Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle (ebook offline reader .TXT) 📕

It is true that I crave that validation. It is also true that praise makes me squirm. “The floor is all shiny aqua tiles that go halfway up the walls. The rest of the walls are pale, pale purple and decorated with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. Succulents in hanging baskets. Travel posters of fictional lands. There are tons of big, leafy green plants everywhere. I kill every plant I touch in real life, but here I have a green thumb.” I open one eye, chancing a peek up at Wesley. He’s writing on the paper, a small smile creeping over his face. One corner of his mouth hooks back slightly, unconsciously. I talk faster.

“There are red vinyl booths and a black countertop with bar stools. An old-fashioned cash register. A jukebox. Fairy lights. A display case full of donuts.”

“What kind?” he interrupts.

I’m a pastry junkie; I could write sonnets about what kind. “Cinnamon sugar, chocolate strawberry mousse, caramel and peanut long johns. Fudge brownie with powdered sugar.”

“Nice.”

“Cinnamon rolls,” I go on. As I talk, the talking becomes easier, and why should this embarrass me, anyway? My café is spectacular. “Bear claws. Beignets. Pumpkin and cream cheese. Butterscotch pralines. Mexican hot chocolate. Donuts with every filling imaginable: raspberry, apple, lemon curd, blueberry.” I’m making myself hungry. “There’s an old rotary phone on the counter that flashes red when it’s time to go back to the real world. Beside it sits a frosted cake stand especially for Lamington donuts. Half are covered in traditional coconut, the other half chopped hazelnuts.” I realize I’m gesturing, as if he can see what I’m pointing at, and that Wesley’s smile has gotten bigger.

My thoughts run into each other, a thirty-car pileup, totally arrested by that smile.

I have seen Wesley mildly amused, but I have never seen him enjoying. I react with a powerful expanding of pressure in my chest: my body is double-gravity heavy, immobile, never to move again. But my heart is a balloon.

“So?” I wheedle. “What do you think?”

“I think,” he replies softly, “I would like to walk into that alternate universe and buy a cinnamon roll from you.”

“Anytime,” I manage to reply, swallowing. “We’re open twenty-four hours.”

“Busy, busy.” His demeanor turns pensive. “Do you make coffee cake?”

I flourish a hand. “Look at that, it just appeared on the menu.”

“Sweet tea?”

“Sir, this is a coffee shop. Not that I ever concentrate too much on the coffee aspect of it; I guess I get preoccupied with the donut part. We offer coffee, water, chai, and hot chocolate.” I tick the options off on my fingers. Whenever I daydream, the drinks materialize out of thin air in chunky earthenware mugs. I don’t travel lovingly through the entire process like I do with baked goods. A girl’s got to have priorities.

“Look at that.” He flourishes his hand, too. “Sweet tea just appeared on the menu.”

Wesley is playing with me?

My grin widens. “It did not.”

“Right above the macchiatos. Don’t you see it?” He is watching me with a very serious expression. Neon pink from that revolving sign in a faraway land casts out its light all the way to here, glowing upon his cheeks. I’ve seen this expression on him before, but I didn’t know the difference between his nice serious and his intimidating serious. “The customer’s always right.”

“So they are. Go ahead and have your sweet tea.” I hear a clink as the mug is put down on the counter. The jukebox comes alive, unspooling nature sounds: whistling birds, a babbling creek.

“Thank you. Oh, wait. Ohh.”

I look at Wesley. He’s on the opposite side of the counter in my dreamland, seated atop a stool. He’s high in a tree, smiling down at me. Either scenario is equally confounding, and both are true. “What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t put enough sugar in this. Someone should really teach you how to make sweet tea.”

Wesley is playing with me.

I take the mug back, peering inside. “Looks okay.”

“Why do you even have it on your menu if it’s going to taste like this? Honestly.”

“Ah, I see what’s happened. I mixed up the tea with that big jug in the back with the skull and crossbones on it. Three big X’s.” I make slashes in midair. “Whoops.”

“I’ll leave you a positive review with my dying breath. For capitalism.”

“See, that’s really me, though. Whenever I eat out at restaurants, they could serve me a bowl of rocks and I’d say, ‘Thank you so much!’ People in the food industry don’t get paid enough for all they put up with. I’m not about to make their job worse. Give me rocks, I’ll tip twenty percent.”

He shudders. “Restaurants.”

“You’ve mentioned that before. You don’t like them.” I study his face, his gaze locked on mine with the faintest trace of trepidation. “Any reason why?”

“I like the part about eating food I didn’t have to cook,” he replies. “Not having to wash any dishes? Great. But then they destroyed the idea by letting people in.”

Something about the quick cadence of his words, how easily they roll off his tongue, tells me he’s leaned on them at least once before. A rehearsed justification. But I’m delighted, anyway, laughing, and it shakes the leaves. We both tip our heads back. It’s raining again, fat drops jumping across the canopy far above in a frenzy. Wesley meets my eyes, his smile still warm. The aroma of cinnamon and cocoa powder drifts on beyond reach, pink neon chinks of light magicking back into sunbeams of an eerie golden green. The color of the sky before a storm.

“Time to head back, looks like,” I say reluctantly. I should try to dampen how disappointed I sound, but I don’t have the heart to.

“Watch out,” he replies. My limbs are rusty, the bottom of my jeans cold from sitting on the ground. I scramble away right in time for him to jump out of the tree and land with a hard thud beside me.

We race across the stone bridge, rain pelting