Page 62 of A Taste of Vanilla

“Yeah.”

“Because you can flirt with me?”

Oliver whispers, “Please do not answer that.”

The man ignores him, and his eyes hold mine.

“If you want me to.”

It strikes me then that he does not flirt like other men. Because of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t pour charm over the conversation and hope it covers the parts he doesn’t want seen. He doesn’t crowd me, flatter me, tease me too loudly, or touch me before I can decide whether I want it.

He gives me the choice.

“I might.”

Oliver makes a pained sound.

“Might?” the man says, his voice low.

“I’m considering it.”

“I can wait.”

Oliver points his bar towel at me. “I don’t like this.”

I glance at him. “You don’t like most things.”

“I like the quiet, working appliances, and women not making life-altering decisions in my bar.”

“This is not life altering,” I say with an eye roll.

Oliver stares at me, but the man says nothing, which is very unhelpful.

I eat the mozzarella stick to avoid thinking about the fact that my entire body seems committed to betraying me.

For a few minutes, the conversation moves.

Not away from the tension, but around it.

Oliver serves the last customers as the woman at the end of the bar leaves without waving goodnight. The two men near the dartboard argue about eleven dollars with the seriousness of an international tribunal. Someone plays something low and moody from the jukebox because Oliver banned banjos after I complained about country music twice in one night.

He sits two stools away and drinks black coffee.

I steal glances.

He catches every single one. Not obnoxiously, not even with a smirk.

But every time I look, he’s already there or almost there. Something about being caught feels better than being unseen.

Grant stopped really seeing me long before he cheated. I know that now. Maybe he saw the bakery owner when she was useful. The fiancée when she looked good beside him. The sweet, creative woman when she made him seem interesting.

But he did not see all of me.

The too loud, too restless, too emotional, too ridiculous, too excited by fictional maps and weird lattes with sprinkles me.

He looks like he sees too much and is not particularly scared by it.

It may be a projection, but I choose not to care.