Page 9 of The Last Kiss

The man mountain in navy doesn’t look at me. His attention on the broadsheet he has spread along the bar. Jeez, he’ll have to move before the evening rush. He’ll be like Moses parting the sea. I don’t think he’s going to move though, and I feel sorry for anyone who tries to make him. You’d put your back out.

I sit on my stool, twisting slightly from side to side until I happen to glance forward to follow the barman turning mysterious bottles. A dark gaze is watching me in the back mirror behind the bar, one dark and expressive eyebrow curved.

I am not disappointed. No.

Disappointment, what’s that?

Midnight eyes; full lips petulant below angled cheekbones. He’s a shopping list of perfection.

Michelangelo could be crying in heaven because he failed to sculpt a masterpiece like this.

Face an elegant symmetry, there’s a dark soulfulness in the shadows of his face, the hollow curve under cheekbones, the shine of midnight, the plump fullness of lips. I wonder what they’d feel like to kiss?

I’ve been caught staring. He stares back. It’s okay though. I’m going to die anyway. This can’t get uncomfortable and cause me to squirm forever because there isn’t a forever to squirm through.

The barman comes back and slides me a short glass. “This is what you need, apparently.” He shrugs while his face says: please don’t be ill all over the floor after drinking it.

“Is that so?” I peer into the glass at the purple-hued liquid. “What is it?”

The man mountain shifts, spinning long legs around on his stool to face me. “It’s best to just drink.” His voice is heavily accented. All: It’sa besst tooa shust drink.”

Is that French? Shoot me now for not paying attention in French GSCE. I’d go to night school just to learn how to wrap myself around those vowels with him.

Oh wait. I’m dying. French will serve me no purpose on the other side unless there’s an Artisan bread stall I need to concern myself with. “Petit pain, Monsieur.”

Focus, Julia.

I lift the glass, sniffing gently, scrunching my nose as my nostrils tickle, watching those full lips curve at the edges. I tilt the glass at him, feeling very Film Noir sat at the bar talking to a tall, dark, and bangingly handsome stranger. “Merci.”

He nods and then turns back to his newspaper. Okay, so maybe not that Film Noir.

The first sip is sweet, so I take another, gasping as my insides set alight, pure rocket fuel slipping down my oesophagus. It might be melting.

MY OESOPHAGUS IS MELTING, PEOPLE.

I glance up and find midnight eyes staring back at me in the mirror. It looks like he’s chewing the inside of his cheek, but it’s hard to focus due to the all-out body burn I’ve got going on.

Well, if you’ve got to go, I’d take staring into those eyes any time.

3

A Shrug in French Means Anything

What the shit was in that drink? My face is on fire. I can’t look in the mirror above the bar in case he catches me checking out the heat damage.

I can’t stop looking at him either. My eyes are involved in some major eye-fuckery as I throw him some side eye. Thighs stretching navy. The white cotton is taut around some pretty hefty muscles… those ones in your arms. What the fuck are they called?

That drink has melted my brain.

“Biceps.”

“Pardon?” he asks, but it’s all pardonne?

“Oh. Sorry.” My face is nuclear.

I could be used as a clean energy power source.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” I give one of those British smiles—tight-lipped, containing lots of unspoken words—and then zip my lips shut in case I blurt out any other body parts. Attempting to act unaffected, I stare down at the blurred menu I have positioned on the bar. I say blurred, because what I’m sure was English during my last visit is now in… well, actually, I don’t know. I zoom it closer to my face and then back out again. I should put my glasses on.