I'm embarrassed to admit how long I sat there and looked down at those sketches with a goofy grin on my face. Snapping out of it, I took them over to my jewelry box, slipping them in and storing them for safekeeping. I was always that kind of girl; I saved things. I had the movie stub from my first date when I was a teen and the label off the first bottle of liquor I ever tasted in a scrapbook. I had seashells from every beach I had ever visited in a vase in my dining room. I liked having little reminders of things that once made me smile around me.
And, well, Paine's artwork made me smile. Huge.
I showered as I thought of him sitting off the side of the bed in the very early morning light, scribbling those pictures for me before he left. It was infinitely better than waking up to a note.
I decided then to only date men who grew up with single mothers, little sisters, and could draw from that point on.
I had half-expected him to show back up before I left for work and had to suppress a surge of disappointment when he didn't. I left early and stopped to get coffee, buying an extra one for him and cursing myself for doing so. As I drove across town (my path to work making me pass his shop), I tried to convince myself to not stop, to not be that girl. Needy, borderline desperate to be around the guy she was crushing on.
But I found myself pulling up behind his Challenger when I noticed the shop was open for the morning already. The shades were half-closed on the windows to block the brutally bright morning sun and, as such, I hadn't spotted the small group of people inside until I pulled the door and it was too late.
"Oh," I said, taken aback when three sets of eyes fell on me. One set was Paine's light green ones. Another were very dark green ones on the face of a man with an old school kind of handsome mixed with a post-punk look: tattoos all up his arms and across his neck, gauges in his ears, plain white v-neck tee, tight black jeans, and black and white checkered creepers. To say the charming smile he was giving me was enough to melt any red-blooded woman's panties was an understatement. The final set of eyes were blue and belonged to a man Paine's size build-wise with blond hair in an undercut, pulled into a small bun at the crown of his head. He also had a blond beard and a knowing little smirk on his face. "Um, sorry to interrupt," I said, my words almost tripping over one another I was so flustered. I turned to Paine, thrusting my arm with his coffee out a little awkwardly. "I just wanted to say thanks for dinner. I, ah, need to get to work."
He took the coffee from my hand, brows drawn together slightly as I yanked my arm back and turned to move back toward the door. Or, at least, I tried to make my way back toward the door. I failed because suddenly my wrist was snagged in Paine's giant palm and I was turned and pulled back the distance I had just created. "Fuck was that?" Paine asked when my gaze found his.
"I'm sorry... what?" I asked, painfully aware that the other guys in the shop were staring at us. And while I couldn't see, I was pretty sure they were still smiling.
"'Thanks for dinner, I need to get to work'?"
"And coffee," I reminded him, trying to lighten the mood.
But then what little space was between us was gone and Paine's face ducked down toward my neck, his breath in my ear where he said just loudly enough for me to hear, "Babygirl, I was inside you less than twelve hours ago. Can't even give me a good morning kiss?"
"You have company," I reminded him.
"Oh, honey, sugar, darling," one of the other guys said, making me jerk back to place him. It was the green-eyed, post-punk one. "Please tell me someone as gorgeous as you isn't wasting your time with this ugly fuck," he said, jerking his head toward Paine.
Paine rolled his eyes. "Elsie, this is Shooter," he said, indicating the green-eyed one.
He reached for the hand I offered, but turned it knuckles-up and leaned down to kiss it. To say I let out a girlish giggle would be a giant understatement.
"And Breaker," Paine went on, ignoring both Shooter's hand-kiss and my subsequent reaction.
I held out my hand to Breaker who took it as offered, shaking it hard before letting it drop.
"Hey doll," he greeted me.
"What?" Paine asked as I pressed my lips together to try to keep a smile in.