Chasing Wishes (25 page)

The man looks down at his shoes and mutters something under his breath as the people in line around him start snickering, and we follow Dahlia into the restaurant.

Dahlia wasn’t kidding when she named her restaurant ‘Kitchen Little.’ The room can only hold six tables, all of which are packed, and the restaurant’s elderly owner instead seats us on two stools at a small diner counter. The counter might as well be part of the kitchen, really—it’s not like we can’t see all the chaos from here. The two waitresses rush in and out delivering orders and taking steaming hot plates of potatoes and eggs as the cooks hurriedly flip omelets and stack pancakes.

Despite the borderline claustrophobic interior and hectic kitchen, I like it here already. It’s an intimate, unassuming restaurant, like a tinier version of the diner I worked at in high school. The wait-staff may be rushing around like lunatics, but the customers are relaxed and enjoying their breakfasts. A few are even reading the morning papers with their coffee, something unheard of at my diner in New Haven. If you hogged a table like that at my old diner, you’d have been thrown out in a heartbeat.

Dahlia brings us today’s menu and my mouth instantly starts watering. Between the sweet aroma of maple syrup and the plates of fluffy pancakes zipping past us on the way to their tables, it feels like a delightful kind of torture.

All it takes at one glance at the menu and I already know what I’m getting.

"Gingerbread pancakes with sweet lemon sauce," I whisper in awe. "Holy shit."

Terrence laughs and closes his menu with a smile.

"So what are you getting?" I ask, immediately regretting opening my mouth as I remember he can’t read the menu. A wave of heat rushes to my face and I turn red in embarrassment.

"I’m a creature of habit," he answers serenely. "One Portuguese omelet stuffed with lump crab, spinach and fresh cream, plus a double side of sausages."

"Want me to read it to you?" I ask, picking up the menu again. "If you want to try something new, I can—"

"That won’t be necessary, Irene," he responds tersely, and then after a moment adds, "but thank you all the same."

I stare at him for a long time before finally speaking up again.

"So, I need you to be open with me here," I quietly tell him. "Do you want my help or not?"

"I’m sorry?" he asks, seeming confused.

"I’m supposed to be your assistant, but if you snap at me whenever I try to help you, this isn’t going to work. If you don’t want me to be proactive offering help, then I won’t. You still have to tell me thato whenevert, though."

He tries to interject but I talk right over him.

"I can’t read your mind. I don’t know what you need all the time," I continue. "Hell, I don’t even know what we are right now. Am I your girlfriend or your employee? I already told you that I can’t be both."

I go silent and wait for Terrence to say something. Just as he opens his mouth, our waitress arrives and ruins everything. I never thought punctual service would be so unwelcome, but there’s a first time for everything.

We give our orders to the cheerful but clearly exhausted waitress and then sit in silence for what feels like mere seconds before our food arrives. The crab in Terrence’s omelet is still sizzling and my pancakes are so fresh off the griddle that they’re still steaming. It just figures that I’d get world-record service at the one time I want a chance to talk.

"We’ll talk later," says Terrence as I surreptitiously nudge his napkin-rolled silverware toward his searching fingers. "I promise."

I want to tell him that he won’t
have
a later if he doesn’t make up his mind, but the words fall away and my frustration crumbles as he smiles at me. Who am I kidding? All he has to do is look at me with those stunning green eyes and I’m all his.

Terrence closes his eyes, leans in close to his omelet, and inhales deeply.

"It smells so good," he whispers. "What does it look like, Irene?"

"I... um... lumpy and yellow. I mean, it’s an omelet.," I stammer. "Omelets are really hard to describe."

He chuckles and then smiles from ear to ear as he takes his first bite. Without another word, he dives into his omelet as if it’s the most important thing in the world. I take one bite of my delicious looking stack of gingerbread pancakes and my eyes widen at the incredible taste.

"This is... holy
shit
this is amazing," I moan through a mouthful of pancake, quickly going back for more. It’s like a forkful of Christmas.

"Told you that you were missing out," says Terrence, matching my impropriety with a mouthful of eggs. Now that he’s cut into his omelet, the fresh cream and melted cheese oozes out onto the plate and looks so incomprehensibly delicious that it’s almost seductive. Food shouldn't be turning me on like this.

Dahlia leads another couple to the counter and I scoot my stool closer to Terrence to make room for them to sit. Terrence pulls away from me as our shoulders touch, but then relaxes and leans in close to me again. His touch is warm and soft, and my pulse quickens even though we’re just eating breakfast together.

"Marcus took me here when I first relocated the company from Boston," he says. "Dahlia hooked me in an instant and I’ve been coming here ever since. She makes the best breakfast in town."

"No kidding. I wish you could’ve seen the line outside. She must be set for life on this place."

"If the line’s as long as I’m imagining, she probably ought to expand. She can certainly afford it," he comments, and I shake my head.

"Probably wouldn’t fit the theme," I say, and Terrence raises an eyebrow at me.

"This entire restaurant is smaller than my old apartment, Terrence," I tell him. "She didn’t name it ‘Kitcheniv heigh Little’ for nothing."

"Seriously? It’s that small?"

"There are six tables in here, and that’s literally all it can fit. Those poor waitresses can barely squeeze between the chairs."

Terrence laughs and takes a few more bites of his omelet as the conversation stalls again.

"So, what’s going on in the lab tomorrow?" I ask.

"Marcus and I are working with the lab staff to finalize details on a prototype we’ve been working on," he answers, cutting into his sausages.

"Which one is this? That mechanical arm you made for Verta?"

He shakes his head.

