Delia said, “Boy, are you overthinking this. Go over there, stare into his eyes, do a slow blink, and then give him a slow smile.” Delia leaned forward. “Let’s practice. Do it to me.”
“When I am thirty-six, I will not be this embarrassing.”
“Yes, you will. By the time you’re thirty-six you will have stopped caring so much about what other people think. Now give me a slow smile.”
Gus gave her a sultry look, pouting her lips, and taking ten long seconds to blink at Delia.
“Okay. Less Jessica Rabbit. Stop thinking how stupid you must look doing this and instead think you’ve never met anyone more interesting than me.”
Gus blinked and smiled at Delia, looking at her like her head had just turned into a giant cheesecake.
Delia said, “Good. Now say ‘Hi. I’m Gus.’”
Gus said, “Hi. I’m Gus,” and Delia shook her head.
“Slowly. All the blood will have left his head at your smile.”
Gus said, “Hiiii. I’m Gusssss.”
Delia chuckled. “Okay. Go get him, Tiger. Tell me what color his eyes are and remember I’m a painter. I need something more than blue or brown.”
Gus looked again at the register and Delia said, “Or we can talk more about Beer Belly. I’d love to know if he lives at home still. In the basement, on a pull-out?”
Gus muttered, “You were sleeping on your friend’s couch a month ago,” but she stood up. She shoved her hands into her pockets and went to stare at the muffin case.
Delia sipped her three-dollar coffee. Next time they were going to McDonald’s. Making something cost three times as much did not make it taste three times better.
The kid came over asking Gus what she wanted, and Gus looked up, blinking at him, and slowly smiling.
The kid blinked in return. He stopped being bored and his interest zeroed in on her. He stood up straighter. And then he smiled back at her.
Gus’s back straightened and the interest on her face turned real.
Gus leaned forward, Delia could only assume she was trying to see what color his eyes were, and the kid’s face heated.
They exchanged a few words, oblivious to everything around them. The kid leaned against the counter, pulled into Gus’s orbit.
Gus turned back to Delia and starting walking back to the table, smiling wildly. Delia mouthed, “Name.”
Gus stopped and turned back to the boy and said into a sudden lull, “Oh, um, I’m Gus. What’s your name?”
Delia held her breath.
Come on, come on. Show her what kind of power she has.
The kid went, “Uh. . .” He laughed and shoved his hand through his hair. “Rick. My name’s Rick.”
Delia’s breath rushed out and she hid her relief behind her coffee cup.
Gus said, “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, Rick.”
Oh, great. And there went one-dollar coffees.
Gus floated back to the table and Rick said loudly, “Er, Gus? Did you want a muffin?”
She stopped, her face flaming, and she turned back around, trudging back to the case one more time.
Rick was standing taller, his shoulders wide, his chest puffed with pride. Delia could practically hear him thinking, wondering, if Gus had come over there just to talk to him. To him?
Gus bought a muffin, the transaction taking three times as long as it needed to and involving a lot more giggles than the customers waiting in line thought necessary if their sighs and shuffles were anything to go by.
Gus finally made her way back to the table and Delia said, “I told you.”
“He remembered it.”
“He had to think about it. You owe me sixteen dollars and fifty-eight cents.”
Gus couldn’t get the grin off her face and she nodded in defeat. “He’s actually pretty cute up close. He goes to UMass Boston, English major.”
Delia bit her tongue before she could warn Gus off an English major. An English major had to be a step up from Beer Belly.
“You should ask him out.”
Gus shook her head. “I told him I’d see him tomorrow.”
Delia nodded. “Good. Be sure you feed and water your new pet.”
Gus’s grin turned into a full blown smile and it said she’d just had a glimpse of what she was. A woman. An eighteen-year-old woman with the power that had launched a thousand ships, started a thousand wars, sitting inside her.
She said to Delia, “Now you do it.”
Delia laughed, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Delia, you are a beautiful, mature woman. You could have any man in this room.”
“Mature?”
“With so much experience you could run rings around any man here.”
“I’m going to slap you in a minute.”
Gus took a big bite of her three-dollar muffin. “You’ve got to give me a chance to earn my sixteen dollars back. Or you can just admit defeat because you know you can’t do it.”
