Meet Cute (Page 13)
“Oh, really? Is there lots of cool stuff?”
Daxton’s face is an interesting shade of red. “It’s just memorabilia and crap.”
“But some of it might be worth money, so I’m going to see what I can get for it.”
What I wouldn’t give to help clean out that room. I find myself a little giddy over the thought. I’m a TV memorabilia junkie. I may have boycotted watching the show after law school, and boxed up all my old things, but they’re still in my bedroom closet.
A few minutes later Emme slumps back in her seat, rubbing her tummy. “You all right, kiddo?” Daxton eyes her plate. She’s barely touched her burger or fries, and only managed to drink about half of her shake.
“Just not really hungry anymore.” She fiddles with her napkin and peeks up at him. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a waste.”
“You want it packed up?”
She shrugs. “Can I go next door to the bookstore and look around while you guys eat and talk about stuff that you don’t want to say in front of me?”
Daxton gives her a look. “Em.”
“What? I’m not dumb and I’m not trying to be rude and, like, I’m kind of done hearing about Aunt Linda, so can I go?” She gives him sad puppy dog eyes, which I’m sure are at least 50 percent authentic.
“Fine.”
Emme slides out of the booth, grinning.
“Hold on.” Daxton pulls his wallet from his back pocket, flips it open, and retrieves a twenty.
“What’s this for?”
“You’re going to a bookstore. This is so you can buy a book.”
“Oh.” She smiles and pockets the money. “Okay, thanks.”
“And you only go to the bookstore. Nowhere else, okay?”
“Okay, Dax.”
“And no crossing the street.”
She makes a face. “What?”
“Stay on this side of the street.”
“I’m not a baby. I don’t need someone to hold my hand all the time. I know what the walking guy and the flashing red hand mean.” And there’s the teen snark I’ve been waiting for. I fight my own smile because I don’t want to encourage the sass, but I’m curious as to how Daxton handles it.
He glares at her until her eyes roll. “If I’m just going to the bookstore, I have no reason to cross the street anyway. Any other rules?”
“I think you’re good. You have your phone?”
She pulls it out of her pocket. “Satisfied?”
“Can the attitude.”
“If you stopped treating me like a baby, I wouldn’t need to pull out the attitude.”
Dax raises a brow. “I can take the twenty back.”
That changes her tune. “Sorry. Okay. No more attitude. I know you’re just trying to, like, show me you care, or whatever. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Go look at books and don’t cause a riot, or stage a political protest or anything that’s going to piss me off.”
“Oh my God. You’re the worst.” She rolls her eyes again, waves at me, does a little bouncy spin, and heads for the door.
Daxton watches her leave. “I’m pretty sure one of these days her eyes are going to roll up into her head and stay there.” He glances at her plate, frown still in place. “She hardly ate a thing.”
“She giving you a hard time?” I bite the end of a fry. The portions here are huge. I still have half a sandwich and half my fries, but Emme’s plate looks like she mostly pushed the food around.
“Not really. I mean, the spontaneous tears are to be expected. It’s just . . . she’s a teenager. She’s growing. When I was her age, I ate everything in sight.”
“Her appetite is off, then?”
He runs his hand through his hair. It falls right back into place, which I find annoying for some reason. “Half the time I just offer her junk food to get some calories in her body. She picks at almost everything.”
“Is that abnormal for her?”
He fiddles with his napkin. “I don’t really know. I mean, I used to have lunch with Emme and my parents every Sunday, but I never focused on her eating habits. It’s just not something I thought about. She’s already small, smaller than the other kids her age. She can’t afford to lose weight. I don’t want to stuff her full of sugar and chocolate because that’s not any better.” He blows out a breath. “Sorry. I’m unloading on you and that’s not what you’re here for.”
I give him a sympathetic smile. “You’re taking on a lot and going through a heavy personal loss. People grieve differently. When my mom passed I didn’t have much of an appetite for a while, but it came back eventually.”
His eyes soften and his hand slides across the table a few inches in my direction. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It was during my undergrad, so it was a long time ago.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
I swirl a french fry in my ketchup. Maybe Beverly has a valid point, maybe Daxton does feel comfortable with me for some reason—because of our law school connection, probably. It’s possible he doesn’t remember it the same way I do.
Regardless, right now it’s not about what happened five years ago, it’s about finding points of connection and this loss is something we share. It’s a way for him to relate and for me to gain his trust. “It was difficult, particularly for my dad. I think that was the hardest part, seeing him suffer without her. Kind of like you have to watch Emme go through this while you do, as well. It makes you feel helpless.” It’s taken me a long time to get over that, and in some ways it’s made relationships challenging. I’ve already suffered hard losses, and I know that pain. I’m not sure my heart is meant for much more breaking.
His eyes are on me, soft, maybe a little relieved, and full of painful sympathy. “That’s it exactly. I feel helpless and so . . . out of my depth. Is your dad okay now?”
I focus on the napkin in my lap. “In a way, yes. He’s with her now, if you believe in that kind of thing. So I’d like to think he’s happy and at peace. That they both are.”
This time when Daxton reaches across the table, his fingers slide over mine, eyes full of commiserating despair. “They’re gone? You lost them both, too?”
My first instinct is to retract my hand and hide it under the table, away from the man who seems to cause no end of conflict every time he drops into my life.
“Not at the same time, and not in such a . . .” Violent, horrific, haunting. “Difficult way.”
“But you’re alone. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
His hand is still covering mine. The contact is unnerving because his warmth seems to seep under my skin and into my veins, radiating through my entire body, inciting a very different set of emotions, ones I haven’t felt in a very long time. Ones at war with the sadness of my own loss, of his. Ones that definitely don’t fit these circumstances. I shake those off. It’s just because we share a similar level of trauma, because his loss makes me remember my own. And he’s attractive, which is impossible not to notice when I’m sitting across from him like this, and he’s touching me.
I withdraw my hand, severing the contact. “No, I don’t have any siblings. I have a very close friend who’s pretty much like a sister, though, so it’s almost the same thing. I imagine this is hard in a different way for you because you have someone, but she’s in your care and needs your guidance.”
He stretches his leg out and his foot knocks against mine under the table, but he doesn’t seem to notice, or move it away. Maybe he thinks my leg is part of the table. “Does the empty feeling ever go away?”
I think about holidays, my parents’ birthdays, my own, and what it’s like to be without them when I reach milestones. “I think you learn how to live with holes in your heart. You can’t patch them up, or plug them with other people, but you find ways to make it bearable, if that makes sense.”
The flicker of hope in his eyes dims.
“It gets easier, Daxton. Not right away, and probably not for a long while, but it will get easier. You adjust.” You simply get used to having those empty spaces in your heart. But I leave that part out. His wounds are too fresh to poke at, and this discussion makes mine feel the same.
“You’re different than I remember,” he says.
His words feel like an electric charge. I give him a questioning smile. “I’m sorry?”
“I wish I would’ve . . . I wanted to . . .” He stumbles over his words. It’s strange to see him so uncomposed. “I know you’re here for Emme’s well-being, but I—”
“Daxton?” A shrill female voice makes us both jolt.
Standing at the end of the table is a tall, very leggy, very stereotypical California female. Her blond hair is almost white—artificially so—and her boobs are fake and there’s enough collagen injected into her lips to make her look like she’s just finished giving head to an entire football team.
His eyes close for the briefest moment and his fingers tense against the edge of the table. When they open again, he gives me an apologetic look, and then his expression and his body language transform as he directs a warm, welcoming smile at the quasi-human Barbie doll.