"No, it's just something... well, something I’ve been working on with Marcus for a few years. It’s a side project," he answers and then abruptly goes silent.

"So it’s such a secret, world-changing thing that you can’t even tell your assistant?" I tease.

He goes silent for a long time and closes his eyes, and then he gives me a weak half-smile.

"It doesn’t need to change the world," he whispers. "It just has to change me."

****

I
don't know why, but I'm more nervous tonight as I sit beside Terrence in his comfortable reading chair than I was even the first time I was in bed with him. I'm acutely aware of his strong, gentle arm around my waist and his leg pressing against mine. He shifts in his chair and I feel the soft fabric of his slacks caress my leg as sensually as if it was his fingertips. It's as if every sensation is amplified ten-fold tonight.

Last night was pure impulse—sheer desire overriding my self-consciousness and misgivings—and if not for that, I'd
never
have let myself make love to him. I'd have foregone the amazing experience entirely rather than risk having sex with my boss and becoming my mother.

Yet here I am in his room again, not only dressed to the occasion but practically sitting on his lap.

There's a knock at the bedroom door, and then Terrence's chef, Antonio, opens the door a crack and peeks in. Satisfied that he's not interrupting anything, he quietly scurries in with a small tray laden with a bottle of pinot noir, chocolate-covered strawberries and a single, long-stemmed red rose in a vase.

My eyes fixate on the rose and a strange fear flickers to life in my stomach. Last night was pure, animal passion, but roses are romantic. Wine and roses are a next step—a step beyond desire toward commitment, toward a relationship I can't have because
I'm his employee and he pays me.

...and yet, I'm thrilled beyond words to see it and know that I'm willing to be with him again, no matter how much I tell myself otherwise.

I know I'm willing because of what I'm wearing right now: a gorgeous little black dress from Neiman Marcus that I ran out and bought while Terrence was taking an afternoon nap. It has a deep scoop neck and a two-tiered short skirt with a little flare, and while it's cheaper than my outfit from Stonewear, it's not by much once I add in what I'm wearing underneath it. Good lingerie is absurdly expensive, and I know myself better than to think I'd throw away twenty-six years of frugality the first time I actually have some money. The fact that I bought it even though I've spent most of my life living y lStonewout of thrift stores means I must
really
want to wear it with Terrence, no matter what the voice of doubt screams to the contrary.

Antonio places the tray on the small, glass-topped table beside us, gives me a thumbs-up and a wink that make my face grow hot with embarrassment, and then quietly closes the door on his way out.

Terrence reaches out for the corkscrew and his hand brushes against mine as I slide it toward him.

"Always looking out for me, aren't you?" he says softly, almost sadly as he finds the bottle on his own and pops the cork in one strong tug.

"I'm supposed to be doing that," I answer. "It... it's my job."

It's a job I don't want tonight, a job I shed last night long before my clothes fell to the floor beside it just so I could be with him.

"You first," he whispers as he hands me the bottle. "I'd serve you tonight if I could see what I was doing."

"So do it, then. Here's my glass; I'll let you know when to stop," I tell him, pushing the wine back to him. He beams at me as if I've just told him he's won a lifetime supply of puppies and then slowly pours me a drink. I let it reach almost to the rim before calling him off.

"It's funny the little things you take for granted until you suddenly can't see. Take pouring wine, for example... take a look at what I have to do." He presses the tip of his index finger about an inch below the rim on the inside of his glass as he pours the wine. The level slowly rises until it touches his finger, and then he pulls the bottle away.

"It's the little things that took the most adjustment for," he continues. "Not things like driving, cooking... I can hire people to do that stuff. The hardest things for me have been things like dropping the cap on the toothpaste or having someone move my shoes."

He smiles and winks at me as he holds up his glass.

"To the most amazing weekend ever," he offers a toast. I can drink to that, and the clink of our glasses resonates throughout the room. The wine tastes sweet at first, and then a deep, almost spicy flavor takes over on my lips and tongue.

"Mind if I tell you a little secret?" he whispers between sips of wine.

"Sure. I'm always looking for good blackmail material."

He laughs and kisses me softly on the cheek, and my mind grows warm and hazy the moment his lips touch my skin.

"I lost my vision over the course of three years, roughly, and I was completely blind by twenty-one," he says, taking another drink. "It's been hard, but I've tried to adjust to it as best I can. No matter how much I try, though—no matter what precautions I take—there's one thing that scares me more than anything else."

I slip my arm around his waist and cuddle up close to him. My eyes latch onto the tinge of red left on his lips by the wine, and I suddenly have the urge to taste him. He falters in his story as if scared to admit he's not super macho all the time, and I pick up where he left off.

"It's being lost, isn't it?" I ask, and he slowly nods. I knew it from how he reacted to me letting go of him to greet my former coworker at Verta, from how he always tries to keep one hand anchored to something, anything, when I'm not at his side.

"I'm terrified of losing track of where I am and not knowing how to find myself again. It's happened to me a few times before I learneefop>

"Jesus..."

"That's why I asked you not to let go of me at the Verta meeting," he whispers. "I... I didn't know where I was. It's like the world was spinning even though I was standing still. I
knew
we were standing in front of the elevator in my mind, but the rest of me somehow didn't believe it."

I don't know what to say. What can I possibly say to someone exposing his greatest fear to me? I can't tell him it'll be okay or that it's all just in his mind. Of course it's in his mind—all the worst fears and doubts hide in there, lurking in the darkness and waiting to pounce on you when you least expect them. Instead, I lean my head on his shoulder and give him a weak, one-armed hug as we sit together in his comfortable reading chair. As he refills his glass, I take the opportunity to steer the conversation away from the topic.