When the strange looking, blue-eyed man showed up, she was cleaning the glasses.
She raised her eyes and looked at the man.
He was sitting on the table at the end of the diner. He was wearing a hat that was holding his brown hair, his body was mostly covered with his green coat. He was wearing black gloves and they were still on his hands, it was kind of weird because the temperature inside the diner was hot.
Like, really hot.
Emma was wearing a tank, she always wore tanks at work, and then freeze to death with her thin coat until she got home.
When she was finished with the glasses and realized that she was the only one who noticed the man, she sucked in a deep breath and walk to the man at the table.
Still wearing those gloves. Wow.
Such determination.
"How can I help you?"
The man raised his head, his eyes were more deep and oddly more blue from close. He didn't say anything or make any sound for a moment, then, he opened his pink, good shaped lips and muttered:
"Can I just sit here? For a while," he said, his lips were pink and his eyes were bright but she could see, a sudden realization, that his face was pale. "Please."
Disconcerting pale.
"Sure, it's okay." It wasn't. Her boss would never let it happen, you had to order at least one thing if you wanted to put your ass on any of the chairs in the diner. Emma thought it was unnecessarily rude, but her boss was a rude man anyway. And this was his exact way of explaining the one simple rule to be in this diner more than ten minutes:
Order something.
The only other way to spend more than ten minutes in the diner was to be a person who works for the diner. And if you're one of them, a waitor or waitress here, the rule was a little bit different:
Make people order something.
But Emma had never really followed that one simple order, she was just treating people in the way that made her feel right, in the way that they deserved. In her perspective, anyway.
"Um… Are you okay?" The moment she asked the question she felt repentant. Why the hell do you even care? Clenching her jaw, she looked at the blue-eyed man.
"I'm fine," he said, looking at her face with an unreadable expression on his face and without blinking his eyes.
Unlike him, Emma was blinking like crazy and she was pretty sure she had had blanked a billion times since the weird conversation between her and the man started.
"Okay," she said with her calm, how-can-ı-help-you voice. "Not my business, right? I know." She smiled and saw, right before turning and starting to walk back to the glasses-which she had already done cleaning-, the blue-eyed man's pink lips' curling up, forming into a warm smile.
No. Not warm.
She couldn't know that. He was just a stranger, a stranger who wore gloves and a coat in a hot-tempered diner, he wasn't a person she could just read on the face.
No.
But she knew something.
That smile was cute. He was cute.
And weird. Too weird.
Too weird to be cute.
I mean, she was used to these stuff. The Avengers, and X-Men, flying cities and Asgardian Gods, yeah, you know? Weird was equal to normal nowadays but this guy had something different about him.
He had been sitting there for… How long? She didn't know. It was more than ten minutes for sure. Taking a deep breath and feeling nervous, she grabbed a bottle of water and walked to the man, once again.
She put the bottle on the table, trying to imagine the deep blue eyes that had fixed on her.
"I don't want to be a pain your ass but…"
"What?" he said, looking puzzled.
"What what?" she said, she was even more puzzled than him. Why did he interrupt her like that? Was it the word 'ass'? Really?
"You're not… You're not a pain in my…"
"Well of course, I know that," she said slowly, as though it was a little child in front of her. Suddenly, she felt the embarrassment, and the annoying, physical reaction it brought with itself: sweating. "I know that I'm not…" She stopped talking suddenly, feeling really annoyed. "Look, I just don't want to keep pushing you about ordering something, but. uh… You have to order something. Otherwise you can't sit here. So I brought you water… The only thing that everybody drinks…Oh, and, don't worry, it's from the house… I guess. I mean, it is from me." She laughed weirdly, like a giant weirdo, and then, hating herself, stopped it.
The man looked uncomfortable too, just like her, but the look of understanding on his face was appreciable.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It's not my stupid rule. It's my boss's."
"It's okay," he said simply, and held the water in his hand, still looking on her face.
She was still standing there, with no reason to stay, but you know, sometimes, there is this odd feeling that keeps you from doing anything, from going anywhere, from saying anything, even some rare times, from breathing.
This was, again, oddly, one of those times.
She couldn't even breathe properly.
She reached out her hand, saying, "I'm Emma."
He looked at her hand, her stupid, trembling hand, and then reached out his own. His grip was tight, but gentle. Kind as though he was trying to make her feel like that, like, he could break her hand if he wanted to, but he was kind and gentle enough not to do that.
Or, you know, maybe this was just his way of shaking hands with someone and also, this was just Emma's weird way of making up stupid scenarios about the people she didn't know, not maybe, for sure.
Like, she was making it all up in her head, for sure.
Like, she was thinking that there was something strange with this cute guy, for sure.
Like, there was something familiar with this guy, for sure.
But really, that unpleasant feeling, seeing a familiar looking stranger and not being able to remember the thing that makes this person so familiar in your eyes, was all over her.
The blue-eyed man looked around… Suspicously?
And then looked at her again, as though he was trying to decide whether he was going to tell his name or not. As though she was trustworthy enough.
"James," he said in a low voice. So low that for a second, she thought she couldn't her him. But then, the name flew like a bird in her head, swam like a bird in the ocean, James, James, James.
There was still that unpleasant feeling.
But she chose to ignore it.
"Nice to meet you," she said, and loosened her grip on his hand, but he was still holding her hand, examining her face. "You can let go now, you know," she said in an amusing voice.
He let go.
"You really are a weird guy, aren't you?"
James took a deep breath and looked at the bottle, once again in his hands. "You don't even know the half of it."
Emma smiled.
But she wasn't sure it was noticed by the weird stranger named James.
Nor did she knew that it actually was noticed by him.