Delia wasn’t a fresh-faced teenage girl, newly blossoming. But she knew she still had that power inside her. Along with the knowledge that came from her
decades
of experience, she knew she could still make a man forget his name.
And, redheads weren’t known as wild vixens for nothing.
Delia nodded. “Anyone but Rick.”
Gus smiled like she’d already won and pointed behind Delia. “I choose Jack.”
“What!”
Delia turned to see Jack walking through the doors, looking beautiful and perfect. It was windy outside and everyone else looked slightly windblown but he looked as if the wind had left him alone. As if it wouldn’t dare muss such perfection. And maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe when the wind got close enough to him it just stopped, just decided it had found a nice place to be and why rush anywhere else?
Delia turned back around to glare at Gus. “You fight dirty.”
“It’s in my blood. And I want my sixteen dollars back.”
Gus scooted over on her side of the booth until there was no room for Jack and whispered, “Don’t overthink it.”
“It’s going to hurt when you have to give me thirty-three dollars instead of just sixteen.”
Gus looked skeptical. “I’m not even betting. Jack’s not going to forget his name.”
Jack ordered his own coffee and muffin and came over to them. “Is this where you come every morning instead of going to work?”
Delia looked up at him. “Is this where you come when you say you’re going to a meeting?”
Delia slid over in her seat and Jack sat down next to her, and Gus put her face in her cup, trying to hide her grin.
Jack took a sip of his coffee. “Ms. Charles said she saw you two down here and thought I would like to know how my employees spend their time.”
Delia pushed her cooled coffee away, raising an eyebrow at Gus. Was she really going to do this?
Gus nodded imperceptibly and Delia knew she was being stupid. But she didn’t want to lose that sixteen dollars. Didn’t want to accept that she didn’t have that power anymore, that age had taken it from her.
And she wanted to see if she could make Jack forget his name.
She bumped his shoulder playfully. “You already know how these two employees waste their time. What did you order?”
“Pumpkin spice.”
“That sounds disgusting. Why do people do that to coffee?”
He took another long sip. “I like it. Sweet and spicy. Just right.”
Delia looked at his profile. “Can I try it?”
There was a long pause, and then he turned his head slowly in her direction. Their eyes met and he pushed his cup over without a word.
She put her lips where his had been, still looking in his warm, brown eyes, and a firebolt shot southward.
She sipped and it was sweet and spicy. She said softly, “It’s just. . .right.”
She handed the cup back to him, their fingers grazing, and Delia swallowed. He brought the cup to his mouth and watched her over the rim as he drank.
Heat flooded her, his eyes dilated.
Gus said, “Jack, let’s do sushi for lunch today.”
Delia drank Jack in, she let him see. How much she wanted him and how much she hated it. How she knew she could never have him and how grateful she was for that. How she would never survive him.
How she knew she’d forget everything but him if she only let herself.
Gus said, “Jack? Sushi?”
Jack’s leg brushed Delia’s as he leaned toward her, his shoulder rubbed hers.
And Delia thought,
I want you. I want you like the dawn wants the sun to rise. Waiting, hoping, craving for that first ray of light to bring warmth back, to chase away the cold, the dark, the loneliness. I want you. I hurt without you.
Gus said, “Good, we’re all agreed on sushi. Jack!”
Jack blinked, resting his hand on Delia’s thigh and turning to look at Gus. “Yes?”
Delia sighed silently, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at his profile. Regal and compelling. So perfect. Like a god, like an emperor. Like he should be minted.
Delia straightened in her seat, pushing his hand off and turning back to Gus and her gaping mouth. Delia cleared her throat and motioned to Gus’s purse. “Thirty-three dollars. You can keep the change.”
“But. . .but. . .”
Jack said, “Do I even want to know?”
Delia shook her head, clearing it, and took a long, long sip from her cup. She grimaced, the coffee cold and bitter after Jack’s pumpkin spice, and pushed it away. “She bet me sixteen dollars that I couldn’t make you forget your name.”
Jack put his hand back on her thigh beneath the table. “You could.”
And now she knew.
Stupid.
She lifted his hand up and put it on his knee.
