“You know why I can’t go after her. It’s one thing to have urges and another to act on them, knowing that it could never work out,” I said, staring into my brother’s eyes, which were identical to my own.

Caleb’s tone softened. “You know I have never looked at what happened in Chicago exactly the way you do. We’ve gone through this before. You’re being too hard on yourself. What you need to do is go down to this diner again, grow a nut sack and ask her out, plain and simple for the sheer fact that you are not going to be able to function until you get this out of your system. Find out if she’s even available, for Christ’s sake! Then, you need to really get to know her and if you continue to feel this way and things develop, you need to tell her the goddamn truth. Let her decide what she wants instead of assuming you know how she is going to react. If she sees the guy that I see, knows the guy I know…she’d be nuts to leave.”

Leave it to Caleb to turn crazy into something that kind of made sense.

I took a deep breath and nodded trying to ingrain my brother’s comforting expression into my memory. I would need it tomorrow.

Denise came down the stairs and interrupted our conversation to let us know dinner was ready.

We moved upstairs into the kitchen and enjoyed the feast that my sister-in-law had spread out for us, sitting casually on stools that surrounded a granite island. I watched the way Caleb caressed Denise’s back and stared at her throughout dinner, like she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

For the first time in my life, I think I am starting to want what they have.

I want to share my life with someone.

After dinner, I hugged my brother and sister-in-law goodbye, leaving the warm candle lit house for the cold November air and drove back to Boston feeling more confident about tomorrow.

***

When I walked into the diner, I saw her immediately.

She didn’t notice me right away. I stood at the door and my heart nearly skipped a beat because I had forgotten how pretty she is.

Allison was sitting in the corner with a freakishly tall older man, laughing at his jokes. She seemed to be on her break.

I stayed by the door until she looked in my direction and waved over at her with a half smile when she noticed me.

Upon seeing me, the happy look on her face abruptly turned surprised and then serious…almost pained.

Fuck. That wasn’t what I was hoping for.

“Allison,” I said, walking slowly walked over to the table from which she was just getting up.

“Cedric…what a surprise.”

Allison looked nervous, not at all the comforting presence I remembered from our car ride.

“I wanted to stop in and say hello…it’s been a while…find out how the Bright Horizons thing went?” I asked.

She still looked serious, nothing like the sweet, happy, Allison I left in the car that night.

“Oh, it’s going great. They paired me with a twenty-year-old in Cambridge. He’s a good kid. Thanks again for helping me with that.”

Allison stood awkwardly, leaning her arm on the counter, almost as if it were helping her balance, then she looked up at the ceiling, then down at her nails…anywhere but at me. I thought I noticed her hand tremble.

What happened to her?

“Great to hear it,” I said.

I stood frozen, perplexed at the standoffish vibe I was getting. For the first time, I realized that maybe my advances were unwelcome. Maybe I had misread her all along.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked as if I were just any other customer.

The fact that she looked more beautiful than ever was like a dagger in my heart right now. Her long dark hair was half up, half down and there was a tiny white flower in the corner of her ear. She smelled like green apples again and I wished I could taste her and see if she also tasted like green apples.

Get a grip.

“Yes. I would love a piece of that coconut cream pie,” I said, wondering how I was going to stomach the pie feeling like I was about to throw up.

“Sure. I’ll be right back. Sit wherever you like.”

Allison suddenly went into the kitchen and came out with a piece of pie, placing it on the table of the booth that I sat myself in. The goddamn pie didn’t even have whipped cream or a cherry on top. I took this as a cryptic ‘fuck off.’

“Thanks, Allison,” I said as I desperately searched her eyes for any sign of hope or recognition of our past connection. Instead, they looked pained but distant and I realized there was so much I didn’t know about her. So much I still wanted to know even in this troubling state.

“You’re welcome, Cedric.” It blew me away that she said nothing else, turned around and walked into the kitchen.

