Year Four/Week Seven– Present
We ended up back at Plane.
It always amazed me looking around, seeing new faces everywhere I went. The campus was big, thousands of students bustling about with their own lives, own agendas and personal stories.
And yet here I was, back at a coffee shop when I hated coffee, trying to figure out Jace.
“You sure you don’t want anything?” he asked, pulling out his wallet.
“Positive.”
“You know one day –”
“Hi, I can help whoever is next!”
We made our way to the cash, stopping beside the pastry display. “Can I have a latte, please? For Jace.” Then his attention was back on me. “One day, I’m going to get you to like coffee.”
My eyes lingered on the snickerdoodle cookie. I ripped them away before Jace could see. “Hell might freeze over before then.”
He laughed, that signature laugh that sent butterflies to my stomach. His whole face lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Do you think you’re going to Hell?”
My eyes opened wide. “What?”
“Just an honest question,” he shrugged. “Do you?”
“I mean, uh,” I scratched my scalp, cracking up at the fact this was the conversation we were having. “Probably.”
“For what?”
“For what?” I repeated.
“Latte for Jace!” the barista called.
As we walked over to the sugar cart, Jace asked again, “Yeah, for what?”
He placed his drink down on the counter while I leaned against the table, watching his slender fingers remove the lid.
“I’m more curious about you,” I began, regaining my footing. “They say the quiet ones are the most surprising, have the most to hide. Will you surprise me, Jace?”
My confidence came in waves, you see. In a crowded environment like Plane, I could blend in with the atmosphere. No one could see through me when there was so much else to look at. Alone with Jace, that was a different story. No one but him could see me, and that was a terrifying thought.
His eyes never left mine as he stepped forward, placing a firm hand on the surface beside my hip and emptied a sugar packet into his cup.
My breath hitched as he leaned in closer, his words tickling the curve of my ear. “Something tells me I already have.”
And with the weighted presence of his body dangerously close to mine, he disposed of the packet and led me to a two-seater booth underneath floating shelves.
“So back to the Hell question,” he stated, settling into the ladderback chair.
“Are you religious?” I asked, half-laughing, half-flustered from just a few moments ago. My legs were pressed together underneath the table.
“Nope, just curious.” He took a sip from his cup. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll probably be in Hell with you.”
“What would drag you down there?”
“Envy, most likely. I’m a pretty jealous person. Want what I can’t have, have what I don’t want.”
I folded my arms across my chest, leaning back. “Everyone has a bed. You’re saying you don’t want a bed?”
He chuckled, his dimple poking through. “Not material things, darling. I’m talking about people.”
“What do you mean?”
He inched forward, wrapping his fingers around the width of his drink. “It’s never the people I want in my life that come around. I feel like I’m waiting for someone to understand me, and no one ever does.”
Before I could answer, react, fucking blink he tapped the table with his knuckles and said, “I’ve got to use the bathroom.”
And so I sat, staring at the empty seat across from me, watching strangers through a glass window drift like ghosts through campus.
That small piece of information that Jace let me in on, a shred of vulnerability he finally showed me felt like a landslide of progress. “I feel like I’m waiting for someone to understand me, and no one ever does.”
What made him say this? Made him open up? Was it the fact that I showed him a piece of myself? A piece that I never wanted anyone to see? Or did I even have to show him for him to know that I was struggling? What was left underneath Jace Boland that I could unlock?
As soon as he sat back down, I reached out and grabbed his hand. It was a forward gesture, a tactic I used many times before to make a man nervous. It never fazed me. But this, my touch featherlight over his, felt like the scariest thing in the world.
My index grazed over the ring on his pinky. “I understand you.”
His eyes were fixated on my hand, his fingers frozen. For a second, I thought he was going to yank it back and leave me embarrassed and shattered. But suddenly, he squeezed my hand gently, and removed a brown paper bag from his jacket pocket.
He slid it over to me, keeping his grasp interlocked with mine.
I unwrapped it, peeling off the white tissue until I saw the snickerdoodle cookie from the pastry display.
I thought… I thought he didn’t notice. I thought he didn’t see me looking. I’m the one who notices everything. I’m the one who pays attention.
No one had ever paid attention to me before. Not like this. Not ever.
“Jace –”
“I understand you,” he whispered. “I understand you.”
