Six
“Really? On your day off?” Anna said when we walked in. She’d come right from the library to do her afternoon shift at the café.
“What? I’m hooked on Daisy’s croissants.” Anna nodded.
“You raise a good point.” She seated us in a little nook and I couldn’t stop feeling like everyone was watching us. In fact, I looked around and saw Lacey on her laptop with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and a plate filled with crumbs on the table. I’d thought she was going to spend the rest of the day sleeping, but apparently not. Anna skipped over and gave her a quick kiss before taking the plate. Lacey looked dazed and heart-eyed for a moment before she looked back at her computer.
“That’s Lacey,” I said to Fiona, pointing her out. “She’s really cool.” She was. Effortlessly cool.
“It’s awesome that she let you stay there. I wish I had something like that.” She looked down at her hands and she was sad again.
“Wait right there,” I said, pointing to her so she wouldn’t move. I weaved my way through the tables and walked right into the back where Daisy was up to her neck in flour.
“Hey, you’re here on your day off?” she asked.
“Couldn’t stay away. Listen, can I get two chocolate croissants? I have a girl who needs them. And maybe if you could put a few aside in a bag for her to take home?” Daisy looked at me and then peered over the counter of the bakery at Fiona.
“Ohhhhh,” she said, as if she had caught on to something.
“It’s not . . .” I said, unsure of how exactly to explain everything with Fi.
Daisy put up flour-coated hands.
“Say no more. You’ve got it.” She scraped the flour off her arms and hands into the sink and then plopped two croissants onto a plate.
“I’ve got maybe five left. Is that enough?”
“Probably for a few hours,” I said. She gave me a look and then made a shoo-ing motion.
“Go, she looks hungry.” That was what Daisy did. She fed people. It was her thing. I set the plate on the table and Fiona looked up at me, a smile breaking out like sun from behind the clouds.
“Thanks,” she said, picking one up.
“Do you want anything else? I’m going to get some iced tea.” She said she also wanted some, so I rushed to the back and scooted by Jen, who also asked me what I was doing here, and filled two glasses with iced tea, and plopped two lemon slices on the rims.
I brought them back to Lacey and she looked up with wide eyes and a smear of chocolate on the side of her mouth. That was the only evidence that croissants had even existed. The plate was empty.
“I was hungry,” she said, sheepish.
“Damn, you should have told me you were that hungry,” I said, setting down the iced tea. “I would have brought more.”
The urge to reach out and wipe the chocolate from her face was almost unbearable. Finally, I did. I just let my hand reach out and my thumb scraped the chocolate from her skin. Before I could even consider the consequences, I popped my thumb in my mouth and licked off the little bit of chocolate.
Time stopped. She looked at me and everything in the café went away. Just like it had when I’d first seen her again. Only . . .
I blinked and shook my head.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No problem,” she said, her voice dazed. I knew I should be doing something, but I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be.
A throat cleared and we both looked up like startled deer in car headlights.
“Your croissants,” Daisy said, holding out the bag to me. Her eyes flicked between me and Fiona and back again and she gave us both a smile.
“Enjoy.” She wasn’t just talking about the croissants. Oh, I was going to get an earful at work tomorrow.
I unrolled the top of the bag and pulled one of them out. Might as well, since Fi had eaten two.
She sipped her iced tea, but the tension between us had ratcheted up about five thousand notches. I could barely think with her sitting right across from me. I moved my legs and accidentally bumped her feet under the small table. I felt like all eyes were on us. I wished I could put up a wall that we could hide behind. But then I’d be alone with her and that wasn’t good either.
I couldn’t win.
We were crossing territory we’d already crossed, only this time we were older and a little bruised from the last encounter.
“I miss you. I miss you so much sometimes that it hurts,” she said quietly, staring at the plate of crumbs.
I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t. I had missed her. I thought about all the times that I had wanted to tell her something I knew would make her laugh, or something that only she would understand. I’d lost count of how many times it had happened. I’d tried to ignore it, but that wasn’t possible. I’d filed those moments away in the backroom of my brain and had covered them with the hurt from our breakup. But now . . .
Now that cover was slowly sliding off and I was remembering how good things had been.
We sat again in silence and I felt like I was being ripped apart at the seams. Something had to give. Something had to happen. We teetered on a precipice and something had to give.
“I miss you, too,” I said, and she reached out to clutch my hand.
“I know I fucked up, Cricket. I know I did. But I just want to know if maybe . . . if maybe you would consider being my friend again?”
“I’ll have to think about it, Ladybug,” I said and she stroked her fingers along mine. I had to close my eyes because I couldn’t look at her. She was just too beautiful. Too much. She consumed me.
“Okay,” she said, taking her hand back. I shivered at the loss of contact. “That’s okay. I don’t want to pressure you. It just feels like we were meant to run back into each other for a reason.” Of course she would say that.
“Unfinished business?” I said, trying to lighten things up.
“Like ghosts?”
I shrugged one shoulder.
“But we’re not ghosts,” she said.
“Not yet.”
She smacked my shoulder.
“Don’t be morbid.”
Phew. Things had gotten a little too serious there.