Yours to Bare (Slip of the Tongue 3)

I’ll keep telling myself that until it feels true enough.

I have seven more minutes to mourn.

Then it’s back to happy as usual.

4

Monday morning, I stake out the coffee shop.

I ignored fickle fate for an entire Friday and a weekend—three days, seventy-two hours. It helped that I had my daughter to distract me. But once Kendra picked Marissa up, I was alone with my thoughts again.

Alone with her thoughts.

And I just can’t let it go.

Finding that journal under my table was an accident? An agenda with one entry wasn’t supposed to lead me right to her? I can’t ignore it. If fate is testing me, I won’t fail. I know one thing for sure about the owner—she comes to Lait Noir. So I make sure to get there when the café opens at the break of dawn.

Another thing I know for sure? She fascinates me. She’s beautiful in a way that makes her seem untouchable. I don’t want to keep my hands to myself, though. I want to feel and make her feel. I want the journal girl I met a week ago to be the one from the gallery.

It’s almost nine when I look up from my laptop and spot her across the street, waiting for a break in traffic. Once again, she’s in all black. Her white-blonde hair is pulled back except for a few loose strands that float around her face. Pulling her coat closed, she expertly darts through traffic in knee-high leather boots.

I quickly slide my laptop into its case, weave through the tables, and get in line. When I hear her heels clicking behind me, I glance back.

She unfurls a soft-as-fuck-looking gray scarf from around her neck. Her coat is open, her nipples noticeably hard through a dark, sheer blouse.

She clears her throat.

I look up. I’ve been caught staring.

“Are you following me?” she asks.

“That’d be impressive, considering I’m ahead of you in line.”

After a tense silence during which she might be planning to deck me, she smiles. She’s messing with me, but like the other night, her sense of humor isn’t so obvious. “Finn, right?”

“Good memory.”

The man behind the counter calls me forward. I order a black coffee and angle sideways to ask, “Can I get your drink?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“I insist. How’s a latte sound? You like that pumpkin spice stuff?”

The barista laughs. “Yeah, do you like pumpkin spice, babe?”

She smiles—at him. That fucker. “Do those even have caffeine?” she asks.

“I got you,” he says, looking back at me. “Halston likes it black as the devil’s soul. That’s why she keeps coming back to me.” He winks. “That’ll be four-sixty.”

I give him my credit card but keep my eyes on her. “Halston. Really made me work for that, didn’t you?”

She reaches by me to take her coffee from the counter. All at once, she’s in my nostrils, my personal space, blocking anything in my vision that isn’t her. She smells like pepper, a hint of masculinity that has me leaning in. Since her hair is pulled back, I see the flash of a tattoo under her ear. I’m keeping tally: secret journal, red bra, fake smoking, strategically placed ink, spicy scent. She hides herself well, and my curiosity’s getting the better of me.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she says, stepping back before I’ve had my fill.

“Will you sit for a minute?”

“No tables . . .”

“I know a place.” I pick up my coffee, and since I’m headed toward the exit, she has to follow. My predestined table is taken, today of all days, but that’s not where I’m taking her. Near the front of the shop is a deep windowsill that’ll fit just two ass cheeks—one of hers, one of mine.

She peers outside, and then at me. “Is this about work?”

“No.”

Her phone begins to chime. She takes it from her purse. “Don’t answer,” I say.

She arches an eyebrow at me but silences it. “It’s not a call. I only have a minute.”

“I’ll take it.”

She balances on the ledge, facing me. It’s cozy, our knees brushing. She doesn’t pull hers away, and I’m certainly not about to. “Do you . . . come here a lot?”

I’m about to tease her for what sounds like a pick-up line, but she rubs her elbow in a way that makes me think she might be nervous. I let her off easy. “Best coffee in the neighborhood,” I say. “I’d know. I’ve tried it all.”

“It’s great,” she agrees. “Convenient too.”

Convenient. Like me, she must live or work around here. Because it’s mid-morning, I doubt her job is a typical nine-to-five. I soak up details like a sponge. “What’d you decide about the show last week?”

“Someone told me it was crap,” she says with a shrug. “An eloquent assessment I happen to agree with.”

I smile, but the mention of the show takes me back to that night. To the way we left things, her walking away under someone else’s arm. Every bone in my body says to leave it alone—because, yes, heartache goes bone deep. The truth hurts. My brain might’ve been on vacation when I started an affair with Sadie, but it came back the day she left. It’s here now, and it knows better. “That man,” I say, “was he your boyfriend?”

Watching me, she absentmindedly picks at the sleeve of her coffee cup. “You think that’s your business?”

“Yeah I do.” I’m bluffing. It’s not my business, but I have to know. I can’t put myself in the same situation twice. If she says yes, I’ll walk away right now and won’t look back.

“Not was,” she says. “Is.”

“Is?”

“He is my boyfriend.”

Fuck fuck fuck. I don’t even blink. This is a hard limit for me. I’ll never get involved with someone like that, someone unavailable, again. I’d thought this was it, though. I really fucking did. I haven’t felt anything in a year, not until I opened that journal. It awoke things in me I feared were dead, and I think this girl—Halston—might understand me.

Her forehead wrinkles. “Are you okay?”

“I, uh, yeah.” My legs don’t move. I’m not walking out the door. I need to, and I will, but first there’s the matter of her journal. “It wasn’t the answer I expected.”

She blushes. Her milky-white skin blooms like a rose. She understands why I bought her coffee and brought her to this tiny windowsill that’s currently digging into my ass cheek. There wasn’t supposed to be someone else.

“Who is he?” I don’t know why I’m asking.

She glances at the nude lipstick stain she’s left on her lid. “Are you going to take my coffee back because I have a boyfriend?”

“After you’ve put your mouth on it?”

She half-gapes. “I . . . I’m going to be late to work.”

“I have a confession to make,” I say.

“I don’t think I should hear it.” She puts her purse over her shoulder and goes to stand.

“I found your journal.”

She freezes, then slowly lowers back onto the windowsill. “M-my . . .”

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“It wasn’t . . . what I expected.”

“It’s yours, isn’t it?” I ask. “I found it here, on the floor. Well, not here,” I point toward the window, “there, under that table.”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“I’ve been reading it. Shitty of me, I know, but I opened it to see if I could find someone to return it to, and your words just fucking gripped me. You write like—”

“It’s not mine,” she says. “I think you’re confused.”