Chapter Eleven.
The waitress was looking at Jack behind the counter as she pretended to be busy with cleaning the mugs.
Her shift had already ended but she wanted to stay in for a little while longer to see how all this was going to end.
"Annie, you can go home now. My shift just started…" she other waitress interrupted her thoughts.
"Shut up, sweetie. I wanna see this."
He was staring at her curly hair and how it moved slightly every time Kate tilted her head. It was quite obvious that the magazine she was reading was about in the same interest level with the car magazine Cars Gone Wild that she had pretended to be reading earlier at his place.
Kate hadn't noticed him because Jack was sitting a couple of table from her. To see him completely, she would've had to raise her gaze from her magazine and glance directly to his table's direction. That could draw people's attention to her and it was exactly the thing that Kate was trying to avoid the most at the moment.
Jack took a swig from the bottle of whiskey that the waitress girl had brought to him and placed it back on the table after getting the necessary encouraging from it.
Without even thinking what to do next, he grabbed his work case and stood up from the chair, starting to walk towards her table.
With few long steps, he reached her table and he seated himself on the empty chair that was on the other side of the table.
Kate was startled by the person who had suddenly joined her. She found it extremely difficult to swallow the cappuccino that she had just sipped in but when Kate finally managed to gulp it down her throat, she raised her eyes from the floor to recognize the stranger.
The face that she finds staring back at her belongs to the person whom she wants nothing to do with and to whom she wants to see the most. Only thing she was able to do was to frown back.
He had changed somehow. The stubble on his face was thicker and his hair had grown a bit, but it wasn't those changes that caught her attention. His eyes reflected emotionally drained feeling.
"Oh. It's you," she eventually broke the silence. Her voice was cold and hurt but still she wasn't able to make it sound harsh or uncaring.
He didn't say anything and was looking her straight to the eyes. Although she had spoken Kate hadn't taken her gaze away from his face, but as she noticed that he wasn't going to say anything back, she broke the staring by shifting her eyes to the table.
How the heck should I be able to run away from him again? she thought and the idea of her having to leave him once more, made her eye lids squint close and she swallowed clumsily.
Moving the gaze back up, she could see that Jack was still staring at her. He had brought his palms on the coffee table.
Her uncaring and cold safety wall came crumbling down when she saw the glister in the corner of his eye.
Realising that this might be the only chance she would get to leave she yanked herself up. If I don't leave now I may never be able to go. She grabbed her hobo bag and was about to take a step when Jack's fingers all of a sudden curled around her wrist.
"Just sit down and hear me out, will you? I'm not going to let you simply walk out on me twice," he said silently and looked hopefully up to her.
Kate let out a loud and tired sigh as she slowly turned back to face him.
"What do you want from me?" she whispered.
"Just listen to what I have to say. That's all. After that, you can go if that is what you want."
Kate glanced to her wrist and when Jack noticed her gesture he let go off her. She put her bag down as she sat back to the chair. The determined and waiting expression took over her face.
"OK. I'm listening. Talk," she said crossing her arms under her breasts and swung one of her legs over the other.
Jack flashed a brief smile that soon faded off. He tried to regain the moisture to his dry mouth by licking his lips quickly before he started talking.
"The thing is that when I brought you to my apartment, I wasn't thinking clearly. I didn't know what might happen after I had seen you and the things that had happened before that moment were swept to the back of my mind," he said slowly and articulated every word carefully.
Kate tilted her head to left and raising her eyebrow she let him know that she wasn't buying this completely.
"You honestly expected me to believe you that you didn't remember that you had a wife?" she snapped and looked him straight to the eyes.
"I'm not saying that," Jack started and her expression was even more waiting than it had been before.
He swallowed hard and let out a sigh shifting his gaze to his palms that were on the table. After contemplating something for a short spell, he brought his eyes back to her. The glistering had come to them again.
"I hadn't seen you in three months when we met here the first time. How could I not kiss you, touch you or make love to you?"
His answer took her off guard and she had to move her eyes away from him.
This point Jack had lost almost every rational thought that he had had during their conversation and was letting his emotional side take over.
He slid his hands towards her on the table and stood up from his chair leaning over their coffee cups so his face was close to hers. He shifted the pressure to his palms taking support from the table's surface and captured her lips with his mouth.
At first Kate felt stupid just sitting on her chair, her arms hanging by her sides. On top of that, his nose was starting to tickle her left cheek as it moved slightly back and forth on her skin at the same time that he opened and closed his mouth.
She brought her head forward and started kissing him back. He was pleased to see her reacting this way, beginning to press his lips harder against her as his nose dug deeper into her cheek.
Kate raised her hands and cupped his tilted head between her palms, parting her lips and letting him deepen the kiss.
After a while he broke their clumsy kiss but kept his face still close to her.
"Come here," he said leading her towards him.
She wasn't reluctant and rose up from her chair and made her way to him. He pulled her arm harder and she fell into his lap. After giggling a bit and readjusting her position, she was sitting on his lap, legs on both sides of him and caressing his short hair. She brought her head lower and kissed his ear.
He moved his hands to her back forcing their chests to meet. Placing small kisses to her neck, he mumbled something.
"What…"
"Do you want to get out of her?" he spoke against her neck between the kisses.
"What about Sarah?" she whispered to his ear.
"She's not home."
Kate withdrew her head away from his mouth and looked at his face. He worried what her reaction might be but eventually she nodded to him hopping off from his lap. She grabbed her bag and waited until he was ready to leave as well.
He took her palm into his hand, entwined their fingers and led her out of the coffee shop towards his home once again.
Annie smiled to the other waitress who looked at her weirdly.
"I was right. It was worth staying extra time. Now I can go home," she said making a smirk.