Page 29
“A brave move.”
There it is again. The compliment instead of criticism. The Good for you instead of Why couldn’t you just buck up?
His words go down like honey. Warm and sweet to the soul.
I take a sip of my coffee.
“Hey, so how did you know?” I say. “You pegged him off the bat.”
“Well, besides you gripping my hand like a python when he showed up, there was the whole narcissistic tendency thing. Shooting off a twisted devaluation of you and whatever relationship you had in the past masked as humor, while tossing me a cheap compliment—that’s about as weak as it comes. Also, I don’t like his sweater.”
His deflection with the sweater comment lightens the mood. I laugh. “He’s a villain because you don’t like his sweater.”
“He’s a villain because he’s a married man trying to ‘catch up’ with a woman he gallingly called Angel Eyes, who traveled all the way across the country to get away from him. He’s worthy of a slight shake of my head because that’s clearly a woman’s sweater.”
I twist to observe the sweater as quickly as possible. Turn back to face James.
“That’s definitely a unisex sweater.”
He shrugs. “Agree to disagree,” he says, absolutely content to steer this conversation in a different direction. “I’m personally more of a keep-bells-off-my-sleeves-at-all-costs guy, but to each their own.”
“Says the guy whose entire wardrobe is black.”
“I also wear gray. I’m not a monster.”
As the conversation travels unhurriedly along the path of easy topics, from wardrobe preferences to former science fair projects, our coffees slowly wind down with the snow outside. By the time the scene outdoors is a friendly flurry skittering around lampposts and over truck beds, Dom is almost long forgotten (except for a nagging awareness of his location at all times) and my mug is nearly empty. Even more people have filled the shop since we found our table, and the heat from coffee and cheer has warmed up James so much, he’s rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows sometime in the past hour. I, meanwhile, have abandoned one boot to let my socked foot tuck beneath one leg.
“So how long will you be staying in Maple Hills?” I say, swirling the dregs of coffee in my mug.
“I’m set to return on the twenty-fifth.”
I pause. Scrunch my nose. “Christmas? Christmas Day?”
“Christmas evening,” he corrects. “A full day with the nieces in all their chaos and charm, and then I got a ticket that should get me back before midnight.” He sees my expression and adds, “It was the most financially conscious decision.”
My nose, however, refuses to let up (or, in this case, down).
The confidence in his green eyes momentarily falters. “What?”
“You should stay at least until the day after. I mean . . . it’s Christmas.”
“I’ll have already stayed eight days. That was the point of coming early.”
“Yes, but . . . Christmas.”
To my surprise, he pauses. “Are you asking me to stay through Christmas?”
I don’t know exactly how to respond here.
Is he telling me he cares about my opinion on his whereabouts? Does he want me to ask him to stay through Christmas? Is this like . . . a romantic thing? Does he think I want him to stay?
No.
It has to be just part of the conversation.
Right?
“I mean . . .” I give a massive shrug of my shoulders as I lean back in my chair to emphasize just how casual and nonchalant I am about all this. “It seems you don’t need to save the money.”
