the redheaded wife and started to sob.

  “Oh, honey, it’ll be okay.” Mrs. Geoffrey patted her back. “How can we help?”

  Mr. Geoffrey held out his hand. “You must be Alex. Paul called us from the hospital. We figured you might need us.”

  “Great. Can you clear those tables?” Alex pointed to the piled tables and hurried to the service window to figure out which order slip went with the food Junie had just put in the window. Seconds after she delivered it, the doorbell jingled again. The way that the Geoffrey’s greeted them, they had to be locals. Alex headed for the coffee cup waver, and when she turned to deal with the bill-frowner, she found that Finn, who she hadn’t even noticed arriving, was already on the case as Angela handed out menus and filled people in on specials. Junie’s mother arrived and set to work in the kitchen. Through the window, Alex noticed that some enterprising townsperson had opened up the outside seating and had started putting people at tables there. One of the librarians arrived and went to work taking orders. A girl in ridiculous high heels and a two-hundred dollar haircut also started taking orders. More townspeople arrived to seat people outside and stopped to gossip with each other while hogging the coffee pot and forgetting to give people water. Meals stacked up in the service window. Diners started going in search of the coffee and refilling their own drinks. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed on the world. She was in the storage room hunting for flatware because everything in the dining room was dirty when she heard the cash register ring. Alex ran out to it.

  “Thanks for coming,” Finn said waving the customers out the door.

  “What are you doing?” Alex demanded.

  “They wanted to go so I rang them up. I know how to handle money. I’m an accountant.”

  John-John sat on Ida’s stool munching on a cookie and staring at her. Alex did not want to know where he got that cookie, or why he was here in the first place.

  Behind her, a plate smashed, hushing the steady chorus of “excuse me” from diners who had not yet gone freelance with their service.

  Into that silence, the door opened and in stepped Marc.

  So this was what drove Tina to throw herself into Mrs. Geoffrey’s arms sobbing. Alex forced herself back a step just so she wouldn’t drop into his embrace like a
hysterical mess. Her jaw ached from the effort of not crying with relief.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Finn grumbled.

  Alex decided she needed to find out what the history was there some other time. Right now, she had a super volcano rumbling right under her. She needed to get it under control before Paul called to find out how everything was going and had to be told the business had been destroyed in a few unattended minutes. “Ida went to the hospital. Paul went with her.” Alex checked her watch, frowned, and squinted at it. A very few unattended minutes. “About an hour ago. And it’s lunch rush early.” She glanced out the window. Outside seating was full, but she wasn’t sure how many were tourists and how many were loitering locals.

  Marc smirked at her like they shared a joke. “You seem to have a little more help than you need.”

  Alex tapped her nose.

  “Okay.” He drew a deep breath, surveying the scene. “Finn, are you okay on the register?”

  “I know how to run it if that’s what you mean.”

  Marc leveled a serious glare at Finn. “I mean, can you do this for the rest of the afternoon because I don’t know how, and Alex is going to be busy.”

  “Fine.” Finn shrugged like he was doing Marc a favor.

  “Alex, can you sort out the kitchen? I need somebody with some experience managing the traffic flow out of there.”

  “Okay.” Alex had gotten to the service window before she realized how he’d charmed her into doing what he wanted. By the time she turned around, Marc had his arm around the girl with the ridiculous high heels and the expensive haircut and was working her. While Alex figured out which orders were duplicates and where the rest needed to go, the noise level in the dining room dropped to a normal clatter and hum.

  Marc came up behind her, just enough in her peripheral vision that she didn’t wallop him with a plate. “How’s it going?”

  “How did you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  Alex tipped her head toward the quiet, happy dining room.

  “It wasn’t anything. I’m just doing half of Ida’s job. Finn’s doing all the checks.”

  “It was chaos when you walked in.”

  “Everybody wanted to help. It was just a matter of directing them. I have some practice at that. A little flattery goes a long way, too.”

  He was very good at getting what he wanted. Here she was falling for another line. Her old friend nausea climbed up her throat. “Yes. I suppose it does. Hey, Kady, you have an order.”

  Jeanie, who had been about to put the plates in the window, flinched, and one of the plates in her hand slipped. Marc didn’t move away, but he cocked his head like he was studying Alex. At least she wasn’t the only one psychoanalyzing her.

  “Thanks, Alex.” Kady butted between them, forcing Marc back a step. “You know, this is fun. I spend all my days behind a desk talking to the same six people. It’s nice to get out and talk to normal folks.” She flashed them a big smile, grabbed her plates, and hurried back out to mix with her customers.

  “Alex?” Marc murmured.

  Fascinated, she watched him extend his hand to touch her arm and pause just as his fingers grazed her skin. Her breath caught in her throat at the sensation. A little flattery goes a long way. That was what he’d said. It sure did.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Orders are starting to stack up.” Alex kept her gaze in the kitchen where no orders were appearing, but both Jeanie and her mother were trying to eavesdrop while appearing busy. Mom was better at it than Jeanie. Neither was getting anything useful done in the meantime.

  Now Marc took a step back. “All right.” He tapped the counter twice with his long fingers and walked away. Behind her, she could hear him chatting with customers and keeping things going.