We’ve Only Just Begun by the Carpenters was playing over the speaker and depressing the crap out of me, making an already shitty situation so much worse.

I took a couple of bites of pie and stared at the kitchen door. Fifteen minutes passed before Allison came back out, proceeding to clean off tables at the other end of the diner.

I was shattered. Speechless. She was either ignoring me intentionally or genuinely had no interest at all. Feeling like a complete asshole, I took a ten-dollar-bill out of my wallet and placed it on the table.

I walked over to where she was standing. She was calculating something on a pad of paper.

I swallowed my pride and offered one last attempt to talk to her. “Allison, I better get going. Thanks for the pie. I left money on the table. I hope things continue to go well with the new job. I’d still like to hear more about it sometime?”

And then it came…

“Bye, Cedric.” She might as well have taken her pen out her pocket and stabbed me in the f**king heart.

CHAPTER 11

ALLISON

Ouch, Gemini, this is not one of your better days. It's best to steer clear of negative energy. The Moon is not happy with Mercury, your ruler. So, just for today, avoid confrontation.

When I heard the chimes sound, signaling his exit, I turned around to look at the door that had slammed behind Cedric. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it for about five minutes.

The pounding of my heart and the swaying of the room finally seemed to slow down with each passing minute.

When I knew he was gone, I let the tear being held captive in my left eye fall freely and finally walked over to the table where his piece of pie still sat in the dish, only one bite taken out of it. I realized I was so flustered, I forgot to add the whipped cream and cherry before serving it. The pie looked as pathetic as I felt and I picked it up along with the ten-dollar bill.

As I put the money in the register, I felt another teardrop stream down my cheek. Get it together, Allison.

I didn’t expect seeing him to be so hard. If this had been a week ago, his coming to the diner would have been the highlight of my life. He had clearly come in to see me today. The fact that he barely touched the pie proved that…but why? Why did he come here? Does he feel sorry for me?

After I found out that all of my romantic delusions about him were false, I had to conclude that he must just see me as a charity case. Didn’t the tip the first time around confirm that? Even though I had resigned myself to this fact, it still hurt more than I thought it would to see him again, knowing that I can’t have him.

If it was possible, he looked better than ever. His hair looked a bit longer on the sides, curling around his ears and it was parted slightly differently framing his beautiful face.

And I had never seen him dressed down before. He wore dark blue jeans and a hooded maroon sweatshirt that hugged his muscular frame. He looked younger and so goddamn sexy when he stood before me with his hands in his pockets, seeming almost… nervous.

But why?

When he first came in and started to approach me, I froze, feeling faint and had to hold on to the side of the counter just to grab my bearings. I could barely get the words out when he asked me a question, staring into me again with those penetrating crystal blue eyes. The heat of him standing so close to me, that damn intoxicating scent of his again and knowing now that he was off limits, was too painful to take.

And to think if I hadn’t opened the paper that day, I would still be wasting my time thinking that he could want someone like me.

***

It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. My friend Danny and I planned to meet at Starbucks in Copley Square for coffee after my diner shift, since I didn’t work with Lucas on that day. It was so nice to catch up with Danny who wanted to fill me in on his new boyfriend Paolo.

“Danny!” I shouted and I saw him waiting in line, rushing to join him amongst the crowd of people waiting for their drinks to be called out.

He knew me so well. “I already ordered you your caramel macchiato,” he shouted through the sounds of foaming milk as he stood in the barista receiving area.

We took our drinks over to the velvet purple couch in the corner. We were lucky to get that coveted seat. Everyone knows the Starbucks couch is always inevitably taken by one person unnecessarily taking up all of the space with multiple newspapers, when two people are forced to take the small table with the hard uncomfortable seats.

“So, tell me about Paolo!” I crossed my legs and took a sip of the foamy drink as I anticipated his story. It tasted so good.

“He is awesome. Did I tell you he is a performer?” Danny was beaming.

