AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
"Please…please…please, Carol. Please…please…just let me have this…please," Andrea begged, holding onto Carol's arms while Carol held onto hers and tried to throw her body weight into shifting her friend across the café floor toward the door. Andrea outweighed her—not by too much, but by enough. On top of that, Carol was almost certain that Andrea's legs, in some way, were simply stronger than Carol's. Once she'd locked them, determined not to be dragged by any force incapable of simply heaving her up and carrying her out the door, she was practically immovable. Carol could tug her forward, but she seemed to snap back to her spot unless Carol was actually willing to topple her friend to the floor.
Andrea was alternating between begging and laughing, unable to decide which she needed to entertain most.
"Carol—I swear…you'll never know I'm here," Andrea promised. "I'm so hungry…so hungry…I'm going to order food for me, and my curiosity, and we're both going to eat."
"You're nosy," Carol informed her, laughing in spite of herself.
"I'll order a plate for my nosiness, too," Andrea promised. "Please—you'll never know I'm here."
"I already know you're here," Carol pointed out.
"You need me here," Andrea said, switching tactics without missing a beat.
Carol sighed and let go of Andrea. Her hands were tired and she'd probably made the upper part of her friend's body sore from all the tugging.
"Need you?" Carol asked, putting her hands on her hips and ignoring the fact that their impromptu wrestling match had been a pretty decent workout for this hour of the day.
"It's like—a safety net," Andrea said. "You know—you go on a date with a stranger and you've got the friend you call halfway through the night? She can save you if you need it and sweep you out of there. Well, you don't even have to call me. I'll be right over there with my breakfast and my magazine…and if you need me? I can come and drum this guy out of the café like that." She snapped her fingers. "All you have to do is give me some kind of sign. Something like—like drop your hand down where I can see it and give me a little wave like this."
Andrea demonstrated for Carol her escape wave to be performed under the table and, clearly, in sight of the blonde.
"It's coffee," Carol said. "And Jacqui's here and people are going to be in and out. I sincerely doubt he's going to take advantage of me."
"OK, fine," Andrea said. "You probably don't need back up or protection or anything else, but I have to see him. And you'll want to talk about him later. You'll want my opinion, even if you don't know it now, Carol. And if you tell me to leave, then I'm going to go ahead and tell you that I'm going right out that door and stare in through the window. Or I'll go around back and come in the kitchen door and then I'll just hide behind the counter. Carol—please?"
"Why?" Carol asked.
Andrea gave her the best puppy dog face she was able to muster up.
"To live vicariously? To just know? Carol—all I've got in life is free porn, Shane, and a few shitty Harlequin novels. At least let me see the mystery guy you hooked up with on some kind of Hallmark movie Friday night."
Carol laughed to herself.
"It was hardly Hallmark," she said.
"HBO," Andrea said. "Pay-per-fucking-view, Carol. Even better. Please let me stay? I'll have coffee and enough food to kill a horse. I don't have a client until nine thirty."
Carol sighed, but she couldn't actually be mad with her friend. All the Glory Gals were there for her, and she appreciated that, but Andrea, perhaps, was always a little more there for her than anyone else. Andrea was the friend that, if Carol needed her, would be on the front step with ice cream and wine at two in the morning—no questions asked.
"OK," she said. Andrea smiled. "You're right. It might make me feel better to know—you're here."
"And if it goes bad, you can tell me all about it," Andrea said, affectionately grabbing Carol's arms in place of the rough hold Carol had on hers only moments before. "And if it goes great," she added, raising her eyebrows, "you can tell me all about it."
Carol relaxed. Now that she'd accepted that Andrea would stay, instead of being rushed out like the rest of her friends, Carol was glad that she was staying.
"He'll be here any minute," Carol said, glancing toward the door at the jingle of the bell. It wasn't him. She knew the customers that stepped in together—a couple that was always there before work, and before they officially opened, to grab a cup of coffee to go.
