Page 36 of Never Alone
"Sorry?"
"If you're wearing contacts, why the glasses?"
"Oh. These aren't real. They're just glass. I wear them so flour doesn't get in my eyes when I'm working. See?—"
She lifted them off her face and held them out toward me, tilting them so I'd see that the lenses were plain.
But I wasn't looking at the glasses.
I was looking at her eyes.
They were green. Not a soft green. The clear, specific kind, the kind that didn't blur into anything else.
"I don't see why you don't love them."
The words were out before I'd registered I was going to say them. I heard them land in the warm air of the bakery, in my voice but lower than I'd meant.
Her cheeks went pink.
"Thank you."
For a long moment, I just looked at her. I couldn't have said anything if I'd tried.
The bell went. Someone walked in. I heard the door, but didn't turn for it.
"Happy Thanksgiving," was all I could get myself to say.
"You, too."
I picked up the bag. Turned around. Walked out the door.
The cold hit me when I came out. The bag was warm in my hand.
I walked to the truck.
I didn't know what had just happened to me.
I knew what had happened, technically. I'd walked into a bakery to buy a loaf of bread I didn't need. I'd looked at a woman across a counter. I'd said something I hadn't given myself permission to say. She'd thanked me for it.
That was the technical version.
The other version was that something in me had moved without asking.
I got to the truck. Got in. Set the bag on the passenger seat. Shut the door.
I didn't start the engine.
I sat there with my hands on the wheel.
The smile was still in my head. The green eyes were still in my head. I was trying to hold both, and trying to figure out what to do with what they were doing to me, and I couldn't do either.
Underneath it was something else. A pull I couldn't name. The green hadn't just been green. The green had been familiar.
I'd seen those eyes before. On someone.
Who asked you? Who gave you the right?
I heard her voice before I remembered her name.