For Gus’s sake, she said, “Of course I could. You’re a man and I’m a woman. A man spends his life looking for a woman to show a little interest, to even hint that she might get to yes. And the woman always drives because all it takes is a smile and you men go careening off the road.” She said to Gus, “All men. Even Jack.”
Jack snorted, then looked at the shock on Gus’s face.
Delia said, “I told Gus the secret. That she could have any man she wanted, she could make any man forget his name. That any woman can make any man forget his name, even a mature, experienced woman, and it doesn’t even have to be a real yes.”
Jack looked back at Delia and murmured, “You are a very bad liar. Everything you think floats right across your face.”
Gus said, “But. . .but. . .”
Jack held his muffin up to Delia. “Chocolate?”
Oh, dear God, yes. In the name of all that is holy, please yes.
She said, “No, thanks.”
Jack smiled and brought the muffin to her lips. He put his hand back on her thigh, gripping slightly when she tried to push it off again.
She took a small bite, melting into the seat when Jack bit the other side, his breath puffing into her face. Warm and sweet and male.
Her eyelids flickered closed. God, she could smell him, she could feel him.
She was the stupidest creature on the planet.
Jack rubbed her thigh and pulled back. “No, you’re not.”
Oh, she was. She opened her eyes to find Gus still shell-shocked and Delia snapped her fingers in her face, trying to ignore the heat of Jack’s hand.
“Thirty-three bucks.”
Jack made little circles with his thumb on her leg. “I thought you said sixteen.”
“Sixteen fifty-eight, times two. Once for the kid at the register, once for you.”
Jack jerked, squeezing her leg painfully. “You made
him
forget his name?”
“Ow. No. Gus did.”
Gus turned in her seat, giving Rick a shy low wave when she saw him looking at her. Rick grinned until he saw the glower on Jack’s face.
Jack raised his eyebrows at Delia and she thought,
You’re welcome
.
Jack looked back at the register.
You’re welcome? For him?
When he looked at Delia, she cocked an eyebrow.
He’s better than Beer Belly.
He looked unconvinced until Gus turned back around and he could see the pleasure on her face, could see that she believed it. She could have any man she wanted.
Jack smiled at Delia, running his hand up higher on her thigh.
Remind me to thank you later.
Delia shivered and pushed down hard on his hand to stop his northerly migration. Her bare hand on his made her brain short-circuit and she turned her face away before he could see anything else. There’d been enough truth for today and she didn’t want him to see that she’d let him thank her anyway he wanted to.
Gus said, “Okay, I get it. You can stop making googly eyes at each other.”
Delia pushed at his hand. “Yeah, Jack. Stop it.”
“You’re doing it, too,” Gus said, and then her face blanked. She looked down at the table, expressionless, and Delia stopped worrying about Jack and his wandering hand.
“Gus? What in the–”
A woman’s musical voice cried, “Jack! I’m so glad I ran into you. I cannot get past that secretary of yours; has she even told you I tried to see you?”
Delia looked up as a beautiful woman descended on them. Her trim skirt and jacket hugged a toned body and her warm brown hair was smooth and nowhere near windblown.
Seriously, was there some secret Delia was unaware of? Because she didn’t need to look in mirror to know that
her
hair looked like the wind had found its favorite playground.
“I don’t have time for social visits during work, Diane.”
Diane’s eyes flicked to Jack’s hand on Delia’s thigh and then up to Delia’s face. The expression on the woman’s face didn’t change a beat.
Diane turned away from her. “Augusta! It’s been so long. How are you?” She pointed into the booth. “Would you mind?”
Jack slid out. “We were just leaving. I only came down to collect my hooky-playing employees.”
Diane stepped in close to him, sliding her hand through his arm and plastering herself against him.
Delia watched them for a nanosecond, then turned back to Gus. She said softly, “Let’s go, Gus. If we leave now we can beat him back to work and he won’t have anything to complain about.”
Gus slid out silently, not looking at Diane. They got halfway across the coffee shop before Gus stopped, her hands clenching into fists.
She looked back at Diane, still pressed thigh to shoulder against Jack, and rage filled her eyes. She said loudly, “It’s going to come as quite the shock when she hears you’re engaged to Jack, Delia.”