"Nervous?" Andrea asked. Carol nodded and Andrea reached and picked at her hair—shaping the bits of unruly hair as they went in one direction and another—with her fingertips. "Don't be nervous. You're beautiful. Gorgeous. You already got his attention once. Enough to get him to go with you. Enough to make him come for coffee today."
"What if—he's not at all like I remember him?" Carol asked.
Andrea gently shrugged her shoulders.
"Then maybe you'll like the man more than the memory," Andrea offered.
"What if—he's an asshole?" Carol asked.
"Then we'll drive him out of town with pitchforks," Andrea teased. "But—right now? Why not just think—he's a nice man that you have…at least decent memories of…and he's come to share coffee with you."
Carol sucked in a breath and relaxed a little more as Andrea fussed over straightening her hair and her clothes. She'd already talked her out of her apron.
"You're right," Carol offered.
Andrea rested her hands on Carol's shoulders and smirked at her. She raised her eyebrow in the way that let Carol immediately brace herself for what she knew was coming.
"I'm always right," Andrea assured her. "And, if you like him? You can get him to remind you, sans alcohol, about everything that had you walking like John Wayne."
Carol laughed to herself and shook her head.
"Go sit down," Carol said. "Out of the way. Tell me what you want. I'll put in your order while I'm waiting."
"Full breakfast," Andrea said. "All the fixings. No substitutions. Plain coffee."
Carol nodded her acceptance of Andrea's order and gestured toward the back corner, away from the table that Carol had chosen for herself and the man she remembered only as a rugged stranger.
"Go sit down," Carol said.
"Yes ma'am," Andrea teased. "And, Carol?" Carol hummed at her. "Good luck."
Carol laughed to herself, not wanting to admit that her stomach felt like it was full of butterflies—something that was absolutely ridiculous at her age—but also knowing that she didn't have to admit such a thing to Andrea. Andrea would already know.
Carol put in Andrea's order, glanced at her watch, and asked Jacqui to reassure her, one more time, that she didn't mind handling the café for the short period of time while Carol was having coffee. Jacqui's joking response was that in all the time she'd known Carol, she'd never had so much as a coffee date before. She'd be more than happy to run the café the whole day if Carol would drink coffee with a man she liked for that long.
While she waited for Daryl, Carol nervously arranged sugar jars and sweetener packets on various tables and cursed at her hands for shaking, her stomach for fluttering, and her heart for dancing something akin to an Irish jig. Mercifully, she didn't have to wait for long before the jingling of the little bell produced a stranger instead of one of the normal early customers.
Immediately Carol knew it was him. She still didn't really remember his face, though she found it a nice face to look at now, but she knew it was him. Her body practically recognized him. She stopped fussing with sweeteners at an empty table, stood up, and brushed her hands on her pants in case any spilled sugar remained there from where she'd brushed it off of the table.
He was gnawing at his cuticle, looking around nervously, when his eyes settled on her. He stared at her, a moment, and continued to gnaw his cuticle. Then he dropped his hand from his mouth and walked in her direction, rubbing his own hands on the sides of his shirt.
"You—Carol?" He asked.
Carol smiled at him and nodded.
"Daryl?" She asked, even though she already knew the answer. He nodded and stuck out a hand, rather awkwardly and stiffly. He started to pull his hand back, clearly unsure of the correct greeting in this kind of situation. Honestly, though, Carol didn't know the proper greeting for this sort of thing, either, so she accepted his handshake. He seemed to relax a little when she didn't immediately reject it, and she enjoyed the way that he clasped her hand in both of his to shake it.
"I'll get coffee," she said. "Anything special?"
"Just black," Daryl offered. Carol nodded and gestured toward the table she'd chosen. Daryl nodded his understanding and sat.
Carol screamed at herself, in her head, about being the kind of woman who was so touch starved for male affection that she'd actually found herself enjoying a handshake. It didn't bode well for her common sense if she didn't get things under control. She decided, for her own sake, not to make eye contact with neither Andrea nor Jacqui as she ordered the coffee and brought the mugs to the table. She sat down across from Daryl before she brought her eyes up from focusing on the floor.