  “Are you crazy?” Jeanie hissed.

  “Jeanie,” her mother snapped.

  “Mom, do you know who that is? He’s gorgeous and he’s rich and he’s so nice. How can you be such a—” Jeanie’s lips had pressed together to form the first phoneme of the next word before she remembered that her mother was next to her.

  It was enough for her mother to swat Jeanie on the shoulder. “Watch your tongue.”

  “Can we just get some orders finished up here?” Alex flicked through the bills on the shelf. “We have hungry people, and we don’t want to disappoint Ida and Paul.”

  Her arm still tingled from his very slight touch. Jeanie was right. She was crazy, and she was being a bitch. But another man who got whatever he wanted with a little flattery? This, she did not need unless she wanted to try the hair of the dog that bit her. She scanned the dining room so she could get a glimpse of him. He was standing beside a table chatting up the diners who were loving it. As charming as he was, he couldn’t be as charismatic as Roger.

  * * * *

  Alex cleared her last table. Paul had shown up after three with the news that Ida was resting at home wearing a heart monitor, though they suspected she’d had a panic attack. Then he took over the kitchen. Once the drama was over, the townspeople drifted back to whatever they had been doing before the interruption, leaving only diners. After that, it was pretty much back to normal…with one exception.

  Marc had stuck around all day hosting and being pleasant and confusing and leaving her no way to sneak out of there to think.

  “Hey.”

  Alex jumped. One of the water glasses in her hand slipped and smashed on the concrete.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” Marc crouched with her to help pick up the broken glass. “Crazy day, huh?

  “You could say that. I’m glad Ida is okay.”

  “I’m not sure what this town would do without her.” Marc lifted the plates out of her hands. “I came in here today to talk to you.”

  “Why?” Alex focused on dusting up the last retrievable shards with her cloth so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

  “Sorry I missed you yesterday. My buddy called with a new song. He wanted to finish it up right away. That’s why I didn’t call to let you know I was running late.”

  “Oh.” Jeanie was right. She was being a bitch. “That’s okay. I wanted to go to Dolly Sods after work anyway, and then I decided to go with the star-watching group. There are a lot more stars here than at home.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  She stood up and he followed suit.

  “I sent you a text.”

  “Sorry. I forgot my phone at home.” Intentionally.

  “So are you busy tonight? It’s early. We could still make the movie. Then ice cream after? I’m shooting for a do over.” He smiled, so she returned it.

  Ice cream the other night had just been getting-to-know-you, but the movie made it a date. He probably would have taken her to dinner first if they hadn’t just spent all day working in a diner. Wow. A date. He wanted to go on a date, in public, with her. Very standard. A movie and ice cream. No pressure, but her stomach still wanted to cower around her spine. “Okay. I just have to finish up here.”

  “I’ll get these to the kitchen while you wipe down the table. How’s that?” He lifted the unharmed glass and the broken glass-filled towel out of her hands with just the lightest touch of his fingers.

  “Thanks.”

  Chapter 4

  The movie was the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. Marc draped his arm across the back of Alex’s chair and sat with one ankle resting on the other knee, taking up as much space as he could. By the end of the movie, her butt was numb because she didn’t know how to sit, but didn’t want to move out of fear that he would think she was uncomfortable. That made no sense because she was uncomfortable. She was turning into Jane Eyre, riding backward in the carriage even though it made her sick because she didn’t want to cause trouble. And what did that win Jane? Nothin’.

  But then on the way to ice cream several people stopped them to get his au
tograph and take pictures. Of both of them. Together. Why they wanted pictures of her with him she didn’t know, but he wasn’t hiding the fact that they were together.

  Refreshing. Maybe Jane had something with that backward carriage riding.

  “Strawberry, right?”

  “Please.”

  “Go ahead and find a place to sit.”

  Alex settled in the shadow of a tree. It wouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes for him to get ice cream. Not enough time to sort out her thoughts. He was nice. He’d waded into the mess this morning without thinking twice and straightened it out like a master. Now, a real date. If he only wanted to get into her pants, he didn’t have to do this much.

  Not that she intended to jump into bed with any man who wandered by, but Marc could get female companionship much easier than all this. That implied that he wanted her, in particular. Which made no sense at all. Unless Paul and Ida had convinced him that she was the perfect woman.

  She should have skipped Google and interrogated Ida and Paul.

  “Here you go.” Marc held out a strawberry ice cream cone.

  Great, just in time to leave her with more questions than she’d started with.

  “This is intimate.”

  Damn, she should have picked a brighter spot. “It seemed like it would be quiet.”

  “Yeah, sorry about the fans. They pay my living so I try to be nice to them.”

  “Good idea.” The shadows were not helping her figure out whether he had coffee or butter pecan. “Good ice cream.”

  “It is.”

  “Ida says they make it right here and get all the produce locally.” And we had this conversation the day before yesterday. “So tell me about this song.”

  “My buddy has a talent for coming up with good starts, but he’s not strong on finishing things. He dreamed something up the other night and sent it to me, so I had to follow up before he lost interest.” He licked his ice cream. “I miss the days before Garageband when Jason had to record what he’d come up with and mail it to me or come to my house in person. It gave me a little time between his genius brain farts.”