“No…what kind of performer?” I laughed and slapped Danny playfully on the shoulder.

Danny gave me an impish grin. “Well, let’s just say, by day he goes by Paolo…by night he is Paula.”

“He is a cross-dresser?”

“No, no, no…a drag queen. Big difference. He chooses to dress as a man in real-life, but performs as a woman…for other men. Believe me, he is all man,” Danny said winking.

I laughed. “Oh boy, I bet. That is too cool, though. Can we go see him…um…her on stage?

“Sure. We can take your billionaire blue-eyed boyfriend. You can finally test his sexuality once and for all,” he said jokingly.

“Very funny.” I pushed Danny’s shoulder in jest again.

I had filled him in on my Cedric crush last week over the phone, getting his thoughts on whether I should send Cedric another email under the vise of updating him on the new job.

After fifteen minutes of gushing on the couch about our respective men, Danny had to run to get back his hairdressing job.

I decided to go back to the counter for one of those gigantic rice krispy treats.

When I turned around, of course, someone had taken the couch, so I made myself comfortable on one of the hard seats by the door. At least someone left me a free newspaper here.

I immediately admired a striking cover photo of a turkey taken by my friend Angela, who was a photographer for the paper. The story was about a family that purchased a live Thanksgiving turkey originally intending to kill it and cook it on Thursday. Instead, their five-year-old daughter convinced her parents to save its life and keep it as a pet. The photo shows the turkey sitting at the dinner table with the family as the father stands under the table sticking his head through a hole, creating the illusion that his head is on a plate. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the caption: ‘Eat Me.’

As I munched on my rice krispy treat, I immediately skipped to my favorite section of the paper, which was the local celebrity gossip column. Well…it was my favorite section. Not anymore. I wasn’t prepared for the shock of my life that I would encounter on its pages that day.

My heart pounded faster than I had ever experienced as I saw Cedric’s electric eyes staring back at me from the page.

A piece of my rice krispy treat fell out of my mouth and onto his face and I wiped it away.

He was dressed in a tux. On his arm, was an exquisite blonde with an up do, who seemed to be smirking. Cedric’s smile of course was beautiful and genuine. He looked happy. I immediately started to regurgitate the rice krispies I had eaten. And I am embarrassed to say…I peed a little…just a drop. I lost control down there.

The caption under the picture read:

‘Boston television reporter Karyn Keller attended the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s ALS Fundraiser at the Boston Omni Parker Hotel Monday night on the arm of her long-time boyfriend and former most-eligible Boston bachelor candidate, hot shot J.D. Westock agent, Cedric Callahan.’

I must have read that caption fifty times in the hopes that maybe I read it wrong.

Long-time boyfriend

Boston bachelor

Karyn Keller

Karyn Keller

Karyn Keller

I HATED Karyn Keller. I hated Karyn Keller so much right now. But not more than I hated Cedric. I hated him for making me feel that he wanted me, with just the stare of his eyes that night in the car. All along, he had a girlfriend…a gorgeous, famous one, at that. How could I have been so stupid to think that someone like him would want to date…me…a lowly waitress charity case?

I stayed frozen in my seat. I took the paper, folded it and placed it in my tote. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

The door at Starbucks continued to open and close before me as I sat in a haze for an undetermined amount of time. I felt the cold wind blow in every thirty seconds and wished that I were any one of the people walking in. I wanted to be anyone but myself right now.

I felt so much heartache for a man who never once considered me romantically. Even if he had, for even a moment, the reality was that he was in a serious and public relationship. No wonder he never actually asked me out that day in the car.

Stupid Allison…don’t you think he would have asked you out then and there if he were really interested?

It all made sense now. The email…that’s all it was…a damn message with a job lead. I had blown everything out of proportion. Cedric as I knew him was all in my head. The real Cedric Callahan wouldn’t give me the time of day. He took me for a ride all right. Fuck my life.