Daryl cleared his throat.
"Shoulda—pulled your chair out. Got mixed up with the sittin' down before you. Shoulda—ordered the coffee."
Carol smiled to herself and relaxed into her chair. She noted the strange sensation as her muscles seemed to relax without explicit direction or permission from her mind. Somehow, she knew him. One half-forgotten, alcohol-sodden, shameful night together, and a one awkward phone call, and Carol's body would convince her that she knew this man almost instinctively—like she could recognize him from smell alone. She scolded herself for her ridiculousness.
"It's fine," she assured Daryl, grateful that he could hear nothing of her inner voice. "I—actually own the café. Co-own it. With Jacqui." She gestured toward Jacqui who was serving some people at the counter who wanted easy coffees that took relatively little energy and effort.
"It's a nice place," Daryl mused. "Busy. Even though it ain't open yet."
Carol smiled.
"A lot of people grab coffee before work," Carol said. "It's before our technical opening hour, but…we know everyone that's a regular. And if they're new here, then they're likely to be a regular if they feel welcomed in the morning."
"You might have a point about that," Daryl agreed. He drank his coffee a little too quickly, and Carol saw him grimace over the fact it must have burned his mouth. He tried to ignore that, though, and Carol pretended that she hadn't seen. "Good coffee," he asserted.
Carol swallowed back her amusement.
"It's my favorite blend we have," Carol said. "I named it the Cherokee Rose blend because it's a light blend. It's not popular among those that prefer a darker coffee."
"Not so bitter," Daryl said, this time carefully tasting his coffee. "I like it," he confirmed again, resting the mug on the table. He stared at Carol. She stared back at him. She watched his Adam's apple bob. Looking at him now—sober and with the full light of the morning streaming in, she could see why her mind had remembered him as a rugged stranger. There was something distinctly rugged about him. His skin, in addition to the work shirt with his name on it, declared that he'd probably spent much of his life in hard, manual labor. The lines around his eyes suggested he'd probably spent less time wearing sunglasses than he should have. Still, with short-cropped hair and a smile that tugged up one side of his mouth when he looked at her, there was something she found quite attractive about the man.
She could only imagine what he might think of her with sobriety and sunlight bringing out all the harsh reality on her face.
Carol directed her eyes away from him and toward her coffee cup for a moment. Suddenly, her stomach ached, and she wished she hadn't asked him there. She wished she hadn't dialed the number. This kind of impulsive thing only led to getting her feelings hurt and she'd been just fine without that.
"Glad you met me," Daryl offered, clearing his throat nervously.
Carol looked up at him, again, and felt warmth flood her cheeks—he'd be sure to see the color rush to them.
"I'm sorry," Carol said. "I don't know—what to say."
"I think you're doin' fine," Daryl offered. "Maybe—there ain't no right thing to say. It's just whatever the hell we think of. You think?"
"Where do you work?" Carol asked. "Your shirt looks—familiar."
Daryl looked at his shirt like he hadn't seen it before and nodded.
"Yeah—I work for Williams' Workers," Daryl said. "It's a, well…it's a sort of catch-all handyman business. Just about any damn thing you could want done, I do it." He shrugged his shoulders. "I try to be accommodating."
"I remember something like that about you," Carol said, sipping her coffee. Immediately, she regretted her choice and her face burned hot as she laughed to herself. "Shit. I'm sorry. I swore—I wasn't going to do that…anything like that."
Daryl, thankfully, laughed across the table. He shifted in his seat, but Carol thought he relaxed as he leaned forward and rested his arms on the table, bringing them closer together.
"We can pretend it didn't happen," Daryl said. "Or we can acknowledge it did. Either way, it remains the same. And I don't care either way. Whatever makes you more comfortable."
"You say that like—almost like—you expect us to have more than this one conversation," Carol said.
