Page 3 of Soft Flannel Hank

“I know. Do you want to sit for twenty minutes?”

Esther watched his face as he stared at the empty bench across the booth from her, chewing on the inside of his cheek. But then he was sliding into the booth, directly across from her. He rested his elbows on the table, one hand ina fist, the other wrapped protectively around it. He gazed at his hands as he rubbed the pad of one thumb along the length of the other.

“I’m Esther,” she said, extending her hand across the Formica tabletop.

He stared at her hand for a minute before his massive hand engulfed her own, his calluses rough against her palm. Upon contact, a jolt of electricity travelled up her arm, judging by the way he jerked his hand back, he had felt it, too.

“That,” he said. “That. When you looked at me earlier, I felt it. What—”

“It’s just static,” she said in that same light tone that she used anytime someone commented on her magic. “Happens to me whenever it starts to get cold.”

He looked unconvinced but didn’t press it.

“I’m Hank. Hank Dove.”

She bit her bottom lip and smiled. “Hank Dove. I bet you got all kinds of teasing about that in school.”

He snorted. “You could say that. Don’t bother asking me to coo. I’ve heard it a million times before.” His voice was soft and deep, but had a gravelly edge that gave Esther the impression that he hadn’t used it very much lately.

“I bet I could make you coo,” she said before she even registered the words coming out of her mouth.What the hell, Esther?

His eyebrows shot up, the eyes beneath them wide with surprise.

She could feel more words tumbling out of her mouth before she even formulated them in her head. “I’m so sorry, Hank. I do this thing where when I meet new people sometimes the part of my brain that’s justAnchormanquotes and dirty jokes gets in the driver’s seat and I just can’t seem to help myself.”

Drowning in embarrassment, her cheeks burning, Esther clumsily dug around in her bag for the scrunchie. Not for the first time, Esther wished she had telekinetic powers like some of her colleagues. She was a millisecond away from just tossing the loose deck into her bag and running out of the diner and back to her motel room when Hank reached towards her but stopped, his huge hand hovering just inches above her own. “Stay,” he said quietly before clenching his hand in a fist again and withdrawing it. “I mean, please stay.”

He cleared his throat, and they were silent for a few moments. His shoulders were still hunched up by his ears, but his face had softened. Esther couldn’t look him in the eye, focusing instead on the way one of the buttons of his waffle-knit Henley was loose, dangling slightly on a light gray thread. And behind it, the dark hair of his chest, thick and dense.

“So, uh, you some kind of card shark?”Hank asked.

Esther felt her laugh burst forth, loud and bright, a sound unfamiliar to her of late.

“Hardly,” she replied. “I’ve never once beat my cousins at either blackjack or poker without help. And by help, I mean cheating. These are just tarot cards.”

“Tarot cards?” he asked, his dark eyebrows knitting together.

She smiled, but the cards in her hands felt hot. Her whole body felt hot, in fact. In all her life, Esther had never wanted to draw for anyone as much as she wanted to draw for this man right now.

“Can I do a reading for you, Hank Dove?” she asked, her fingertips tingling. They’d never stopped.

He stared at her for a long moment, breathing deeply, before he nodded. She smiled, feeling the skin around her eyes crinkle.

“Do you want to pick your cards, or do you want me to pick them for you?”

“Does it matter?” His brows knit closer together with the question.

“Not to me.”

“Then maybe you should do it. I don’t want to screw it up.”

She cocked her head to the side and looked at him. “There is no such thing as screwing this up, Hank.”

He nodded tightly again.

“How about this?” she said. “I’ll draw the first two, and you draw the last one?”

“Okay.”