Hate to see him leave. Love to watch him walk away.
A moment passed where there was a stretch of silence between Tatum and me, and I realized I was lost in my thoughts of Malkolm.
Tatum looked at me with a knowing smirk, the wine in her plastic glass already half downed. She eyed me over the rim, and I knew she wanted me to delve into what I’d just been zoned out on—as if she already didn’t know.
“You’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you?”
I felt my cheeks become hot and grabbed my glass, taking a hardy sip.
“Oh my God, you are.” She started laughing as she teased me.
I exhaled, leaned back in my chair, and took another long pull of wine before setting the glass back down. “I was,” I admitted. “Seems I can’t help it. There’s something about him.” I expected her to tease me again, but she had this weird look in her eyes as she watched me silently.
“How long have you wanted him?” Tatum finally asked, setting her glass back on the table but keeping her fingers wrapped around it.
I shrugged, looking off in the distance, letting my eyes unfocus for a moment as I remembered when I first started noticing him. “I don’t know. Not long. A month, maybe two?” I felt so silly having these deep feelings for someone I hardly knew.
I looked back at her and shrugged again. Tatum stayed silent for a moment, but she nodded slowly.
“He’s head over heels for you, Flora, and I’m not even talking about how he’s like this lost puppy constantly coming to the coffee shop.”
I lifted my eyebrows at her statement.
“You do realize that, don’t you?”
“What makes you say that? Well, aside from him coming into the coffee shop a lot, and watching me, but that could all be chalked up to male desire.” She made it sound like he was already in love with me. Or maybe I was reading too much into it. And why did my heart skip a beat and my face feel flushed at the very thought of him being in love with me? That was insane to even contemplate a man I didn’t know having those types of feelings for me.
“It’s not the amount of times I catch him staring at you, or even how many times he stops by to get a cup of coffee he doesn’t even drink. It’s the way he stares at you, Flora. It's….” She paused as if she was trying to phrase whatever was on her mind. “He looks at you like he’s consumed by you.”
He does look… consumed. I saw it in the way he watched me, the way his amber eyes tracked me at every turn.
“What can I say? He seems really nice... and I like the way he looks.” I like the way he looks at me.
But I had zero experience with guys and dating, so I was jumping into this blindly and hoping I didn’t crash at the end.
“I like the way he looks too,” Tatum said, and as I narrowed my eyes at her, she chuckled. “Easy, tigress. That boy only has eyes for you. Besides, he’s not my type. I like them more refined and less bad boy.”
And Malkolm sure did scream “bad boy” in the best of ways.
“You know I have no experience with men to begin with. So I’m sure this whole thing will fail miserably.”
My sister gave me a soft smile and said, “Did you tell him you’ve never been on a date before?”
I snorted and shook my head. “Yeah, like that’s really going to win him over.” Although a part of me knew if I did admit that, if I confided to Malkolm that I’d never dated a guy, let alone been intimate with a guy, he’d be understanding. But it was embarrassing. I was a twenty-four-year-old virgin, inexperienced in every single way imaginable. I put all my focus on building my dream of owning my own business with my sister first and foremost.
I exhaled and felt a little deflated. It’s not like I hadn’t had opportunities in high school. There’d been a couple of guys who had shown interest in me, but I hadn’t been ready for any of that in my life, didn’t want to be physical when their affections were clearly only skin-deep. They hadn’t been interested in me but in what I could give them.
They hadn’t known anything about me, hadn’t even wanted to get to know me. That had told me waiting until I found that special person was exactly the road I wanted to take.
But years had passed, and it had gotten to the point where my loneliness had increased.
“I have a good feeling about this,” Tatum finally said, and I wondered how long I’d been lost in thought and we’d just been sitting there in silence.