"I kinda hoped we would," Daryl said. He shook his head. "Now that I got your number and all. I don't gain nothin' by lyin' about it. Playin' coy, as my brother might say." He sat back in his seat. "I'ma respect you if you say that ain't what you want, but I won't pretend that I hope that's what you're gonna say."
"I think you should probably know that—the shirt looks familiar because one of my best friend's husband owns that business," Carol said.
Daryl smiled to himself and shrugged his shoulders.
"Then he can put in a good work for me when she checks me out—'cause I know she's gonna. And she ought to. I got nothin' to hide," he offered. "I'm a steady worker. Have been for years. Do some jobs that maybe ain't the most glamourous jobs, but they keep the bills paid." Daryl turned his wrist and glanced at his watch. "Speakin' of which—I gotta get goin' soon. Let me pay for the coffee?"
"On the house," Carol said.
"Let me pay next time, then," Daryl said.
Carol smiled to herself.
"It's presumptuous to say next time, isn't it?" She asked.
"Nothin' ventured, nothin' gained," Daryl said. "Is there gonna be a next time?"
"For coffee?" Carol asked. Daryl shrugged.
"That dinner's still on the table," Daryl said. "Friday night."
"Where would you want to go?" Carol asked.
"Wherever's good to you," Daryl assured her.
"I don't like to choose," she said, shaking her head. "It's a—thing."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"If that means you'll go to dinner with me, then you don't never have to choose," Daryl assured her.
Carol's stomach fluttered. She nodded her head.
"OK," she said.
"OK?" He asked.
"OK—I'll go to dinner with you," Carol said. "Friday night. Just dinner."
Daryl held his hands up in mock surrender.
"Just dinner," he said. "Pick you up?"
"I'll let you know," Carol said. "Can you text?"
"Text, call—I don't got that Facebook whatever, though," Daryl said.
"I'll text you," Carol said.
"I'll keep an eye out for it. Thanks for the coffee," Daryl said, standing up. Carol flipped her phone over, glancing at the time.
"Don't you—I mean…I guess if you need to get to work, but…don't you still have a little time?" Carol asked.
Daryl smiled.
"I wouldn't mind a cigarette before work," he said. "Bad habit I got. You oughta know about it. Besides—your girlfriend back there has either got to piss somethin' awful or is dyin' for you to tell her what the hell you think of me. I was thinkin' you might wanna talk to her before you settled into work good. And—it might do me good if you did."
Carol looked over her shoulder. Andrea, who had apparently been quite interested in everything that had been taking place, immediately dropped back and half-covered her face with a magazine.
"I'm sorry," Carol said with a sigh. She looked back at Daryl.
"Don't be," he offered. "Might get me that text sooner, rather than later." His thumb went back to his mouth and he gnawed at his cuticle the same way he had when he'd first come in the door. He didn't offer his hand to shake, though Carol though he might for a moment. Instead, he simply shuffled a little and visibly tensed. "It was good to see you again—or for the first time—however you want it to be."
Carol smiled to herself.
"It was good to see you," she said, leaving it at that. "Talk soon?"
"Hopin' so," Daryl assured her. He somewhat waved at her before simply walking away like he didn't know how to end the conversation. He stopped, just before he got to the door, and waved back toward the back of the café. Carol didn't have to look behind her to know he'd waved at Andrea. She didn't have to look behind her, either, to know that Andrea was watching her.
Carol watched Daryl leave. Out the window, she saw him pause, light a cigarette, and pull his phone out of his pocket. She watched him stare at it, like he was waiting for something, before he returned it to his pocket. Then he looked back. She felt her face burn warm when he looked straight at her. He smiled, catching his cigarette between two fingers, and waved at her, again, before he started down the sidewalk to the place where he'd presumably parked.
Carol gathered up the coffee mugs to return them to the counter and get a refill for herself. A glance in Andrea's direction told her that Andrea was already waiting for her to join her.
