“Want a side of twirls?” the waitress asked.
“What’s that?” Donna said.
“Fried onions.”
“Okay,” Mayfair said. “But change my coffee to lemonade.”
The waitress left, and they all sat silently, looking at the way girls just a few years older were dressed and how they behaved. There was a joie de vivre, a lightness, anyone could see they envied.
“Don’t you get the feeling sometimes that you’re in another country?” Corliss asked.
Donna and Mayfair nodded.
Mayfair turned slowly to her left. She could feel his eyes on her. A man who looked like a teenager but had to be twenty-one, evidenced by the glass of brew in his hand, was staring at her with a wry smile on his lips. His dark brown hair was swept back on the sides, but his bangs fell to the right on his forehead, reaching just above his eyebrow. He wore a navy-blue leather jacket, a black V-neck T-shirt, and a pair of black jeans that dropped halfway down what looked like grayish-black cowboy boots.
He lifted his glass of beer in a toast to her and sipped it, not moving from the wall against which he leaned. The lights from behind the bar cast a shadow over him, but she could see his softly carved jaw and firm, full lips. In this light, his eyes were dark orbs. He had a Roman nose. His smile tightened the corners of his mouth. Something about her and Donna and Corliss obviously amused him. When they were served their lemonade and fried onion rings, he laughed and then looked away as if his suspicions were correct. She felt as though he had dismissed them.
Slim but with firm shoulders, he looked at everyone else with what she thought was an arrogant disinterest. He shifted and turned, barely washing his gaze over her as he looked to his right. Why the mere sight of him and his obvious dismissal of everyone and everything around him annoyed her she couldn’t say. They just did.
But in a strange way, they also attracted her. She started to analyze why and stopped herself.
Brain, she thought, take a rest. You’ve got the night off.
Why did that feel even more dangerous than sneaking through the fence?
3
The waitress had brought them their drinks and fried onion rings, and for the moment, Corliss and Donna seemed engrossed with that, not seeming to notice the man Mayfair was becoming fixated on. Fried onions, any fast food, was a no-no at Spindrift. The logic was simply that if you could be brilliant about math and science, you certainly could be brilliant about what was healthy to eat and what was not. She wouldn’t be the first at Spindrift to think that sometimes it was a drag to be brilliant.
Mayfair turned back to look at the young man who had smiled and toasted her. He was looking at her again. Why not acknowledge him? She smiled and toasted him, now that she had something with which to toast. His smile brightened, and he literally put his right foot against the wall and kicked himself forward in her direction. Here’s hoping his first words don’t confirm he’s a dumb redneck, she thought. Corliss and Donna finally realized something was happening and looked up in his direction.
“Fish out of water?” he said, stepping close to their table.
“How can you tell?” Mayfair asked.
“I know my fish,” he said. He glanced at Corliss and Donna but focused his gaze firmly on Mayfair. “Why come to a brewpub and not order any brew, unless you’re not old enough to be served any?”
“Maybe we’re just planning our future,” Mayfair said.
He laughed, silently, tossing his head back just a little.
“Are you an undercover detective?” Donna asked him. “Making sure they don’t serve minors?”
He shook his head. “Just undercover. But I’ll take a wild stab at it and say you three are not from here.”
“Now, how can you tell that?” Corliss asked, as if what he’d said was an insult.
“Oh, it’s a lot of things that altogether boil down to my instincts. Let’s sum it up by saying you have a different . . .” He paused, debating the right word. Mayfair was impressed that such a choice was important to him. “Air about you. So? Am I right?”
“Everybody is from so
mewhere else,” Donna said. “Even you.”
“I didn’t say I was from here. Maybe I’m like you, a visitor observing the local yokels.”
Mayfair took a closer look at him. He had unique eyes, almost a gray-black, with eyelashes any girl would envy, a slight beard, trimmed, the hair somewhat lighter, more brown, and a strong, firm mouth that he curled up in the right corner after he spoke. She estimated him to be only an inch or so taller than she was, but his rock-solid look gave the impression he was taller. Although well put together, he radiated an indifference to his appearance. His boots were scuffed badly. Mayfair learned early in her life to look at a man’s shoes first. How well he kept them, how worn they were, and even their style told her things she more often than not confirmed about him later.
“Is there so much here to entice people to visit?” Donna asked. “We skipped the travel brochure.”